Ed Miliband is invoking the spirit of 1945 in a nostalgic think back to the post war Attlee government. This is a foolish and meaningless comparison. Yet it need not be. The reason for the Attlee triumph was an entirely new prospectus put before the British people; a welfare state, social justice, public ownership and, […]
As an emotive public relations exercise the Prime Minister’s speech to the UN in New York should play well, especially with his party. However it was not the speech of a statesman, neither will it do any good. Unfortunately the FCO and Downing Street do not see the difference between diplomacy and banging the drum. […]
There are two bad ideas in the offing from the government. The first is the proposal that people should be allowed to add extensions without planning permission. Can you imagine the disaster of next door being sold to aspirational know-alls who want everything they can legally get without a thought for the effect on their […]
Nick Clegg is talking in rather vague terms about stopping free bus passes, winter fuel allowances etc. to those who have no financial need of them. This is bound to cause controversy because of the pivotal notion of the universal right to benefits enshrined in the foundation of the welfare state. To test this hypothesis we need […]
The Lib Dems cannot reasonably be blamed for clumsiness with the levers of power. They have had to learn on the job. Unfortunately fate and votes determined that they form a coalition with the Conservatives. This is the party, still, of the view that it is the natural party of power and that it is […]
Two things stand out about the 2012 Presidential race. Neither the President nor his opponent have yet developed obvious winning themes and America is polarised. Rather than a theme, there is instead a schism. It is about the American dream of individual freedom, self reliance and minimal government versus the one nationhood of the United […]
This Blog has recently drawn attention to an untrustworthy Establishment, following the lies and deception at the heart of the failure, for over twenty years, to reveal the truth about the Hillsborough disaster. Waiting in the wings are the outcomes to Leveson and Chilcot. There are high hopes that both will deliver emphatic conclusions in […]
Protests about the unfortunate and apparently very bad film made in America, but nobody seems to know by whom, which insults Islam, has led to an ever widening area of protest, which now goes beyond Arab counties right across the Islamic world. America is shocked by the death of its Ambassador to Libya. It is […]
It is very distressing for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, multitudes think of them affectionately as Wills and Kate, to have to brave their own scandal of privacy invasion, while on an important overseas tour. Now it transpires that the decision to sue the publishers of the pictures in France has provoked an Italian magazine to jump on […]
Markets have gone wild with the news that the Fed is going to pump new money, not once, but month by month, into the US economy, until it begins to grow convincingly under its own steam. Coming on top of the ECB decision to stand ready to do its own version of QE, this shows […]