Difficult Issues The Prime Minister had little option but to condemn the sympathy phenomenon for Raoul Moat, but troubling issues remain. Most gratifying, though, is the extraordinary courage and lack of bitterness shown by P.C.Rathband. Whatever flows from this tragic chain of events, his commitment to overcome the dreadful legacy of Moat’s violence should shine […]

Lending Controls Lord Turner has signalled that there will have to be a return to income based lending which ensures that the borrower has both sufficient income to pay the loan and also have  enough money left over to live. The era of ignoring income, or having no formal controls, relying on house price inflation to take […]

Tributes to Raoul Moat The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has expressed disappointment in the level, 17000 at the time of writing this, of supporters of a tribute website to Rauol Moat on Facebook and the flowers and other tributes outside his home and at the spot where he shot himself. This raises profound issues which should […]

Deeper Recession New figures from the National Statistics office show that the recession in the U.K was worse than at first thought, going down from peak to trough 6.4%. This compares with 5.3% for Euroland and 3.8%  for the U.S. In other words we did worst. When I was researching for my book 2010 A Blueprint For […]

The Marching Season What a sorry sight to see riots in Belfast again. Let us not forget that at the root is the utterly preposterous ‘tradition’ of triumphalist Protestant marches passing through Catholic areas. This whole concept of celebrating a victory of centuries past by humiliating the losers, is the most distasteful and insulting aspect of the […]

Useless Jobs. Lord Tebbit, admired always by this Blog for his personal courage and public candour but rarely for his policy positions, has written an excellent article for the Times today. In an assessment of the road ahead for the coalition he considers the prospect of the unions bringing it down, as they did with the  Heath […]

Health Reforms The centrepiece of the government’s White Paper on Health is that GPs (I prefer the title Personal Doctor) will be in control together with the patient, of their diagnosis and treatment path, for the first time since the NHS was formed. This is the critical point. It is not about funding or who […]

Manhunt The manhunt for Raoul Moat has ended in the media spotlight and now the questions are coming thick and fast. At one level the hunt was a success, in that his shooting spree was brought to an end before he could kill or injure again. At another level he seemed to be able to outwit literally […]

The Synod The Church of England Synod has voted to reject the compromise proposal of Canterbury and York, to allow dissenting parishes to be overseen by a man bishop if they refuse to accept the authority of a woman bishop. Quite right too. The two Archbishops were grievously in error to propose it. Those who […]

Education Muddles I have from the beginning of this coalition government been uncertain about its eduction policies, which are mostly based upon the Tory blueprint, much of which I have criticised in the past. The latest muddles and mistakes over the school building programme, which should not have happened, confirm this department as the weak […]