Today Ed Miliband spoke at the Sutton Trust’s annual conference on social mobility. I must admit that the politics of social mobility has always left me rather cold. To put it quite bluntly, when a banker or lawyer can earn 100 times more than the person who cleans their office, this situation raises far bigger [...]
Dear Judges, In 1748, the Baron of Montesquieu singled out the English political system as an exemplary form of protection of liberties, and the avoidance of corruption and despotism. He described in The Spirit of the Laws the separation between what we would now call the legislative, judiciary and executive powers. His argument was extremely [...]
Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, has just provided yet more evidence that he is, in fact, an odious little shit. In a speech to a union conference, he warned that if widespread public sector strikes take place (which seems likely), the government would enact new anti-strike legislation. This is part of the speech obtained by the [...]
In maybe the most offensive manifestation of the Daily Telegraph‘s slide from serious paper of record to hate-filled propaganda rag for the literate over-80s, their personal finance editor, Ian Cowie, brings us the following suggestion to improve Britain’s democracy: …here’s an idea that might really stir up some interest – and improve our nation’s governance.Why don’t we [...]
We can’t in all honesty, remember if one met Kate Middleton at St Andrews. We may well have – St Andrews is a small place, without any appreciable nightlife beyond the two streets where the students cluster. With the weather so consistently bleak only alcohol could really induce us to travel outside. And so to [...]
“There is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading…To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it [...]
The International Monetary Fund has released a paper entitled Inequality, Leverage and Crisis making the case that inequality was an ‘underlying cause of the Great Recession of 2008-2009′, The Telegraph reports: “Global unemployment remains at record highs, with widening income inequality adding to social strains,” he [IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn] said, citing turmoil in North Africa as [...]
“There’s always a bigger fish.” – Qui-Gon Jinn Paul Krugman on his New York Times blog notes a symptom of just how far the West has regressed in the distribution of income: so much of America’s wealth is concentrated in the top 1% of the income scale that those only just below actually feel insecure about [...]
Scene in Twickenham train station: well dressed woman in mid-thirties shouting at gigantic pink railway employee through three inches of Perspex. Woman’s daughter has phoned mother in tears after being fined for travelling on the wrong ticket. Woman: You people have no idea customer service, you just sit there you fat lump Railway employee: I’m [...]
Last night Nick Clegg gave the annual Hugo Young lecture at the Guardian offices, and in doing so set out his vision of a just society. In his speech – a version of which was published on Comment is Free – he sought to present the Liberal Democrats as the “new progressives”, in contrast to [...]
