Fancy living on 62p a day? Thousands of families are going to have to do exactly that if the government’s Welfare Reform Bill becomes law, and the benefit cap comes in. Never mind the 100,000 children who’ll fall below the poverty line, or the projected 20,000 people who’ll be made homeless by it. Never mind [...]
So, apparently, if you release a report claiming that older people are contributing to the housing shortage by living in homes that are too big for them, some of those older people get quite annoyed. If you were inclined to be cynical, you might even wonder if controversy was exactly what the author – or [...]
Guest post by Matt Mahon In June, the government announced a 22 percent cut in early years spending. At the time, the effect that was most widely discussed was the closure of SureStart centres, but now the direct impact on state schools and primary education is also becoming clear. Another ‘saving’ announced at the time [...]
There’s a bit of a comments storm brewing over at LibCon over the ‘gender neutral baby’ story which came out a few days ago, with Flying Rodent in the ‘won’t the poor kid get bullied?’ corner, and Jennie Kermode of Trans Media Watch entering the fray for the ‘no it won’t, and gender’s just a [...]
Your starter for 10: Which voice of Britain’s embattled public sector workers said this yesterday? We acknowledge that some cuts are necessary due to the parlous state of the country’s finances, but we feel greatly let down that we are not considered to be a protected priority area by the government. They have and will [...]
The supreme court ruled today that Raymond McCartney and Eamonn MacDermott are entitled to compensation for being wrongly convicted of murder during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. This news doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact, which, when you look at the actual substance and implications of the judgement, is kind of odd: [...]
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 [...]
This is a guest post by Andy McGowan, Access Officer at Cambridge University Students’ Union So Nick and Dave are at it again – and I don’t just mean making embarrassing slips of the tongue like this one. They’ve also gone back to having a go at easy targets as a smokescreen for their own [...]
As you may or may not have noticed, the lefty blogosphere erupted in mild outrage recently over the news that Camden Council had ‘banned’ the anti-monarchist organisation Republic from holding a ‘not the Royal wedding’-themed street party in Covent Garden. (The party wasn’t strictly banned – the council just refused to close the street – [...]
