Last week Australian National University announced that they will be making all of the staff in their music department reapply for their jobs resulting in cuts of over 10 academic staff (here’s the grim letter they sent to staff). This is on the basis that teaching music properly makes a loss, and is being done [...]
It has been quite a weekend for Europe. The bondholders’ settlement has been well and truly shaken. First Hollande deposed Sarkozy. He has entered office on a pledge to amend or reject Fiscal Union, a treaty that will force Eurozone governments to cut spending during any present or future recession. Yet the real tremor came [...]
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m launching a new conference on tax justice in London this Wednesday through International Tax Review magazine, so here’s one final shameless plug and an invitation to come and debate an issue which, I think, is one of the most important facing the world today. It’s free to attend if [...]
It emerged today that Greece will hold snap elections less than 4 weeks from now. An official announcement will be made tomorrow. Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal have confirmation from an unnamed government official that the poll will take place on May the 6th. The radical left, meanwhile, have surged forward in the polls. According [...]
Things can quickly get out of hand. It started with questions being asked about how much tax Mr Livingstone actually paid. Boris’ tax arrangements were inevitably brought into the argument. And then came Mr Osborne, who has indicated that the shadow cabinet will happily release all of their tax returns – a move that would, [...]
Ed Miliband accuses the Tories of playing politics with the tanker drivers’ strike. The Mail accuses Miliband of playing politics with the Olympics, because of the party’s funding by the unions (IIIE has already covered the ham-fisted idiocy that is the Tories’ attempts to paint the unions as undemocratic). Guardian commenters (again, let’s not go [...]
The cash for access scandal is neither exciting nor particularly concerning. Representatives of big business do not need to endure dinners with David and Samantha in order to exercise undue influence over government policy. More worrying is that the revelations have, once again, given rise to demands for the state to fund political parties, so [...]
Seven million people watched the first episode of the new series of The Apprentice, which screened this week on the BBC. This means that seven million people should have gained a rather interesting insight into the economy, and the government’s plan for recovery. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to have happened so I thought I’d spell [...]
Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers have “banged” the table at a cabinet meeting to mark the impending passing of the death warrant on the needy, elderly, and disabled into law, Downing Street has said. The Death to the Poor Bill, for England, has had a difficult passage through Parliament but was finally passed by the [...]
This is a guest post by Amy Kavanagh. You can follow her on twitter at twitter.com/BlondeHistorian. One of the classic responses I get from people when I tell them I am disabled is; ‘oh but you’d never know to look at you’. This is usually meant as a compliment. Yet I believe this twisted praise reveals [...]
