Policy Announcements, Tuesday 27 March
Government Ed Miliband, Minister for the Third Sector, today launched the Government's search for a partner to deliver a new £1.2m Innovation Exchange - a programme to support the third sector's capacity to innovate. The Innovation…
Review of the Papers, Monday 26 March
Government The Government is to dramatically overhaul its strategy on crime by ending its drive for ever-tougher sentences and instead putting more emphasis on rehabilitating offenders and sending fewer of them to prison. Cabinet papers…
Policy Announcements, Monday 26 March
Government A new UK policy for managing solid low level radioactive waste has been published by the UK Government and the devolved administrations today. The policy, which follows a public consultation in 2006, puts proving public safety…
The sad decline of The Independent
I had noticed that The Independent had ceased to be a newspaper and had become instead a soap-box from which Simon Kelner and his staff could bore on about Iraq and the environment. A sad decline from the refreshingly open-minded and wide…
Short intermission
I'm off skiing for a week, and JG has already headed off on holiday for a fortnight, so things may go a little quiet round here for a while. But LP should still be posting the summaries and maybe the odd additional posting if something…
BBC sceptics
The BBC is in many ways excellent (when you compare the quality of TV and radio in other countries, for example), but is nevertheless a persistent irritant with occasional outbreaks of festering sores. The priority given to football over…
What the budget really means for disposable incomes and incentives
Forget about what the BBC, the Government or the Tories say about the impact of the changes to personal taxation and benefits announced by Gordon Brown today. Here is what it really means for people of working age (comparing the current…
The Budget, the BBC and the Bias
The BBC's reporting of the Budget debate on Radio Five Live has been fantastically lop-sided. On the most basic measure - air time - they broadcast the whole of Gordon Brown's speech but cut off both David Cameron and Ming Campbell mid-flow…
Review of the papes, Wednesday 21st March
Gordon Brown will announce today that the government is to spend an extra £1bn to lift 200,000 children out of poverty as he uses his final budget to help put Labour back on track to meet its target for alleviating deprivation among the…
£40.5bn extra a year and he wonders why there's child poverty
Only a couple more hours and Gordon will giving his final Budget to Parliament. There will be much patting on the back by his loyal followers, though probably mostly by himself. He will claim the longest period of economic growth in the…
The sickness tax
Has there been a government better at "charging for old rope" than this current one. As I understand, our taxes go, in large parts, to the funding of all things NHS - including their car parks. However, our money that went to towards…
Review of the papers, Tuesday 20th March
Gordon Brown has exhibited a "Stalinist ruthlessness" in government, belittling his cabinet colleagues whom the Treasury treats with "more or less complete contempt", according to the man who was Britain's top civil servant until two years…