Tag Archives: Politics

Protests and a lack of moral courage from students, who knew…

Posted on 25/11/2010 by

Yesterdays vandalism and thuggery reported in the Telegraph this morning. Interesting that they chose not to contextualise the photo they used, which in other sources appears to show a group of schoolkids surrounding the van and shielding it, although given … Continue reading →

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On transparency in government expenditure

Posted on 12/08/2010 by

We hear today that Department for Communities and Local Government have published ”details” of all spending above £500.  The Minister responsible for the department, Eric Pickles, claiming that this move will encourage an ”army of armchair auditors” to examine the … Continue reading →

Posted in performance | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Educating parliamentarians – A crash course in critical thinking?

Posted on 04/08/2010 by

Lib Dem MP for Cambridge, Julian Huppert, gave an interview to the Independent in which he talked about the need for parliamentarians to understand science and technology.  A fair point, parliament is stuffed with party hacks, lawyers and PR people … Continue reading →

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The inevitable gun control pontification

Posted on 04/06/2010 by

So the UK has some of the tightest firearms licensing regulation in the world, apparently surpassed only by Japan.  Yet we still have a reasonable level of firearm related crime, predominantly using illegal weapons.  With the unfortunate events of this … Continue reading →

Posted in Liberty | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Israeli attacks on civilian shipping

Posted on 31/05/2010 by

Much of the rhetoric around the alleged attacks by Israeli forces on an ”aid flotilla” today is strident and generally focussing on whether Israel was excessive or wrong to do so. Some are concentrating on the body that organised the … Continue reading →

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Liam Fox lives up to expectations

Posted on 22/05/2010 by

It’s reported in the Telegraph that Liam Fox has made his first faux pas as Secretary of State for Defence, stating that the UK is not engaged in Afghanistan for the ”education policy” but to assure UK security. There are … Continue reading →

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Dawn of a new era

Posted on 12/05/2010 by

Things have been moving quite remarkably over the last few days, and with real life intruding there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to capture it here. Overall, I’m happy with the outcome.  Mark Thompson discussed the risks … Continue reading →

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Electoral decisions – Who do I vote for?

Posted on 06/05/2010 by

Everyone else is coming up with their ”endorsements”, so a few thoughts on what’s guided my voting decision. First, we vote for an individual, not a party and more specifically not a party leader.  I’m not sure what kind of … Continue reading →

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Setting political directions

Posted on 13/04/2010 by

Prompted by a Twitter discussion I’ve been thinking about our ideal of political involvement in delivering public services, and our actual experience of it.  The topic was Policing and the value in elected governance.  Clearly the ideal would be that … Continue reading →

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Policy driven options appraisal

Posted on 20/02/2010 by

Coverage of the nominally cross-party discussions on health care yesterday was drowned in discussion of the decision by the Tories to absent themselves. This was coupled with demands to remove one of the funding options, the so-called “death tax”, from … Continue reading →

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