This year’s annual Hay-on-Wye Festival has just ended. In his column in last week’s Sunday Times, Jeremy Clarkson wrote this about the annual twelve-day jamboree: ‘You might imagine that Hay is a lovely day out for all the family, a chance for children to meet all the authors they love… Of course, it’s no such… [Read More]
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), New Labour’s most relied-on think tank, has proposed that the ‘long’ summer holidays (shorter than in most of Europe) be abolished in a bid to curb what has been referred to as the ‘summer learning loss’ amongst pupils from deprived backgrounds. The report, ‘Thursday’s Child’, co-authored by Sonya… [Read More]
Perhaps one of the biggest misnomers in the NHS at present is payment by results, quite simply because it isn’t payment by results at all. It’s payment by caseload. For an operation from the same health resource group, whether you bungle it and leave the patient ridden with MRSA and disabled for life or whether… [Read More]
After Brown’s £2.7 billion bailout over the 10p tax debacle, the multiple taxes on motorists are now coming under greater scrutiny. In the early years, the majority of attacks directed against the Labour Government were the introduction of stealth taxes. That criticism no longer applies. A doubling in vehicle excise duty on ordinary family cars… [Read More]
The tragic discovery last week in her Handsworth home of the emaciated corpse of seven year old Khyra Ishaq raises several disturbing questions. continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.
‘The potential for social enterprise and not-for-profit organisations to contribute to health and well-being remains almost completely unrealised’, surmised Harry Cayton, at a debate hosted by Civitas in the House of Commons last week. The question is why? Social enterprise – as shown in personal examples such as SELDOC and Stahcom, led by Mo Girach,… [Read More]
Last week I posted a blog here suggesting many of the ills currently bedevilling our society, including most notably the current knife-crime epidemic in the capital, were attributable to the Bible and its teachings having ceased to be the focus of religious education in many state schools. That suggestion elicited several sceptical comments. These variously… [Read More]
Yesterday, the world renowned health economist and ‘father’ of managed competition, Professor Alain C. Enthoven of Stanford University, gave a lunchtime seminar at Civitas, in which he advocated the development of genuine patient-centred health care, based on integrated delivery systems and individual (cost conscious) choice in the NHS. Those calling for integrated systems of finance,… [Read More]
Is summer now the season for publications pushing increased government intrusion into private conduct? The warm air has been accompanied by the somewhat chillier sensation of the release of two reports with some joyously Orwellian titles: The Politics of Public Behaviour from Demos and Creatures of Habit? The Art of Behavioural Change from the Social… [Read More]
Who can fail but to be deeply moved, if not humbled, by the magnanimous words of compassion spoken by the mother of sixteen year old Jimmy Mizen, London’s latest teenage murder victim? continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.