An exchange between Ed Miliband and an electrician yesterday raised some important questions for the Labour leader over his stance on holding an EU referendum in Britain. Peter Baldwin, an aircraft electrician at BAE Systems in Lancashire said that he didn’t feel like voting for Labour because the party are not holding a referendum on the… [Read More]
Today, Civitas has released a new report proposing a voluntary contribution fee for the NHS totaling 0.5 per cent of an individual’s income. The contribution would enable users to transfer their treatment budget to any NHS provider that they wish to use. This would essentially end the NHS’s postcode lottery (where patients receive different standards… [Read More]
Today researchers based in York have made an attempt to bring the NHS’s astronomical spending on drugs, especially those for cancer treatment, back down to earth. They claim that the high cost of almost all drugs approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) effectively harms patients by necessitating budget cuts elsewhere… [Read More]
Innovation is at the heart of a healthy economy. The determination to create new technologies, to find an easier and more exciting way of living, led to the creation of the modern economy as we know it. Innovation solves problems. It serves new purposes, frees up time for other enterprises, and creates new businesses and jobs… [Read More]
Last night Channel 4 hosted a docudrama with the premise that Ukip wins the 2015 election and begins to effect its policies. Ofcom received complaints before the show it even aired. Twitter was alive with condemnation for Channel 4, media bias and sloppy scripting. In the show, Prime Minister Nigel Farage announces he will take… [Read More]
Norway is not in the European Union. Instead it is part of a wider group, the European Economic Area (EEA), which permits it free trade with EU countries but allows it to avoid the Common Agricultural Policy, control its own fisheries, and pay a much smaller membership fee. Unlike EU members, it can negotiate its… [Read More]
The other day, while visiting my parents in south-east London, my wife and I took our dog for a walk in the local park. There were several other people walking their dogs, but the peace was disturbed by a youth on a trail bike who roared across the park at full throttle and then, a… [Read More]
Today the Care Quality Commission (CQC) published an advisory pamphlet on clandestine surveillance in care homes by means of hidden cameras or sound recording equipment. Following the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ programme of April 2014 where hidden cameras were carried by Panorama reporters who had managed to get themselves appointed as care assistants, and the diffusion of… [Read More]
We are witnessing the collapse of NIMBYist Britain according to Steve Akehurst of Shelter. The housing charity found in recent surveys that ‘NIMBYism has collapsed across all voter groups. In 2010, there was not a single voter group who overall supported more homes being built in their local area. By 2013 there was not a… [Read More]
Barely an hour goes by without news of the standoff between Greece’s new Syriza-led government and the troika of creditors, the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and the European Commission. The deadlock is unsettling the markets, we are told, as Syriza asks for debt relief and those who hold Greece’s debt refuse another restructuring.… [Read More]