UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage has a spring (conference promise) in his step – UKIP will win this May’s EU parliamentary elections, and at least one seat in the general election. If they fail to place an MP, Farage will quit.
Events in Ukraine have been unfolding rapidly over the past week. The eastern European country saw the return of one former president, Yulia Tymoshenko and the disappearance of Yanukovych, who was voted out by Ukrainian MPs and is now wanted by the authorities for the violence that led to the deaths of more than 80… [Read More]
Half owner-occupying households have two or more spare bedrooms.
Labour and the Conservatives are betting (or hoping) for a Liberal Democrat wipe-out at the next election. Both have floated the idea of ruling out coalition, whatever the outcome. Yesterday’s papers carried reports that Cameron was ‘fed-up’ of working with the Lib Dems and would opt for minority government if met with a similar situation… [Read More]
Whether you love your bankers free range and content or caged and taxed to the nines, the bonus cap was a bad idea. It was clear before the measure even passed that capping bonuses wouldn’t actually restrict behemoth payouts. Now HSBC has shown they can still award eye-watering sums with a little jiggery-pokery – their… [Read More]
As I write, Schools Minister Elizabeth Truss and a group of school heads are flying to China on a fact finding mission to discover why Chinese pupils excel at mathematics. This visit coincides with a report released last Monday, which revealed that the children of elementary workers (cleaners, factory workers, labourers) in Shanghai outperform at… [Read More]
President Yanukovych has announced that he is willing to hold elections early as part of a deal with the opposition to end the political crisis in Ukraine. This is a huge step forward in negotiations after shocking images emerged this week of gun battles between police and protestors, with police snipers firing mercilessly at protestors,… [Read More]
The unemployment figure is down, but not by as much as the claimant count. Rapid growth in self-employment is concerning.
Yesterday the EU Commission’s president Barroso said it would be ‘extremely difficult, if not impossible’. I say, ‘Yes and No.’
Character has been the education talking point of the past week. An All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) published a report on it, Tristram Hunt delivered a speech about it, and various education-comment heavyweights have written about it. Character education has an intriguing genealogy. In the Victorian public school, the development of ‘character’ was a central preoccupation. The 1864 Clarendon… [Read More]