Admittedly, the topic of share buybacks, when companies repurchase their shares to return money to investors, may not immediately set the pulses racing. However, if William Lazonick is right, cracking down on this practice may be crucial to getting investment rates back up and the economy back on track. Lazonick’s research has focused on the… [Read More]
Integration continues to be a government priority, with the Care Minister Norman Lamb making an encouraging announcement today that the coalition aims to set the NHS on track towards full integration of health and social care by 2018. It is hoped that this will move patients better treated in community settings away from hospitals, prevent… [Read More]
After a week of Tory grandees past and present declaring their willingness to take Britain out of the European Union, Ed Miliband has had an easy ride. The Labour leader has enjoyed the discomfort that the Conservative civil war is causing his opposite number, and will deride the upcoming protest vote against the Queen’s Speech… [Read More]
Serbia and Kosovo have normalised relations in what has been hailed as an historic moment for the two Balkan States. After ten rounds of talks with High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, often up to 14 hours at a time, Serbia’s Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and Kosovan Prime Minister Hashim Thaci… [Read More]
Publishing specimen exam scripts would quickly show what standarsd GCSE candidates really achieved and quickly put an end to grade inflation or to complaints about it.
Since the Wealth of Nations project here at Civitas began, we have been calling on the government to pursue an active industrial policy. Up until recently, industrial policy has had a bad name, being associated with the (partially) failed efforts of the 1970s. Yet, the most outstanding examples of industrial policy measures are often not… [Read More]
Much ink has already been expended on last Thursday’s local elections and the strong performance by UKIP. Achieving a projected national share of 23% of the vote (though not literally 23% of the vote cast on Thursday, as Anthony Wells has explained), UKIP netted 147 new council seats across England and also helped make it… [Read More]
Today the former Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, announced his intention to vote out of Europe ( full text [£]). His analysis ranged from the military to the political, but he was most accurate regarding the current economic costs. This stands in contrast to the errors espoused by former Defence and Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind on… [Read More]
Bulgaria’s wiretapping scandal, dubbed as the country’s ‘Watergate’ is a messy criss-crossing of accusations and leaked wiretaps. Former agricultural minister Naydenov has accused ex-interior minister Tsetanov of illegally wiretapping politicians in the previous Cabinet. Tsetanov, often referred to as former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov’s right-hand man, denies any wrongdoing and has blamed the Socialist opposition… [Read More]
Genuinely equal constituencies are possible if the boundaries get drawn after voting, not before.