EU Budget Commissioner, Janusz Lewandowski, has called on the EU institutions and numerous specialist agencies to limit next year’s growth in internal expenses to less than 1%. It is self-evident that these offices must limit their budgets, but Mr Lewandowski’s letter fails to take the more drastic measures – such as scrapping some agencies altogether… [Read More]
Tomorrow the House of Commons will decide whether or not to defy the decision by the European Court of Human Rights to force the people of this country to give votes to convicted criminals who have been sentenced to prison. There are some comments by David Green at the Daily Telegraph. Carolina Bracken has written… [Read More]
Vince Cable yesterday marked the beginning of National Apprentice Week by announcing that the Government would increase annual funding for on-the-job training by £222 million to take the total to £1.4 billion. It was hoped that this, coupled with encouraging firms to take on more apprentices, would increase the total number of people enrolled on… [Read More]
In an emphatic open letter, the Director of the Howard League, Frances Crook, calls on all MPs to stand against Thursday’s motion relating to voting by prisoners. Ms Crook rightly states that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is “arguably one of the greatest achievements in recent history”. Similarly, it is true that, so… [Read More]
So far, 2011 is not proving to be a very decisive year for the EU. A month of mulling over Hungary’s untimely media clamp-downs, a series of vague statements urging ‘dialogue’ as the protests in North Africa escalate, and now, dithering over what to do with Romania and Bulgaria’s accession to the EU Schengen zone… [Read More]
In October last year, the Equality and Human Rights Commission suggested that progress to close the gender pay gap was grinding to a halt. That December, the Office of National Statistics inconveniently noted ‘the biggest fall in the gender pay gap since the measure was first produced using the ASHE methodology in 1997’. This renders… [Read More]
Political developments had mixed effects upon global markets last week. Investors were reassured by comments on the eurozone from European leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, then worried about the situation in Egypt and the uncertain fate of President Mubarak’s regime. These two different events, the pledges to save the Euro and the… [Read More]
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Human Rights Watch World Report 2011 has slammed the EU for its overreliance on dialogue rather than action in tackling human rights abuse, and for its “obsequious” approach to known rights violators. Whilst there is no inherent harm in cooperative dialogue, the EU seems “particularly infatuated” with this discursive model.
Here’s a cheap joke – ‘What’s the difference between manifesto pledges and promises made to unelected sports organisations?’ You can only break the former… Funny? Probably not, but apt given this is the main objection to the better Spurs bid for the Olympic Stadium.