Monthly Archives: October 2013

News of Sharon Shoesmith’s six-figure payout caused an outbreak of spluttering rage yesterday. Once the Court of Appeal had ruled in her favour, though, a large payout was never in any doubt. Politicians on all sides are ranting about it … Continue reading →

I try not to blog about blogging, it’s a bit disappear-up-your-own-backside, but a couple of things happened recently that made me stop and reflect. The first was the death of Norman Geras a couple of weeks ago. I remember how he … Continue reading →

Everybody wants to be tough on welfare these days. Even the new shadow work and pensions secretary felt the need to frame her party’s jobs guarantee scheme as tough on welfare. The thing is, you can’t be tough on an abstraction. … Continue reading →

Tory politicians spent the weekend telling us that we should be more like the Chinese. Fresh from his recent visit, a starry-eyed George Osborne praised China while dismissing Britain as defeatist and second-rate. (In the space of just over a year, … Continue reading →

A couple of articles in the Economist upset a lot of people at the weekend. The paper suggested that there was no point in trying to save some of Britain’s former industrial towns. Instead, they should be allowed to decline … Continue reading →

At the Conservative conference, George Osborne announced that, assuming his party is re-elected, he is planning to achieve an ‘absolute budget surplus’ by 2020. This is different from his last promise to eliminate the structural deficit, which left plenty of … Continue reading →

The good folk at Pieria asked me to write a piece on demographics, so I did. Last week, also on Pieria, John Aziz wrote this on ‘The Economics of Abundance’: As the march of the robots continues, society and big … Continue reading →

“There’s no point trying to live in London,” said the FT’s Christian Oliver at the weekend, after he had spent a miserable afternoon looking for a house to buy in Bromley. It’s the latest in a series of warnings about … Continue reading →