Wanted: an NHS
“The power which causes the several portions of the plant to help each other, we call life… intensity of life is also intensity of helpfulness — completeness of depending of…
The Spirit of ‘15
Last year’s commemorations of the First World War were a good excuse to re-open old wounds and close our eyes to modern Europe. Now consider that 2015 marks the 200th…
Whose Hospitals?
“I don’t know how much any of you realise that with the Lansley act we pretty much gave away control of the NHS… we don’t really have day-to-day control.” Jane…
Softly, Softly
Angus Macpherson is Police & Crime Commissioner for Wiltshire Police. He recently told a business breakfast meeting that the police were now working as a region, taking in Gloucestershire, Dorset,…
Punishing The Toys
Windsor Castle is home to more than a few of the 1,200 items of ivory in the Royal Collection. The 1,200 items that Prince William would like to have destroyed…
No Heritage Soon
Where did the inspiration come from for our National Health Service? Historians have a habit, given that Nye Bevan was a Welshman, to look to Wales, to the miners’ and…
Analysing ‘Dave’
The MP for Witney is a Tory Prime Minister for our times. Not too blatant a representative of the landowning and military class (though do scratch and sniff), nor the…
The Biggest Society
Communists and fascists agreed that an efficient society requires a strong element of focused terror – the fear of physical attack. We may think we have moved on but in…
The People’s Ponzi
We’ve been hearing quite a lot recently about Ponzi schemes, as the financial chickens come home to roost. A Ponzi scheme is an investment scam that promises investors a high…
Whither Wessex?
"At a number of places in his celebrated Imperialism (1902), J. A. Hobson used southern England as an image of the successful, imperialist side of British capitalism: a countryside of…