Keeping It Under Your Hat
With 11.5 million documents to read through, we’ve not heard the last of the revelations from the Panama Papers. David Cameron is on the defensive, though Jeremy Corbyn’s attacks are…
Cider House Rules II
We don’t often get to discuss the politics of cider. Politicians are usually smart enough to leave cider alone. But it did make the headlines this week, with news of…
Pop Goes the Weasel
“Governments with money centralise and claim the credit. Governments without cash decentralise and spread the blame. Those are not the views of a hardened media cynic. They are what I…
Housing Whom?
Oxford professor Danny Dorling is the rising star of radical sociology. Some of us heard him speak in Witney during the 2010 election campaign. He has his critics, but he…
Responsibility Without Power
We are grateful to an MK blogger in Penzance for a careful analysis of what the Coalition’s pseudo-localism means in practice. It amounts to devolving the running of services, and the making…
Tax – and Spend Better
“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”Oliver Wendell HolmesWhat defines a community? Among other things, it requires trust. It requires it because it calls for a lowering of the…
A Stitch In Time
We remain firmly opposed to the wave upon wave of London overspill housing that is changing the character of our region for the worse. (And destroying in the process the…
Six Months
That’s all it took. All it took for the Coalition’s true programme to be made manifest. It talks the talk about decentralisation and localism but does it walk the walk?We…
Nothing Left Out
Colin Bex has defied the sceptics by conducting his campaign almost wholly by public transport. Today he did need a lift, to fit in three towns in as many hours…
Keep Off the Cider!
Alistair Darling’s last budget before the election took a widely predicted swipe at cider drinkers. This afternoon he announced plans to raise the excise duty on cider by 10% over…