The Economist‘s Washington correspondent comments on … …Barack Obama’s proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts for one year on family income under $250,000. The plan would benefit all families, by the way, not...
It seems that my celebration in a recent blog post of the abolition by parliament of the vicious system of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs) was a little premature, although we have all...
We are currently confronted by the prospect of an Act of Parliament coming into force within a few weeks that will change the composition of the House of Lords, introducing a badly flawed electoral...
Yesterday, May Day 2012, was a very special day for a little noticed reason. On 1 May 2012 an Act of Parliament abolished the infamous system of IPPs (Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection). This...
The government’s Bill to reform the House of Lords and the majority report on it by a parliamentary Joint Committee are as full of holes as a cheese grater, and they grate equally painfully. ...
Two gems from the weekend: “[The World Bank’s] most recent reforms of voting rights were remarkable only for their temerity.” The glimmer of a possibility of change at the World Bank, Peter Chowla, Guardian,...
The election for London mayor is a dismal affair. It seems inevitable that either Boris Johnson (Conservative incumbent) or Ken Livingstone (his Labour predecessor) will win, but neither is an attractive candidate, both carry...
The Labour leadership has made a regrettable mistake in seeking to put the problem of antisocial behaviour at the top of the party’s list of priorities, however large it might and does loom in...
There is solid justification for about 50% of the indignation aroused by the exposure of the attempt by the then Treasurer of the Conservative party to sell access to David Cameron (and, more seductively,...
The European Court of Human Rights is preventing Britain from deporting the radical Moslem preacher, Abu Qatada, to his native Jordan on the grounds that he would not get a fair trial there if,...