Why is the government persisting in policies that strangle demand in the economy instead of boosting it? Faced with a bad financial crisis, a paralytic economy and no growth, the coalition government’s immediate instincts...
Financial Times, November 5, 2011: Letters: Salmond’s ‘devo max’ option is a camouflage device From Sir Brian Barder. Sir, You are surely unnecessarily alarmed by the Scottish first minister’s “shrewd” decision to include “devo...
I’m going to take November off. For some time now I’ve been having tiresome problems with my hands and fingers — nothing that wouldn’t quickly be put right by becoming ten years younger, but...
The Labour leadership is making a sad mistake in opposing the government’s decision to abolish IPPs (Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection), as I argued in a new blog post yesterday. The other sentencing changes...
At last the prime minister himself has signalled the firm intention “shortly” to end the cruel injustice of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs). David Hanson, Labour MP for Delyn, who was a minister...
My letter in today’s Guardian argues that rising demand for fuller self-government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland points to full UK federation as a better culmination of devolution than the disintegration of our...
Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs), which keep thousands of people indefinitely in prison long after they have been punished for their offence, inflict needless misery and injustice on IPP prisoners and their families. ...
Labour’s shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, has again attacked Ken Clarke’s humane, courageous and progressive programme of penal reforms designed to reduce our bloated prison population, improve prison conditions by enabling prisoners to work...
Someone at the BBC seems to have it in for Ethiopia, for some reason. Newsnight, the BBC’s most trusted and supposedly authoritative of current affairs programmes, this week (on 21 September 2011) thriftily recycled...
The government’s proposals for House of Lords ‘reform’ are a nonsense, but that’s no reason to give up on more sensible and progressive options for change. Devolution has brought us half-way into a UK...