Monthly Archives: July 2009

There are too many quangos. The panoply of regional government quangos in England need to be abolished, returning to Councils or national government those powers and budgets that are still needed. There are numerous national quangos that reflect past problems, set up in haste but allowed to develop a life of their own when the [...]

The press is alive with the discussion of too much spending and too much borrowing by the public sector. There seems to be several sources of the noise. The PM wants to highlight the issue to stress the contrast between government investment (his way of describing too much spending, and waste, as well as investment) [...]

Let me repeat a few old truths, and add a few new examples. I detect a new mood in the public and the media. Many people know public money is being wasted on undesirable schemes, on inefficiencies, poor quality, and on marginal projects. Unlike their government, most votes know this cannot go on on the [...]

Yesterday we were treated to the news that the government is going to investigate how many parents might have made misleading claims when applying for a preferred state school place for their children. No sooner than we learn that Harrow are not going to prosecute a parent who applied for a place at a better [...]

Beware all the statements from EU leaders that the UK has their support over the Iranian attacks on UK embassy staff. There was yesterday an orchestrated PR attempt to show the EU is on the UK’s side. Of course they are and of course they should be, as the principle of diplomatic immunity is an [...]

We learn today that the Chancellor is warning the City not to go back to the ways and days of big bonuses. This is the same Chancellor who allowed a near £10 m pay and bonus package for the CEO of RBS, a bank where he represents the controlling shareholders! This speech is almost as [...]

Big falls in share markets yesterday were put down to worse than expected unemployment figures in the USA. Readers of this site will not be surprised that the real economy is still struggling. In this recession in the US and the UK industrial companies have been much quicker to cut employment costs. Some have done [...]

We can be sure of one thing. On both sides of the Atlantic the architects of the current failed system of regulation will conclude we need more regulation in the future. They will be interested in what they can add to an edifice which worked badly, not thinking about what they should demolish before rebuilding. [...]

It was not a great start for the soon to be nationalised Eastern mainline company. The media were told early yesterday morning, whilst the Commons only had official confirmation and a Minister to question twelve hours later. The statement wasn’t worth waiting for. The Minister had no figures of how much revenue would fall, how [...]

Yesterday Barbara Keeley produced one of the worst Ministerial replies I have heard during the proceedings on the government’s rushed and incompetent Bill to change the arrangements for paying MPs allowances and salaries. It was so bad her boss Jack Straw also gave a wind up speech on the same amendments, to try to calm [...]