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Posted on Monday, November 07, 2011 8:32 PM
By serendipity we came across two interesting articles on charity and charities this weekend. The first comes fromBrendan O’Neill of Spiked, a summary of his lecture to the Liberty League last month attacking the concept of ‘the poor’ and the moralising of those who purport to help them and the perceived ‘underclass’. “We should be super-sceptical whenever we hear the phrase ‘the underclass’… because I can guarantee you that every time you hear those phrases, you will discover far more about the person doing the talking than you will about the people being talked about” |
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Posted on Sunday, October 30, 2011 6:43 PM
Has Dr Eilidh Whiteford now taken her grievance a step too far? In today’sScotland on Sunday, she likens the alleged bully-boy tactics of Labour MP and chairman of the Scottish Affairs Committee Ian Davidson to women who are subjected to domestic abuse and are said to be’ asking for it’. Methinks the lady doth protest a tad too much. As doesthe paper’s editorial. Now we hold no brief for Mr Davidson, who we suspect is a product of that old West of Scotland school where men are men and women belong in the scullery. |
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Posted on Friday, October 21, 2011 11:08 AM
Folowing our comments on Tuesday about the potential of shale gas outlined by Professor Dieter Helm, the Adam Smith Institutehas published an even better case for exploiting the apparently limitless supply of the stuff lying off the coast of north-west England. ASI says Europe is going hell for leather for very expensive green renewables with coal backup while China and America are seeing the light on shale. Russia, it says, is worried about the future of its natural gas when demand is reduced;that pipeline coming across Europe wouldn't be able to hold us to ransom. |
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Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 10:37 AM
Yesterday the Sovereign Fund came into being. Part of George Osborne’s Spending Review last autumn, it changes the way we pay for the monarchy, with the Civil List being exchanged for a 15% share of the revenue of the Crown Estate. We have watched with interest the attempts by the First Minister to ensure that the increasing revenues accruing to the Crown Estate from offshore wind development around the Scottish coast and in Scotland’s coastal waters come to Scotland rather than straight into the Treasury coffers without passing Go. |
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Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 4:17 PM
So, are we convinced by the Prime Minister and Chris Huhne’s little chat with the energy companies? Did we see the big six retreating cowed, licking their wounds and promising we’d all be warm this winter. Porcine squadrons more like. Instead, we’re to be sent little leaflets urging us to switch to another company charging almost exactly the same, and those of us who have the temerity to cling to quarterly bills to go for that direct debit. |
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Posted on Friday, October 14, 2011 9:35 AM
All this week the Guardian has been running a series of articles and readers’ comments under the banner ofDisunited Kingdomthat looks at the process of devolution in all three administrations. What makes it interesting, apart from excellent (if predictable) contributions fromProfessor John Curtice,AL KennedyandSimon Jenkinsamongst others, is that this is almost the first time that a UK-wide newspaper has treated the subject of devolution and independence with anything approaching seriousness. |
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Posted on Thursday, October 06, 2011 10:04 PM
We can't help feeling we should be exercised over the Scottish Tory election, but frankly, the party seems so hell bent on destroying itself one way or another that it’s impossible for even political nerds like us to maintain much enthusiasm for the details. The most interesting press contribution we’ve seen so far came fromKenny Farquharson in last week’s Scotland on Sunday; if Murdo Fraser wins, he thinks, and presumably, all goes according to plan, the formation of a new centre right party believing in devo-max will galvanise those of all parties who support this putative second option on the referendum ballot. |
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Posted on Monday, August 15, 2011 10:27 PM
Carole Vordeman’s report on the teaching of maths (see Doing our sums properly, below) has elicitedthis responseposted it on the ConservativeHome website today from John Bald, an independent education consultant.We urge anyone remotely interested in education to read it. Mr Bald thinks Ms Vorderman’s report does not go far enough. We should not only ignore leftist educationalists, we must go back to basics, and should apply her idea of separating everyday maths from ‘abstract’ maths to the teaching of English too. |
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Posted on Sunday, August 14, 2011 7:35 AM
Rainforests have been sacrificed this week in an attempt to analyse the riots in English cities. One of the best efforts appears in the current edition of The Spectator - fromHarriet Sargeant, who points the finger squarely at education – or lack of it – that has made a swathe of young men and women unemployable. Quoting figures on literacy released in the week before the riots Sargeant maintains that |
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Posted on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 3:47 PM
We in Scotland have been a tad reticent this week in intruding on the private grief that has overtaken London and other major cities in England. Professor Tom Devine says we are a more conservative (with a small c) society, not given to civil unrest. How can he be so sure? The best way to alleviate poverty has long been to heave a brick through a designer shop window, and if poverty is the cause of the rioting, then we have communities every bit as materially poor as Tottenham. |
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