Too many children are being taken into care: the Baby P witch hunters are to blame February 9, 2012 WHEN Sharon Shoesmith, the former director of Haringey Children’s Services, became the scapegoat for the death of Peter Connelly or “Baby P”, almost everyone joined the witch hunt. The media went for her with a viciousness that knew no bounds while Ed Balls, then Children’s Secretary, took the unprecedented step of ordering her dismissal (unfairly, [...]
We skirt around the issues with quota proposals February 9, 2012 SPEAKING at a summit in Sweden yesterday, the Prime Minister revisited the issue of women in business, saying that he wanted to “accelerate” the increase in women on the boards of top UK firms. Although he said he would not rule out quotas (though Downing Street subsequently did), David Cameron said he would prefer to [...]
Don’t allow politicians to read Dickens for us February 9, 2012 WHAT would Charles Dickens do? If he were alive today, support everyone’s favourite cause it seems. In the author’s bicentennial year, everyone wants a piece. Schools minister Nick Gibb announced this week, referring to shocking levels of student illiteracy, that there are “shadows of Dickens’s world in our own” and called for more ambition in [...]
RAPID RESPONSES February 9, 2012 Greek gamblers Despite yesterday’s progress, with Greece’s long list of missed deadlines, and its opposition to keeping spending cuts promises, do Greek officials feel Eurozone officials will not allow the country to default? Greece will get the chance to put that theory to the test on 20 March, when €14.5bn (£12.13bn) in bond payments will [...]
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya… Is it time to intervene in Syria? February 8, 2012 YES MICHAEL WEISS THE question is not whether or not the West ought to intervene in Syria but when it will. For 11 months, President Assad’s regime has rejected all offers for substantive reform, while massacring upwards of 7,000 civilians, displacing tens of thousands more and running a network of arbitrary detention facilities rivalling Saddamist [...]
Bank accounts should become a rite of passage February 8, 2012 FINANCIAL education should be made a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum – that was the motion Justin Tomlinson MP put forward in Parliament just before Christmas. Tomlinson pointed out that debit card usage now exceeds cash usage. Yet about 19 per cent of parents have never discussed how to spend money with their teenagers [...]
Both sides do battle in war for independents February 8, 2012 THE president of the United States, according to the late Clinton Rossiter, is America’s “Manager of Prosperity”. Presidents sink or swim on their economic records. When the economy booms, $15 trillion in activity can – no matter how absurd – be attributed to the astute management of one man. The same is obviously true in [...]
RAPID RESPONSES February 8, 2012 A British disease Simon Denham is right in many of his observations [Politicians are slaughtering UK finance – the goose that is still laying the golden egg, Monday], particularly the way politicians are keen to jump on any current popular issue, banker-bashing at present, and will happily destroy the income that is feeding them in [...]
The Eurozone is almost out of options – taxpayers must prepare to take their losses February 7, 2012 OVER the last few weeks, negotiations over a potential write-down of Greece’s debt have taken us here and there, and back again – and at the time of writing, they remain unresolved. But whatever the outcome of the talks between the Greek government and its creditors, let’s not forget the bigger picture – ultimately, the [...]
The EU’s war on planes leaves UK trade grounded February 7, 2012 WE ARE witnessing the opening skirmishes of a trade war between the EU and the rest of the world. This is unnecessary, costly for the European economy, and self-defeating. How did we get here? Under European law, an airline (wherever based) which operates flights that take off or land in the EU must, from next [...]