Monthly Archives: February 2010

Tough call on care costs, by Richard Humphries

27 February 2010 | Richard Humphries

This year’s general election could be the first in which social care is a key campaign issue. Everyone agrees that sorting out the wicked issue of paying for care needs consensus. But electioneering is about conflict, demanding that each party demonstrates loudly how different they and their policies are from each other.  So the collapse of private, cross-party talks aimed at establishing a political consensus, and the welter of misunderstanding and mutual recriminations that followed, should not come as a great surprise given the proximity of polling day.   Read more...

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Unitary disunity, by Jim Brooks

26 February 2010 | Jim Brooks

The recent announcement of a unitary authority for both Norwich and Exeter is another twist in a long story of indecision and failure by government to provide national leadership in the structure of local government in England. Read more...

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Tougher than Thatcher? By the Institute for Fiscal Studies

26 February 2010 | Institute for Fiscal Studies

‘Whoever wins the election, Labour or Conservative, is going to have to cut spending. That is not something that Margaret Thatcher actually did. So tougher than Margaret Thatcher.” So said George Osborne on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme this morning – and the numbers by and large bear him out. Read more...

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Non-executive nightmare, by Malcolm Prowle

26 February 2010 | Malcolm Prowle

The recently published report into the appalling failings of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust brings the issue of organisational governance once more back into the spotlight. Read more...

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Look back in anger, by Peter Wilby

25 February 2010 | Peter Wilby

The red mist at Downing Street is par for the course in a society obsessed with short-term results, and where fear of failure still reigns supreme Read more...

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Reset the retirement timetable, by Jon Sibson

25 February 2010 | Jon Sibson

This generation is enjoying longer lives and longer periods of retirement than any of its predecessors.  It’s a result of improved standards of living, medical advances and other factors and is clearly very good news in many ways.  But these big changes also create a number of significant challenges, especially to the government’s fiscal position through higher costs of state pensions, health and long-term care.  This challenge is compounded in the UK (and other advanced economies) by the retirement of the baby-boom generation during the next two decades. Read more...

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Tax-break tension, by Mike Thatcher

25 February 2010 | Mike Thatcher

Councils, it seems, are back in favour. After years of being viewed with distrust by Whitehall, they are now ministers’ new best friends. Read more...

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The Fourth Way? by Nicholas Thompsell

25 February 2010 | Nicholas Thompsell

Is the Tory plan for worker co-ops to provide public services a fresh take on an old idea or a radical new way of doing things? Read more...

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Stopping the climate crunch, by Aled Jones

25 February 2010 | Aled Jones

Government should use its purchasing power to help businesses develop successful low-carbon technologies Read more...

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Parent power battles, by Conor Ryan

23 February 2010 | Conor Ryan

Today’s announcement by Gordon Brown that the Government is accrediting the best academy providers, plus some excellent secondary schools, as schools providers, with parents having the power to demand change, is a significant step forward in Labour’s schools policy. Until now, the party had appeared far too defensive in the face of Michael Gove’s Swedish free schools policies, allowing the Tories to adopt Labour’s academies as their own. The Brown speech opens up a new front in the schools battle that I described recently in Public Finance. Read more...

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