Monthly Archives: April 2011

A pointless PFI report, by Tim Care

28 April 2011 | Tim Care

Stop press: the latest report from the National Audit Office on Private Finance Initiative projects has just been published.  Does it offer any new insight into the issues?  Does it offer possible solutions?  In a word, ‘no’. Read more...

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First-past-the-post fallacies, by Colin Talbot

27 April 2011 | Colin Talbot

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Reserving judgment, by John Tizard

26 April 2011 | John Tizard

Recent reports that many local authorities have raided their reserves to balance their budgets for 2011/12 and, in some cases, to avoid deeper cuts than they are already making, should give deep cause for concern. Read more...

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From red tape to mouldy sausages, by Heather Wakefield

25 April 2011 | Heather Wakefield

Happy Easter Monday! Apart from being the day of the Easter egg hangover, it is also Eric Pickles’ chosen deadline for his consultation on statutory duties – part of the government’s big drive to ‘get rid of red tape’. Strange day for a deadline and – even stranger – the CLG web site says nothing at all about it today.  But now that the consultation is apparently closed, let’s hope that those of you contemplating a response to the statutory duties review managed to submit yesterday, in between cream eggs. Read more...

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Don’t bury good news

21 April 2011 | Michael Ware

One of the first signs we had that my Grandad Ted was going senile was when he started to bury his pension book in the back garden. Grandad had an irrational fear of swarthy foreign burglars so took to burying valuable things. Read more

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PFI: back to the bad old days? By Tim Care

21 April 2011 | Tim Care

During the 2010 election campaign the Conservatives proclaimed themselves to be vehemently anti the Private Finance Initiative. Yet despite this, recent research shows that under the current government, 61 PFI contracts are being negotiated of which 39 are due to be signed-off this year. This is more than the 32 in 2008 and 39 in 2009 (under Gordon Brown’s leadership). It seems that the coalition government’s appetite for PFI is greater than that of the previous government. Why is that? Read more...

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The NHS needs to pause for effect, by Neil O’Brien

20 April 2011 | Neil O'Brien

There is widespread support for GP commissioning across the political parties and in the NHS itself. But such a major reform cannot be rushed Read more...

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One year on: the five states we’re in

20 April 2011 | Colin Talbot

The Cameron-Clegg coalition seems determined to roll back the frontiers of the state even more than Margaret Thatcher Read more

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Scottish manifestos: do they add up? by Don Peebles

20 April 2011 | Don Peebles

The main political party manifestos have now been issued in advance of May’s Scottish parliamentary elections. Read more...

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Back to the drawing board on school building, by John Keyes

20 April 2011 | John Keyes

The James Review on school building is a further illustration of the tension between the localism agenda and the need for cost efficiencies. Read more...

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