Archive for the ‘British current affairs’ Category
Five years of Cameron’s leadership
December 8th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
It’s five years since David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative Party, an event which led in May of this year to him becoming the youngest British Prime Minister since 1812. The BBC web site has a summary of the main events along the road.
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Transparency in government
November 19th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
You have to give the new Coalition Government credit for a wholly new scale of openness in setting out the detail of public expenditure. This week the government has released spending by every department over £25,000. The data covers over 194,000 individual transactions, payments to suppliers and bills covered by government departments in the first […]
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The launch of the High Pay Commission
November 13th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
I was really pleased to see earlier this week the official launch of The High Pay Commission. The Commission is an independent inquiry into top pay in the private sector. It will look at the reasons for the gap between high and low pay in the UK in recent years and why this matters The […]
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How wide should income differentials be?
October 29th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
One of my passionate concerns is over inequalities in income, wealth and power – it shapes much of my political thought and aspirations. I’ve blogged before on the wide income differentials in British society – see here and here. Of course, it would be ridiculous for all of us to be paid the same; we […]
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Transparency in government
October 25th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
This week, I’m visiting Oxford to address a Chinese delegation from Tianjin, a city of 12 million, not far from Beijing. The subject of my presentation is “Government Communications In The UK”. Now on this blog I’ve been critical of the Coalition Government’s plans for cutting pubic expenditure, but I have to give the new […]
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Why all the cuts may not happen
October 20th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
After five months of waiting, today we have the Comprehensive Spending Review announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. The headline figure is £81 billion of cuts in order to eliminate the deficit by 2015. You can see the details here. My own position is that the Coalition Government is cutting too much […]
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Labour’s new team
October 11th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
New Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has now chosen his team of Shadow Ministers and you can see the full list here. The biggest surprise was the appointment of Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor, but my former boss at the Communication Workers Union will be a very effective communicator of Labour’s attack on the speed […]
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Redrawing our Parliamentary boundaries
October 6th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Some weeks ago, I did a posting about the consequences of the Coalition Government’s wish to reduce the number of constituencies represented in the House of Commons from 650 to 600 and to make these constituencies more equal in terms of the number of electors. As I reported then, in some parts of the country […]
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Ed Miliband’s first speech as leader
September 29th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
I couldn’t listen live to the first speech by Ed Miliband as Labour’s new leader because I was chairing a meeting at Consumer Focus addressed by Lib Dem Minister Ed Davey (he was very good). But I have now heard every minute of the near hour-long speech and, if you haven’t, you can check it […]
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What we need now …
September 28th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
… is a by-election – ideally in a Liberal Democrat-held seat or at least a Conservative-held seat. In the ‘old days’ of British politics, typically there used to be three or four by-elections a year. These days, Members of Parliament tend to be younger and healthier so there is less death or serious illness. But, […]
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