And then a step to the riiiiight.
Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett
The Conservative Party is the Harry Houdini of British politics – it puts itself into impossible situations, apparently for the sheer thrill of it
Reuters/Stephen Hird
It’s unfair to call Lord Adonis a political ‘Judas’. He’s a policy specialist who has always aimed for the centre ground.
A new start: Syrian refugee Raghad al Sous now lives in Huddersfield.
Reuters/Andrew Yates
There is ongoing disagreement among OECD countries as to whether foreign aid spent in-house counts.
A student protests over tuition fees in 2012.
Karel Prinsloo/EPA
The baby boomer generation has fixed the future.
Straight down the line: one of the BBC’s values.
Reuters/David Nicholls
The BBC has called for a national debate on what it is for. The public needs to speak and the politicians need to listen.
Relentless scorn.
thebrilliantenglishcompany
The government’s recent Green Paper spells our a vision of far smaller BBC. Coincidentally, this is just what Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers have campaigned for over decades.
PA / PA Archive/PA Images
If you want to see how the market failure model works, look across the Atlantic at PBS and NPR and be afraid.
True British Metal/Flickr
Two parties. Two rivals. Two plans. One surprisingly similar outcome.
Are savers and pensioners in the chancellor’s sights?
Badly Drawn Dad
A “triple lock” election commitment to keep taxes down is just pushing the pursuit of revenue into other areas – with the threat of more to come.
In a hyper-democracy the headlines are always hot.
Steven Ritzer/flickr
The out-of-the-blue move to a living wage in the UK exemplifies the ditching of methodical public policy processes for manipulative hype and spin, the ‘hyper-democracy’ that brings politics into disrepute.
Not just for the workless.
from shutterstock.com
MPs will vote Monday on a welfare bill which imagines a world where work is a gilded path away from poverty.
Engine of growth.
Scottish Government
The way the UK thinks about workplaces and workers means that those learning a trade are at a disadvantage. And that’s bad news as we attempt to add 3m apprentices to the mix.
Trouble on the way.
Conrado via Shutterstock
By limiting financial support to smaller families, the government is doing its best to stop undesirables from reproducing.
Who is paying the most?
Tax burden via Orla/www.shutterstock.com
In his budget, George Osborne said that we are all in this together. A look at the evidence shows that we’re not.
A budget without bite for tackling a shortfall of homes.
FreddieBrown
The budget contained some major housing reforms, but the chancellor had no answer to the sector’s number-one problem.
I’ve got the year 2020 on the line George. Seems to be a problem with your maths.
Shutterstock bad job
Chancellor’s promise of £9 an hour is nothing more than false advertising.
Doing the numbers dance.
altogetherfool/flickr
The arithmetic for town halls and previously endangered Whitehall departments is now distinctly rosier.
Building a power base. Osborne plays the game.
Will Oliver/EPA
With this budget, George Osborne has shown he’s a sophisticated political operator.
Did Osborne provide a spark for productivity?
US Air Force
A living wage grabs the headlines, but sluggish productivity is a harder nut to crack than that.
Protestors have their prayers answered?
LIVING WAGE
This was a bombshell of a budget, signalling direct interventions in the labour market that went far beyond what most observers were expecting.