Recycling is a success story – and one which Friends of the Earth and our supporters have been at the heart of since our first campaign to persuade Schweppes to take back used bottles in 1971.
The army have uncovered a sophisticated spying operation on the secret service by the dissident republican group, Oglaigh na Heireann. According to the Belfast Telegraph, members of the organisation planted digital cameras in woodland bordering MI5’s base in Northern Ireland, Palace Barracks.
Ben Brogan, reporting comments by Conservative MP and former George Osborne advisor Matthew Hancock, has argued that the Coalition’s fiscal policies have lowered interest rates; here we show he is wrong.
George Osborne’s decision to raise VAT to 20 per cent from January 2011 has been widely described as regressive, including by the new Head of the Office of Budget Responsibility Robert Chote. Mr Chote has also emphasised the extent to which raising VAT was not unavoidable, and was in fact a choice made by Mr Osborne.
Asked which strategy for managing the budget deficit they agreed with, voters put the Coalition’s plans last. Just 22 per cent supported the Government’s attempt to deal with the deficit by the next election, compared to the 74 per cent who were evenly split between Labour’s proposal to reduce the deficit by half over the next five years.
Most political bloggers are motivated to fight what they see as bigotry, prejudice, and ill-informed, unjustifiable assertion. This is a fine and noble cause, because the spreading of false beliefs – without the evidence to support them – is bad for all of us, as is the displacement of informed argument by mere rhetoric. All the more so when the perpetrator is powerful or influential.
Last week saw the deadline pass for local authorities and businesses to produce proposals for new, local regeneration bodies to succeed the eight regional development agencies outside London, allegedly replacing the “top-down prescription approach taken previously”.
Nick Clegg’s proposals for 5-year fixed terms will put Britain at odds with most democratic countries. The proposals were not even Lib Dem policy.
Wars, like all violence, tend to pull us towards absolutes. We either win, as in the Second World War, or lose, as in Vietnam or with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The former soldier in me is easily ‘pulled’ into seeing the conflict in Afghanistan as a matter of absolutes, of simple ‘Cause, Effect and Solution’. But the analyst in me sees things differently.
Scottish Labour has launched a concerted effort to cap the amount of caffeine in some alcoholic drinks such as Buckfast wine.
