Unless there is a change in how it perceives the nature of warfare, the West will lose the war in Afghanistan, despite declaring victory, and spend the next 10 years in splendid isolation wondering what went wrong.
The leaked DfID document raises important questions about Andrew Mitchell’s ‘output-based’ approach. How will progress be made without the commitments? What is so broken that needs fixing?
Cancer – and particularly Breast Cancer – has become a political football with questions being asked over whether very large increases in investment by the last government have led to better results. This morning the BBC and other news sourcestest
Gaffe-prone work and pensions minister Chris Grayling has made another stunning statistical screw-up – over-estimating the proportion of London households in which no one has ever worked by a factor of more than 3:1.
DfID are recommending the end of 100 public commitments. Among those for the chop are support to global education and cash for health services and systems.
While the swivel-eyed TaxPayers’ Alliance and Policy Exchange continue to have a go at Professors Wilkinson and Pickett – authors of ‘The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone’ – at least some on the right seem to have been listening to the independent academics.
Chris Huhne and Baroness Warsi today attempted to lay the blame for cuts to come at Labour’s door. But the level of cuts was their ideological choice.
The prime minister’s blustering attack on people committing benefit fraud yesterday highlighted the growing gap between work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s increasingly nuanced line on the issue and the rest of government’s determination to milk the potential of a ‘government cracks down on benefit cheats’ headline for all it’s worth.
Regardless of how his actions might affect the Haitian nation or its people, the incoming Haitian president is unlikely to see out his term in office without it being violently hampered, or even terminated, unless he demonstrates a clear willingness to succumb to the political and financial demands of Washington and Wall Street.
Today’s labour market figures present some promising news, as well as a number of concerning signs about the future direction of the labour market recovery.
