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Fraser Nelson gets it badly wrong in today’s Telegraph

It must have seemed like quite a discovery, when Fraser Nelson found a Department for Education report which proved “that the whole premise of Labour’s education policy – that cash matters most – was false”.

Ignore for a moment the caricature of Labour’s 13 years in government; have Deloitte (who analysed the data on which Fraser Nelson’s argument is based) really discovered that levels of funding don’t matter in improving educational outcomes?

It’s time to act on tobacco packs

It is over a year now since this coalition opened its consultation on tobacco packaging and we are still waiting for their answer. Come to that, it will soon be five years since Alan Johnson launched the Labour government’s consultation.

Reoffending is being fuelled by ex-prisoner homelessness

Britain is rapidly becoming much more peaceful. In case you haven’t already noticed, it is now official. This is great news; but for some these numbers will be small comfort. As usual, headline figures mask the experiences at the individual and neighbourhood level.

South Koreans remain calm despite international concern

I have just returned from South Korea, a country that it’s easy to forget has been at war with its northern neighbour since 1953. While much has been written on North Korea and the international response, little has been written on the views of those in the eye of the storm: people living in South Korea. These were the views that I was most interested in.

The fan takeover of Portsmouth FC should be welcomed by supporters of all clubs

The implicit assumption that the first thing that the owners of any club should be doing is going all out for a return to the top – much less the owners of a Club upon whom was visited more tragedy than most clubs would suffer in a lifetime, let alone a few years – is misguided at best. That way lies madness.

For local government to be meaningful, it needs to have the power to make a difference over things that people care about

Labour’s announcement that it would give councils more control over “use classes” is extremely welcome. In England, any “development” requires planning permission, unless it is “permitted development”. However, under current legislation, many changes in the use of a building count as “permitted development”, and many more (specifically, changes within a certain “use class”) do not count as development at all.