The Mayor of London famously stood up to the government in October 2010, warning of “Kosovo-style ethnic cleansing” and promising that this would never happen on his watch.
So why has he suddenly gone silent on the issue?
Despite some headline-grabbing measures, last week’s Budget was another chapter in a series of spending decisions that once again highlight how Treasury officials, economists, and the politicians they advise rarely look at how their decisions pan out across the country.
The government is showing the same type of contempt for the UK’s railways and communities that Beeching did all those years ago.
Before rushing to blame foreign visitors for putting a strain on the health service with some rather dubious statistics, perhaps the prime minister and his health secretary would do well to examine the policies of other departments of government that are both costing the NHS money and preventing NHS staff from doing what they are qualified to do.
Lucy Meadows, a transsexual woman formerly called Nathan Upton, committed suicide earlier this month, the victim of a media witch-hunt. In December, Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn published an attack on her that aimed to hound her out of her job as a primary school teacher.
By removing the mandate on government to provide a health service, the Health and Social Care Act 2012 is the crowning achievement of the architects of this long recessional from universality. Our response must be political too.
Boris Johnson has released his new Policing Plan today. To mark the occasion he has written about his glorious record at cutting crime in the Daily Telegraph. The problem is that Boris’s record at cutting crime just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Cyprus is moving into unknown territory today, if not wholly by choice. The deal now agreed to close Laiki Bank and massively restructure the Bank of Cyprus will mean substantial losses for depositors with more then €100,000 in their accounts, but that’s just the beginning of the tale.
If Ed Miliband want to differentiate Labour from the Tories, it could start by showcasing its environmentally friendly economic policies.
My candid opinion then is that the assumptions underpinning the budget are simply absurd: there is no way this growth in incomes is gong to happen whatever changes are being made to the income tax system.
