Though cost is important, we need to focus on the quality of social care
Whilst questions of finance have dominated recent debates it is important that we also focus on the quality of care, writes Laura Bradley, a researcher at IPPR.
Good Society
Pickles leak lays bare consequences of health, welfare and localism bills
Eric Pickles’s leaked warning that government plans to cut welfare payments risk making 40,000 families homeless appears to reflect deep concern in the DCLG.
DWP faces legal challenge over welfare cuts
The Disability Alliance is taking legal action against the government’s disability reforms, arguing that they disproportionately affect disabled people and their families.
Peter Hitchens: Bring back 19th-century prisons
Far-right polemicist Peter Hitchens has said he’d like prisons to return to how they were in the 19th-century, and said he “doesn’t believe” in rehabilitation.
Ladies of the WI join the ranks of the bolshy book borrowers
Kevin Meagher reports on the launch of the Women’s Institute’s ‘Love your Libraries’ campaign, and the other nationwide campaigns to save our libraries.
Ed 2.0 blogs his way out of trouble
In what could be a sign of things to come, Ed Miliband used social media to take on his critics and defend his position over yesterday’s strikes, reports Shamik Das.
How do unions renew their public image?
Dan Whittle, the director of Unions 21, on the need for unions to renew and make themselves relevant to the 2011 public.
Happy smoking ban day everybody! – don’t believe big tobacco’s corporate spin
Four years on, the smoking ban is popular and defintive claims that it has led to more pubs shutting are unsubstantiated.
Bus cuts are as short-sighted as they are regressive
If short-sighted bus cuts continue we will all find our society is poorer for it, writes Sophie Allain of the Campaign for Better Transport.
Business rates reform: Clegg promises poorer areas will not lose out
Nick Clegg, speaking at the Local Government Association conference, promised poorer areas will not lose out from the government’s business rates reform.