Last week I gave evidence – alongside Professor Lord Peter Hennessy and Professor Tony Dean –  to the Public Administration Select Committee in Parliament on the changes taking place at the top of the UK Civil Service. The uncorrected minutes of the evidence session can be found here. Other evidence sessions and the terms of […]

I reprint below an excellent briefing by Professor Allyson Pollock and colleagues on key clauses of the Health and Social Care Bill. It addresses two critical issues: The removal of  legal responsibility from the Secretary of State to prove health services and The confusing mixture of ‘person-based’ and ‘area-based’ arrangements for patients (and consequently funding […]

Public Administration Select Committee – Announcement EVIDENCE SESSION: PASC TO QUESTION ACADEMICS AND JOURNALISTS ABOUT HEAD OF THE CIVIL SERVICE ROLE Tuesday 15 November 2011

[I appeared briefly on Newsnight commenting on this – the item is about 20 mins in]. A British Home Secretary faces a media firestorm over a major blunder in one of the Home Office’s Executive Agencies. A senior agency official is blamed to shift attention away from Ministers. He resigns and hits back, hard and […]

The Greek crisis has given neo-liberals a a great opportunity to criticize ‘big government’ Hellenic style – they see the problem as a Big Fat Greek Government (apologies to the film of nearly that name). But as usual the truth about Greece’s problems are rather more complex – what Greece needs is not less Government, […]

My recent post suggesting three simple reforms to financial markets provoked a bit of a squall on Twitter. The Free Market Fundamentalist Tendency especially seemed incensed that any restrictions on markets was a good idea. Most of the criticisms were either simply abusive – such as that I’m “bonkers” – or ideological rants with little […]

I have been thinking about what sort of moral principles ought to apply to finance, including banking. The sort of thing I’ve been thinking about are some fairly simple things that would appear obvious to most of us, but apparently don’t apply to the world of finance. Today I heard a Lib Dem MEP say […]

“Income Data Services, which totted up pay, bonuses and various share awards, says the average FTSE 100 executive director pocketed a 49 per cent rise in the last financial year to bring their remuneration to £2.7m a year. Chief executives had to make do with a 43 per cent rise, poor lambs.” James Moore, The […]

The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has offered a very interesting twist on the western financial crisis. To summarize, he argues that the problem in the developing world is the translation of real, physical, assets into trabeable paper. This allows the raising of capital through loans, which lubricates capitalist development. The west, he suggests, now […]