Articles in the Politics category:
The Scottish referendum campaign is having an interesting knock-on impact on English political debate. The position and dominance of London – the place Scots most dislike about the United Kingdom in its present form, is being looked at more critically. There have been a couple of think tank-type report is recently , but the debate […]
It is worth contemplating the possibility of a scenario in which Scotland votes for independence in September and a new Government holds an ‘in/out’ referendum on the remainder of the UK’s membership of the EU in 2017 and the vote produces an ‘out’ result. Whether it is of the social democratic variety espoused by the […]
It is a commonplace for commentators to say following the recent success of UKIP in the shire elections, that it poses a threat to Labour as well as the Tories. There is some truth in this, but a strand of thinking in the Labour Party has been grappling with some of the issues UKIP poses […]
The Government’s much-heralded ‘Green Deal’ (1) was launched on 28 January. The objective is very worthwhile – to provide a funding mechanism to enable a lot of the 20-odd million homes in the UK which are energy inefficient to be retro-fitted with insulation and energy efficient appliances like boilers and heating systems that greatly reduce […]
The Poll Tax riots in 1990 famously brought down Mrs Thatcher and led to the hasty introduction of the Council Tax. Twenty three years later are the reforms to Council Tax due for implementation in less than a month, about to bring the Poll Tax back from the grave? From 1 April, instead of the […]
As we celebrate the end of the first ever United Nations International Year of Cooperatives, there is a sense of the dawning of a ‘golden age’ for co-operatives in the UK. All the main political parties are signed up to co-ops. The buzzword is ‘responsible capitalism’ and there is a realisation that the existing […]
The Mandarins in the DfT have egg all over their faces. But some are very relieved. Finally the penny dropped somewhere near the top of the office that they couldn’t be saying both that there was shed loads of unused capacity on the West Coast Mainline (the basis of First Group’s up-till-yesterday successful bid) and […]
Local government could never be described as fashionable, yet today there is more talk than ever about the importance of ‘the local’. However, this has converted into less, rather than more, freedom to act locally. Whitehall’s desire to control is strong, as the current freeze on council tax rises demonstrates. Local government hasn’t suffered as […]
I have written articles for magazines for many years; some such as Vole which passed into history 40 years ago. I still write a regular column for Town & Country Planning. I started that in 1986. These days I guest-blog in various places as well as having my own blog Lord Muck, on this website. The articles posted here are a mixture of these blogs and other published writing. I will try to post here every 3-4 months. Hope you find all this stimulating and do respond!
I have spent four years documenting the people who live on Divinity Road and their surroundings. Here is the result.
My new book records a year in the Covid-19 pandemic through the masks that people wore.
