David Boyle's Blog, page 106

The nationalisation of schools

What is to become of me - I am agreeing with Simon Jenkins nearly every time I open the Evening Standard (though not, for some reason, when I open the Guardian). He was spot on today about the gap between localism and the Big Society.

Don't get me wrong. The Big Society is an important initiative, and will be more so if it can grow into a truly cross-governmental project to devolve power. Nor am I against the idea of Free Schools. We urgently need more schools, preferably small ones where ...

Where Richard Grayson is right - and where he's not

Lib Dem policy committee chair Richard Grayson has written a long article in today's New Statesman, which has allowed them to put a picture of Nick Clegg on the cover apparently cracking like an egg:

http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/07/liberal-democrats-social-party

It isn't exactly good publicity for the party, but I completely agreed with Richard about the future direction of the social liberal wing of the party – "arguing for a new political economy that puts issues of power in t...

Where Grayson is wrong

Lib Dem policy committee chair Richard Grayson has written a long article in today's New Statesman, which has allowed them to put a picture of Nick Clegg on the cover apparently cracking like an egg:

http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/07/liberal-democrats-social-party

It isn't exactly good publicity for the party, but I completely agreed with Richard about the future direction of the social liberal wing of the party – "arguing for a new political economy that puts issues of power in t...

Why school reports are so bland

Regular readers of this blog (if there are any) will know that the combination of old-fashioned and radically modern is, in my opinion, often a sign of institutions that are going in the right direction. Slow Food, for example. And it seems to me that the UK's primary schools are often in the same category.

In fact, our primary schools are in many ways the jewel in the crown of British public services in this country, despite more than a decade of Ofsted's less than tender ministrations. T...

Let's remember whose side we're on, in the end

There seems to be a growing sense, which I've only noticed in the past week – and partly, I think, because of The Independent's cheer-leading for a property crash – that we are all buggered, not to put too fine a point on it.

Like most panics which start in the press, this is almost certainly not true. But there is no doubt that cutting public spending by 10-20 per cent will have a huge impact on the economy.

I'm not a deficit hawk, but I do believe that the government is vastly inefficient, a...

In praise of Liberal populism

Life being what it is, I've only just read Timothy Garton Ash's very welcome article on the urgent need for Liberals in British politics:


But it made me think. He portrays Liberals (as he wants Lib Dems to be called) as a bastion against right wing populism and left wing populism. As if somehow Liberalism was just a quiet, intelligent ideology of the BBC and the EU, and other technocratic institutions th...

Coming out in hives

I've come to the conclusion that the issue of honey is not just a symbolic one. I fact, it's getting seriously worrying. There is no local honey at all coming from my huge local allotments, which we live basically in the middle of, at Spa Hill. Last year, there were at least four hives producing.
The trouble is, most of what we can do about this decline is symbolic. But I've made a little oath to myself that I won't buy fake honey any more - anything blended or imported. This is difficult...

When the state can't afford anything

I mentioned a week or so ago that I was wondering if civilised government was possible any more, given the markets, the phenomenon of corporate tax avoidance, and the sheer cost of public services - and suggesting another way forward to end government borrowing.

Now comes the news that the city of Maywood in California is facing such a big budget crisis that they are laying off their entire staff, including the police, and contracting it all out:

http...

Why Prince Charles was right

I know it is de rigeur among people on the Left to be terribly shocked at Prince Charles' 'interference' in the Chelsea Barracks issue. I don't see it like that.

For one thing, look who he was up against. One of the equally unelected demi-gods of architecture, some of whose projects are wonderful, and some of which are concrete modern bastilles that dehumanise us all. Then there are the developers, packed also with unelected power, riding roughshod over local opinion.

For another thing, he i...

The irrelevance of pain

I don't have an axe to grind in the abortion debate, except perhaps to agree with Bill Clinton (it should be legal, safe and rare). But anyone who puts human scale and human values at the heart of their politics, as I try to do, might have been as irritated as I was this morning by the interview on the Today programme.

This is the problem, I suppose, of asking scientists to rule on something when they have no philosophical training - but how, exactly is, pain relevant to the morality of abort...