David Cameron’s decision to abandon Labour’s spending targets has been hailed in some quarters as a political break through. At last, say the traditionalists in his ranks, it frees up the Tories to do what they were put on God’s earth to do – cut taxes. At the same time, it opens up the Tories to what until now the Cameroons have been determined to avoid at all costs –  the Labour charge that they will cut public services such as education and health. And without any doubt]]>

I've had this blog for eighteen months, and it's been - for me, at least - wonderful. I could not have wished for a better host than the team at the Spectator, who never once interfered with anything other than positive suggestions. James Forsyth and Pete Hoskin are stars, both.

I first started blogging in May 2002, before]]>

The British National Party once posted my email address on their website. I got 400 emails of varying degrees of unpleasantness - my favourite being the one that described me as a “nigger-loving Jew.” Yes, it takes a lot of imagination to work racism against black people and anti-semitism into one easy epithet.

Now the BNP says it isn’t a racist, thuggish party, but I’m certainly glad they didn’t know where I lived. And I’m very glad I now know where they live. But here’s my challenge - who’ll

The space shuttle Endeavour manoeuvres in orbit while preparing to dock with the International Space Station. The shuttle's latest, 15-day mission will include four spacewalks. Photo by NASA via Getty Images.

My experience of many social workers is that they are overworked, highly stressed and very defensive. Many are also highly committed. They are up against a system that condemns them when they are seen to be too zealous—and condemns them again when they fail to remove children to a place of safety. They are also subject to the horrors of social work fashion, the current mantras being “good enough parenting and “capacity building” in families. This is all fine stuff, but

The Tories’ education spokesman Michael Gove has consistently shown that he gets the most important point about the collapse of Britain’s education system:  that it’s not just the structures that have gone badly wrong -- the schools and the education authorities that run them – but the substance of what is actually taught, or to be more precise the absence of any substance as the concept of education itself has systematically been eviscerated. For years it has been obvious that the claims of ever-rising levels of achievement have]]>