Society

The UCAS deadline for the receipt of applications for university entry this coming autumn has just passed.  In terms of lifetime earnings a university degree – especially a degree from a top-drawer Russell Group university – is still excellent value for money, so thousands of students now working hard to complete their sixth-form studies will soon be waiting anxiously to see if their A-Level grades match university entry requirements.    I have some bad news for them. Some of them, who reach grades that would normally have guaranteed them a place, will nonetheless have been deliberately denied an offer, just so that others – who have not done so well at A-Level

Ahead of the government’s supreme court appeal against the high court ruling that Article 50 cannot be triggered without a Westminster vote, the Daily Mail ran an article suggesting the judges who ruled against the government were ‘enemies of the people’. What’s more, the paper then ran a handy guide which ranked the 11 Justices of the Supreme Court by giving each a ‘Europhile rating‘. However, after today’s ruling, Mr S wonders if the paper will have to rethink its approach to some arch-Europhiles. Although the government lost its appeal (and will now need to trigger Article 50 with a vote in Parliament), three Justices of the Supreme Court found in favour of

There’s just one story in the UK this morning: the Supreme Court has ruled that the Government cannot trigger article 50 without an act of parliament. News that parliament must vote on starting the Brexit process led to a slight drop in the pound. At the time of writing, the pound is 0.6 per cent lower against the dollar at $1.246. Against the euro, sterling is 0.3 per cent lower at €1.160. Banks A think tank has urged banks to offer basic bank accounts to people with mental health problems. At present, basic account options are offered to other vulnerable groups. Now the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute say that setting spending

The early departure of Robert Hannigan as GCHQ chief, announced today, marks not so much the end of an era as the transition between eras. The agency’s famous HQ in Cheltenham, a metallic doughnut the size of Wembley Stadium, might look futuristic but was designed in the late 1990s before anyone worked out just how much data the intelligence services would have to intercept and analyse. Or how much of espionage would involve codebreaking, and on such an unprecedented scale. The workload exploded as it opened in 2003 and suddenly a GCHQ designed for 5,000 staff looked too small. New ways of working were needed. Hannigan was brought in, as outsiders occasionally are to GCHQ, to

I like to prance around showing off in hats and shouting at men as much as the next broad but – apart from the fact that I can get it at home – there were several reasons why I chose not to join a whole batch of my bitches on the Women’s March this weekend. Firstly, I was sure it would be full of ‘Strong Women‘, a phrase I hate at the best of times – and feel should only be used if the lady in question can tear a telephone directory in half with her bare hands – and which seemed especially inappropriate to describe a bunch of overgrown Violet

Some worrying news from consumer group Which? this morning regarding trading of personal and financial data on a ‘huge scale’, sometimes illegally and in breach of guidelines from the Information Commissioner’s Office. The BBC reports that after contacting 14 companies that sell data, undercover Which? researchers were able to access personal information on approximately half a million people over the age of 50, including details about their salary and pensions, sometimes for as little as 4p an item. Information like this can be instrumental in helping scammers who con people out of their pension savings, or persuade them to move money from their bank accounts. Housing The Guardian reports on new research