Uncertainty reigns. Or at least when it comes to today’s Dilnot Report into social care it does. We largely know what measures will be contained within its pages: a higher threshhold for council-funded care, but a cap (of around £35,000) on how much individuals ought to be liable for. What’s less clear is how the
What an intriguing interview Yvette Cooper gave to Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan show this morning — and not just because she was standing, ruffled and incongruous, in a field somewhere. I was live-tweeting proceedings here, and there was much to anticipate even before she appeared. On top of today’s stories about housing benefit, social care and
A change from the usual for this week’s excavation into The Spectator archives — which is to say, we won’t be digging out an article from the magazine’s 183-year back-catalogue for CoffeeHousers’ delectation. Instead, the images above, and a quick, little story. Given how nostalgic some people have recently been for the General Strike of
Okay, as it’s Friday, here’s footage of that weird, repetitive Ed Miliband interview that has been bouncing around the blogosphere since yesterday:
Before everyone gets too excited, Iain Duncan Smith is not saying in his speech today that immigration is a bad thing in itself. But he is saying that it has consequences, some of which impinge on native Brits. Many of these consequences are, as it happens, writ in the official statistics. As IDS highlights –
Amid all the union sturm und drang yesterday, it was easy to forget about last night’s Parliamentary by-election in Inverclyde. But a by-election there was, after the death of the seat’s previous Labour MP, David Cairns, in May. And the result was in some doubt, too. After the SNP’s strong showing in last month’s corresponding
It’s strange to think of the biggest, national walkout for years as a prelude to something even larger — but that’s how some of the union bosses would have it today. Schools are shutting, civil servants are downing their keyboards, UK Border Agency staff are pausing their vigilant watch over our shores, and all the
Go go Gove, still trying to pack in the initiatives before summer recess. The focus today is on maths and the sciences, where the Education Secretary feels our students are falling behind. In a speech earlier, he set out a number of measures to help ameliorate the situation, including adding his name to City AM’s
On Monday, James drew attention to Dexter Filkins’ stark assessment of the situation in Afghanstan and of the strength of the Taliban. Today, the attack on a hotel in Kabul gives that assessment a fresh and tragic resonance. What we seem to be witnessing is the Taliban, or at least elements of them, flaunting their
Until now, the debate over universities has dwelt inevitably on how much students need to stump up in tuition fees. With the release of today’s White Paper, the government will hope that the emphasis shifts to what students receive in return for that cash. Basically, it is all about fixing a subverted market by making
A letter is bouncing around Whitehall, and I thought CoffeeHousers might care to see a copy. It has been penned by Michael Gove, and is being dispatched to all headmasters today. It urges them to Keep Calm and Carry On during the impending strikes over teachers’ pensions. “My view,” pens the education secretary, “is that
It is as Matt Cavanagh predicted in his article for Coffee House, a few weeks ago. Barack Obama has decided to pull 10,000 of the 30,000 American “surge” troops out of Afghanistan this year. The remaining 20,000 will be outtathere by next summer. “Drawdown,” is the word that the US President used in his address
VERDICT: Ed Miliband repeated the same tactic as last week, concentrating on a specific policy area to test Cameron’s command of the details — and again it had the desired effect, although not quite so tellingly as before. The Prime Minister floundered and generalised on the issue of rape arrests, but managed to turn some
Five-thousand, ten-thousand, or fifteen-thousand? That’s the question hanging in the air as Barack Obama prepares to clarify his withdrawal plan for Afghanistan this evening (or 0100 BST, if you’re minded to stay up). And it relates to how many of the 30,000 “surge” troops he will decide to release from the country this year. Washington’s
The toughening-up effort continued with David Cameron’s press conference just now. There he was, at the prime ministerial lectern, not just announcing a stricter sentencing system than Ken Clarke broached a few weeks ago, but explaining why the government’s change of mind was actually “a sign of strength”. Out are the 50 per cent sentence
Toughness, or at least the appearance of it, is clearly the theme of the week on Downing Street. After the vacillations over NHS reform, David Cameron seems to be going out of his way to sound that little bit more hard. There’s the headline on the front of today’s Times, for instance: “Cameron to Europe:
Invigorating, that’s probably the best word for Policy Exchange’s event on free schools this morning. Right from Sir Michael Wilshaw’s opening address — which set out the reasons why he, as headteacher of Mossbourne Academy, is optimistic about education reform — to Michael Gove’s longer, more involved speech, this was all about celebrating and promoting
Boris, we know, has never had any compunctions about distinguishing his views from those of the coalition government. Take his recent proclamations on the unions or on the economy, for instance. But his latest remarks are still striking in their forthrightness. Exhibit A is the article he has written for today’s Sun, which — although
The bustle around public sector pensions has obscured an equally significant, pensions-related story today: the Sunday Telegraph’s claim that George Osborne is considering sucking £7 billion from the pensions of higher earners. The way it would be achieved, reports Patrick Hennessey, would be to terminate the tax relief on pension contributions made by those in
Quite some claim from Ed Balls, writing in the Sunday Mirror today. “Let’s be clear what George Osborne’s game is,” he blusters, “he’s trying to pick a fight about pensions, provoke strikes and persuade the public to blame the stalling economy on the unions.” And it is a charge that Andy Burnham repeated on Dermot