Backbenchers do not hesitate to voice their opinions about state schools and ministers do not hesitate to intervene. It's as though having lost confidence in their ability to do anything about the economy, politicians have lighted upon education as an alternative arena. But it is only state education that politicians comment on. Private schools are given a free pass. Here's the education minister Josh MacAlister replying to a Westminster debate, occasioned by an online petition calling for schools to move to a four-day week, with the remaining days each being an hour longer: It is essential that we do not ...
When I told my favourite teacher at school that I was interested in studying philosophy at university, one of the books he lent me was Plato's Republic. It was a brilliant choice because it encompassed so many topics and the debates it contained were still relevant. At university I found that one of the thinkers I was most attracted to, Karl Popper, had devoted the first volume of his wartime critique of totalitarian thinking, The Open Society and Its Enemies, to a critique of the Republic. Popper was not the first thinker of his era to treat Plato in this ...
Wed 14th
12:48
Wera Hobhouse condemns "shocking and irresponsible" scale of drilling for oil in protected maritime ...
Embed from Getty ImagesThe United Kingdom is the world's worst offender when it comes to letting fossil fuel companies drill in protected areas. An investigation coordinated by the Environmental Investigative Forum and European Investigative Collaborations has found that the UK has issued production licences that overlap with 13,500km² of protected areas - an area nearly nine times the size of Greater London. Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath and a member of the Commons energy security and net zero select committee, told The Bureau of Investigative Journalism that these findings are "deeply troubling" and that the UK's place on ...
This week's reports of Iranian security forces machine-gunning down scores of unarmed protestors, apparently including children and teenagers must surely strike a chill in the heart of any liberal. How can this be allowed to happen in the 21st Century? Meanwhile, the US military action in Venezuela has attracted widespread condemnation as a breach of International Law, despite Maduro's Government being widely recognised as authoritarian and morally illegitimate. In moral terms, the Iranian regime is little different from a bunch of criminal thugs with guns, killing whomever they please. But in International Law, they are the legitimate Government (largely by ...
The Guardian reports that health secretary, Wes Streeting, speaking at the Institute for Government (IFG), has criticised the centre-left of politics for an "excuses culture" which blames Whitehall and stakeholders for the slow pace of change, saying politicians "are not simply at the mercy of forces outside of our control". The paper says that Streeting's comments will be seen as an attack on complaints by allies of Keir Starmer that change has been constantly delayed by the number of regulations and arm's-length bodies: One of the prime minister's former key aides Paul Ovenden authored a piece earlier this month about ...
