Review of the Papers, Thursday 28 June
Government Utility groups and their shareholders will not have to foot the bill for many of the environmental clean-up costs incurred by their predecessor companies following an influential decision by Britain's top court. The House of…
Rosie Boycott: Labour have made a hash of things
Rosie Boycott has just said on This Week that "in 1997 we were elated but actually we didn't have that many great big problems. And there are a lot of big problems: there is the war, there is the environment, there is the huge gap between…
Ministers for the region?
Gordon Brown (or the Queen I should say) has appointed a load of Ministers for the regions. What are these ministers actually supposed to do other than take a Ministerial wage? More on this tomorrow, no doubt...
Gordon yet to wow us with his magic
So Gordon Potter Brown has conjured up his dream cabinet. All that talk of getting in the real talent from across parties and public figures has been in vein and El Gordo has had to make do with the buffoons and misfits from his party…
Accountability and the BBC
Now at least we have an answer to that chicken-and-egg question: did Blair pay less attention to parliament because the media ignored it, or did the media pay less attention because Blair ignored it? After the BBC cut their coverage of Tony…
Will we talk of Blairism in twenty years time?
Goodbye Mr Blair. 10 years that started off with such promise and hope have ended with Britain and the world far less optimistic and settled. What could have really been the greatest premiership of post war Britain has ended in anticlimax…
The end
Having seen ex-Prime Minister, Tony Blair's final PMQs and the rest of the day’s events unfold, you can only conclude this has been the strangest of power handovers. Not many PMs could claim to go out on a standing ovation from Parliament…
Review of the Papers, Wednesday 27 June
Government There has been a sharp rise in the number of pupils excluded from secondary schools, taking the annual total to more than a third of a million. But teachers' leaders are angry that more than 100 pupils successfully appealed…
Legacies
JG has posted on the subject of Tony's legacy. This post started as a comment, and grew so large that I decided to post it separately. I must see things through an inverting lens. Reagan: Never a buffoon in the eyes of those old enough to…
Justifying the nanny state by Caroline Flint
There is an extraordinary article in today's Times about the Public Health Minister Caroline Flint, aka Supernanny. It seems to be justifying some of the more draconian and nannying legislation that this government has put upon us. Those…
Howard Davies, Europe, Brown and the politicization of our institutions
Howard Davies is reported in Le Figaro as saying: "On Europe, we do not yet know if Sarkozy is a friend or an enemy.... Selling the Brussels result will be arduous for Brown… It is crucial for him that Sarkozy continues to defend the idea…