Economy
A 50-hour week for bairns is the wrong answer
The Scottish Government wants pre-school kids to spend more and more hours away from home. But Laura Bird thinks there are other ways to get more women into work, boost the economy and enable parents…
Windpower to the people
Politicians of all colours have failed to inspire voters with a proper definition of what devolution could bring – a real transfer of power from our centralising government to genuine grassroots roll-your-sleeves-up activity. Enterprising communities…
Scottish Government muddies water on privatisation
How the quiet privatisation of some water services not only brings the Scottish Government up against many of its own supporters, but cuts across some of the most powerful rhetoric it has used over the…
SNP fiscal plans could unite the UK – against Scotland
The publication of the SNP’s 2015 general election manifesto marked a huge change for the party. This manifesto – unlike its predecessors – sets its sights beyond the Scottish border. It seeks to promote “positive…
SNP surge rides the surf of social change
Polls of voting intentions in Scotland for May’s UK general election continue to suggest a huge increase in votes and seats for the SNP – and a remarkable flip-over in its position relative to Labour…
General Election 2015: a clearer view from the window seat
The view from a cruising altitude of 36,000 feet affords clearer insights into at least five crucial global issues missing from the general election campaign debates and obscured by its heat and dust.
NATO’s 2% target out of reach
At times, US frustration with European debates is palpable. But most US leaders understand that while NATO remains the primary framework for military coordination and cooperation between America and Europe, it is still an alliance…
Ending the sterile row over austerity
The differences between Labour and the SNP in their plans for UK government spending and borrowing are much closer to each other’s than they are to those bequeathed by George Osborne.
Europe as a debtor’s prison: an interview with Philippe Legrain
Philippe Legrain, Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economic’s European Institute, discusses the ongoing turbulence in the Eurozone in an interview with the School’s European Politics and Policy editor Stuart Brown.
Inequality and the Left: Miliband, business leaders and tax
The Blair governments did a lot to fight poverty, but were famously relaxed about inequality, or more specifically the earnings of the 1%. For many in those governments this reflected their own views, but it…
Smith Commission welfare powers don’t imply more spending
Great play was made of the devolution of aspects of UK welfare provision to the Scottish Parliament as part of the Smith process. However this may not be as simple or as significant as its…
Restoring trust in bankers? Start by breaking up RBS
Shortly after my book on the collapse of HBOS came out I was speaking to a meeting of savings and post bank executives from Europe and further afield. These are institutions which have largely disappeared…