Politics

The famous line, ‘every one percent unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die’ comes from the mouth of Brad Pitt in 'The Big Short', a film based on the true story of a group of investors who short (bet against) the US housing market. This is interesting, because right now governments...

True to their manifesto pledge, the SNP have steered through legislation that would grant voting rights to prisoners in Scottish prisons. This is a mistake. In a liberal society the imprisonment of heretofore free citizens serves three purposes. The first is eminently practical; to remove dangerous individuals from the population and...

A centralised, national-level Environment Agency isn't the model on which to organise flood defence and response, argues Robert Tyler If we have learnt anything from the flooding, it’s that Central Government isn’t the fastest institution in the world to respond to natural disasters. The response to the flooding in the...

At school and later at college I often asked teachers why they chose their profession, the answer was usually something along the lines of “making a difference”. It is doubtless that a good education is the key to greater equality of opportunity and this fact is not lost on...

In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan travelled to Geneva to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the communist Soviet Union. After years of anti-communist rhetoric and pressure on the Soviets, the two heads of state met to begin a process of reducing political tensions that would end the Cold War....

'You’re ruining my life!' may sound like a stereotypical teenage response to parental domination, but somehow – miraculously – Jumpy manages to avoid all the rotten familial clichés. April De Angelis has managed to lift the cobwebs and the moth balls out of the tired ‘family drama’ and breathe...

James Evans bemoans a lack of strong leadership in British politics, and examines potential reasons for this. ‘With great power comes great responsibility’; this is a paradigm of western political society, credited to the Marvel comic creator Stan Lee. Unsurprisingly, few politicians are regarded as superheroes. In the UK, levels...

  Natalie Oliver,   In 1940, 470,549 couples got married. By 2009 that figure had almost halved to 266,950. This is something David Cameron is keen to rectify, hoping for a resurgence of family values. While opposition groups propose arguments to the contrary, legalisation and acceptance of same-sex marriage is potentially vital...

  The political class of today is eating a mess of its own making. For too long no one would talk about immigration, now they can’t talk enough about it. A force that is overwhelmingly beneficial for the UK and its economy now is being attacked on all sides because...

The Spectator today has reported how the Tories are panicking over an EU budget rebellion. With over 35 names supporting a motion for a real terms cut  Tory whips are in a ‘flap’ as Cameron’s position is simply a real terms freeze. They even worry about Labour (ever the oppertunists)...