Professors’ ‘Lifestyle choice’

When George Osborne talks about being out of work as a ‘lifestyle choice’ and Iain Ducan Smith refers to jobseekers needing to benefit from ‘the habits and routines of working life’, I suspect they don’t have in mind several Professors from the University of Glamorgan’s Business School. 

Yet Prof Paul…

Feature Article; Trade unionism in Wales

In the first of a regular series, we will be publishing edited versions of articles originally published in the Bevan Foundation Review. The Bevan Foundation Review is a seasonal magazine sent to members. It includes challenging and informative articles by politicians, academics, leaders of public and private organisations. Below…

Unison’s reaction to spending cuts.

The planned cuts to total public spending over the four years from April 2011, after economic wide inflation, are set to be the deepest since World War II. The cuts to spending on public services will be the deepest since the four years beginning in April 1975 when the…

Scrutiny gap on welfare reform in Wales

What ever your views about welfare reform, it is surely one of the hottest political issues around. Certainly the changes in prospect will affect all 366,000 of Wales’s working-age claimants, its 631,000 pensioners as well as the 7,500 people who work for the Department for Work and Pensions in…

Getting people and services online.

The Manifesto for a networked nation outlines the numerous benefits to all parties of mass use of the internet, and aims to create a rallying cry behind which government, the private sector and the third sector can unite behind the laudable goal of getting everyone online. The government…

Moving into the final phase

 When Assembly Members returned this week it was clear that the life of this Assembly is drawing to a close. There will now be a frenetic period of completion which will need to achieve a number of things by next March. In particular, the Welsh Assembly Government has to…

Will you still need me when I’m 64?

The line from the Beatles song ‘When I’m 64’ asks one partner to another whether they will still be needed when they get older. Today in Wales, our older population is more critical to the vitality of the country than ever before. Two years ago, for the first time…

The abolition of league tables did not cause a decline in educational standards.

Recent research by the Centre for market and public organisation claims the abolition of league tables has led to a decline in Welsh educational standards equivalent to two GCSE grades per pupil. However this research is flawed and unconvincing for the following reasons:

(1)    It suggests that the gap…

Justice needs to be seen to be done.

Last week, the Nuffield Foundation published a new piece of research on attitudes towards the mandatory life sentence given to people convicted of murder in the UK.

One of its main findings was that there was limited understanding of what a life sentence actually was, and that “perceptions…

The end of council housing in Wales.

The End of Council Housing in Wales?

A new report sets out the historic mistakes in housing policy that have ended up costing Wales over £100 million each year.

Paul Griffiths’ new analysis highlights the enormous effect the 1989 Local Government and Housing Act has had on council housing in Wales….