Gross Value Lost – A wake-up call for WAG

The news of Wales’s position at the bottom of the GVA heap should be no great surprise. This is no great surprise because Wales was bottom of the league in 2000 as well. However, while Wales’s poor relations of the North East of England and Northern Ireland have just about…

Education is not just about the young.

This week we have had a couple of posts about one of the great political issues that engages with almost everyone – education.  On Monday, Anne Crowley noted that the broken promises over fees are likely to alienate young people even further from Politics, and yesterday Professor David…

A defining moment in education

The results for Wales in the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment which have been released could be seen as a defining moment for devolved education policy and indeed devolution as a whole.

They appear to frustrate such hopes and generally paint a worrying picture. The levels achieved by our fifteen…

The gritty reality of ice

Like thousands of others over the last ten days I have slipped and slid on my way to work, the shops and school along mostly ungritted pavements….

Tuition fees illustrate why young people feel disenfranchised

Across Britain over the past few weeks, thousands of school and university students have staged multiple demonstrations and occupations against the tripling of University fees and the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance for the poorest teenagers. Students occupied a building in Cardiff University as they worked to raise…

Eradicate child poverty, the Field way

Frank Field’s review of child poverty has at last found the solution – redefine it out of existence. Instead of looking at household income, a measure which is imperfect but is internationally accepted and has data going back to the early 1990s, he suggests looking at ‘life chances’ -…

Fuel Poverty needs a rethink

The cold weather this week has conveniently coincided with two other pieces of recent news. The first is that the continued rise in energy prices has been referred to OFGEM, and the second is the update of the fuel poverty statistics in Wales. The new estimate of…

What is to be done about alcohol?

Alcohol and its costs to society, to the Health Service, to children and to individuals has been in the news frequently in recent months. Alcohol pricing, advertising, marketing and policy take up space in editorials and opinion pieces. I am confused. I enjoy a drink and my life would…