Riots and Corporate Social Responsibility

Amongst the many, very different, analyses of last week’s riots there is one consistent theme: the desirability of the items that were looted. With a few notable exceptions (a case of bottled water, a waste paper bin), the…

Party machines must not determine the boundary review

If the 2015 general election promises to be the political equivalent of the World Cup, then the impending parliamentary boundary review must surely be the qualifiers.  The number of Welsh constituencies, 40 presently will be whittled down to…

The Bevan Legacy

This is an extract from a speech by former First Minister Rhodri Morgan first given at the National Eisteddfod in 2010 for the Bevan Foundation. The speech has ben reproduced to mark the anniversary.

It’s a great honour for…

Still Falling for the Benefit Myth Part 2

In part 1 of this article I posed a series of scenarios and asked readers to calculate the benefits individuals may get from britain’s allegedly generous welfare system. I hope it was an interesting exercise, that if nothing…

Still falling for the benefits myth

Popular perceptions of Britain’s welfare state are often so inaccurate it is a wonder that anybody actually takes them seriously. If one was to believe what some have said about the alleged generosity of the system in…

The debate begins to rumble…

Behind the scenes two related debates are beginning to rumble…

The media hasn’t yet appreciated the constitutional importance of these, preferring to concentrate on procedure rather that the more complex but fundamentally important constitutional issues.

Firstly, in the light of…

An absence of applause

The Prime Minister’s exhortations to the Welsh Government to open up Welsh public services to individual choice and diversity of supplier met with a stony silence in the Assembly chamber. A reading of the UK government’s White Paper…

Social Service Bill: An opportunity and challenge

How we care for some of the most vulnerable people in our society has recently been near the top of the UK news and political agendas, due to a combination of stories coming together.  These include the…

Communities First – The Future

The consultation process for the new Communities First Programme (Communities First – The Future) was launched on July 5th and responses have to be submitted by September 26th (the document can be downloaded here). The document proposes some…

The Unthinkable on Child Poverty

Eradicating child poverty in Wales will mean a transformation in Welsh society. As described last week, both parents in couple households and lone parents will have to have at least some paid work.  This in itself is a…