For someone so critical of people who dismiss children as feral, it was strange to read about Barnardo's boss Martin Narey using that word himself in relation to the Baby P case.
The fit notes that are to replace GPs' sick notes are a sound idea in principle, saddled as we are with a system that, in theory, can keep employees away from the workplace in perpetuity.
A curious reclassification of cannabis and ecstasy could be under way.
The Daily Mail called it "the day New Labour died"; The Guardian saw it as a "gamble". Whichever you prefer, chancellor Alistair Darling yesterday made clear his intention to protect those most in need during this economic downturn.
What was immigration minister Phil Woolas thinking when
he derided the charities and lawyers who try to help the dwindling number of
asylum claimants? "Playing the system" was how he indelicately put it.
It has been a productive week for retro-Tories.
In this age of freedom of information legislation and whistleblowers' rights, it is perverse that those staff who have the guts to do the honourable thing and expose wrongdoing are likely to run into a career cul-de-sac.
After their 17-medal haul in Beijing, the British Paralympian athletes have been rewarded with a cut in funding just in time to prepare for London 2012.
David Cameron rightly looked angry in the House of Commons yesterday that a child of 17 months had been savagely killed. But did he have to sound so angry?
It is now 201 years since the UK abolished the transatlantic slave trade so one would have thought this week's decision to wind down a police team dedicated to catching human traffickers would be based on sound reasoning.
Was it as long ago as three-and-a-half years that the British Beer and Pub Association announced a ban on happy hours?
That's the trouble with the older people of today. They just have no respeck. They sit idly around all day on park benches, swigging Lucozade, talking about the war - loudly I might say - and waving their sticks and pipes to emphasise some point they are making.
Who said this in June? "I was disappointed that child
poverty rose last year. This is a sign we have to redouble our efforts."
Stressed? You might well be, because figures from the Employers Organisation show social services departments to be riddled with the condition.
So pleased was I to read an article headlined "Social mobility on the rise" that I felt compelled to find out when it was last not "on the rise".
| Outside Left questions the thinking behind today’s social policy, with a sometimes wry, occasionally cynical, always straight-talking look at the political elite that shapes it, written by sub editor, Mike McNabb. |
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