It was a reasonable guess that, once the government had appointed a group of the great and good to investigate the summer riots, somehow we would all have to share the blame. It is a central tenet of liberal Britain that while criminals may share some of the blame for the acts which they perpetrate,
Home Public borrowing will exceed previous forecasts by £5 billion this year, £19 billion next year and £30 billion in 2013-14, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in an Autumn Statement delivered under dark clouds. The ratio of debt to GDP would rise to a peak of 78 per cent in 2014-15. He
Last Easter I left the special school for children with behaviour problems, where I had been head for six years, for a job advising on behaviour at the Department for Education. Recently, I went back to my school and bumped into a boy called Jack in the corridor. He looked at me for a few
Newcastle University library, happily removing academic journals from the shelves to the (apparent) cheers of the academics (Letters, 12 November), is well behind the pace. Michael Wilding, an Australian correspondent, writes that Sydney University’s Fisher Library is planning to chuck out 500,000 books and journals to make room for, of course, more computers. The first
Gross domestic products The Office for Budget Responsibility downgraded UK GDP growth for 2011 to 0.9 per cent, down from 1.7 per cent. How many extra manufactured products does a 0.9 per cent growth in GDP — £12.56 million — translate to? 4.6bn 250g jars of Marmite 60m Dyson vacuum cleaners 34m pairs of Church’s
Women for Islamic law Sir: Douglas Murray’s article (‘After spring, winter’, 26 November) was well written, but it missed a crucial point. What we are seeing in the Arab Spring is an awakening of a political Islam that is neither strictly ‘Islamist’ nor compatible with liberal ideals of freedom. The phenomenon is driven in large
