New zealand

Thumping Australia is grand; thumping Australia without playing well almost feels like cheating. But in a good way. This is where England find themselves today. The Ashes are safe for another few months and England have not had to be very good to keep them. Which is just as well, frankly, since even though they are unbeaten in 12 tests England are not quite as good a side as they like to think they are. They are good enough to defeat these hapless Australians, however. The Australians are basically New Zealand in disguise. Like New Zealand they are a side good enough to get themselves into good positions but not

Having a baby and stuck for a choice of name? Let the eminently sensible and well-adjusted people of New Zealand help you out. Their government has just released a list of names parents wished to call their kids but were banned from doing so by an overbearing and meddling state. Luckily they’re still legal over here, though. So you could go for ‘4Real’ or ‘V8’ – or, if it’s your kinda thing, ‘Anal’. There were even kids about to be called ‘2nd’ and ‘3rd’ and ‘4th’, inspiration having deserted the parents. My favourites came from New Zealand a few years back. That’ll be the twins, Benson and Hedges. And then

Borgen – the title refers to the Danish equivalent of Holyrood or Westminster – has been terrifically popular amongst those people interested in sub-titled political dramas from Denmark. I fancy that viewers in England have simply enjoyed the programme for what it is: a well-made but impossibly smug piece of “progressive” political propaganda. In Scotland, however, it has been seen as something different: a glimpse of the future. Or, at any rate, one future. In one sense this is reasonable. Even if it is only a TV show, one can see why Scots – and nationalists especially – should be thrilled by a drama showing how the ineffably right-on leader

This is the next of our posts with Reform looking ahead to the Spending Review. Earlier posts were on health, education, the first hundred days, welfare, the Civil Service, international experiences (New Zealand, Canada,Ireland) and Hon Ruth Richardson’s recent speech and selling the case for cuts to the public.   George Osborne was right to frame the forthcoming UK Spending Review as a once in a generation opportunity to reshape government.  While it is convenient to see the current fiscal debate as cyclical, the truth is that heavily indebted countries such as the UK have a structural problem rooted in the overreach of government. So Mr Osborne will succeed if

This is the latest of our posts with Reform looking ahead to the Spending Review. The first five posts were on health, education, the coalition’s first hundred days, welfare and the Civil Service. International examples of public finance rescue missions Other countries can provide important lessons on what does, and what does not, work in devising a plan to bring government spending down. Several countries have undertaken major programmes of reform that have set out to restore fiscal credibility and improve the quality of their public services. Examples include New Zealand, Canada and Ireland. Reform has drawn on the experiences of senior figures from these countries, and lessons from the