Andrew Tettenborn is a professor of law at Swansea Law School
There was something predictable in the government’s agreement last week to accept defeat in the Belfast High Court. The overtly republican Irish band Kneecap had brought a judicial review over the withdrawal of an offer of a £14,500 state grant to support artists overseas, alleging unlawful political discrimination. The government lawyers caved at the door
It’s grim up north in Scotland, we’re told. A mission from Edinburgh has produced a report about the woes of life in the Highlands and Islands, and a demand for measures to deal with them. Problems include a high incidence of poverty; a lack of affordable housing and public transport; long trips to the nearest hospital or
Education Minister Bridget Phillipson wants to make our schools engines of ambition and social mobility. Good for her. Unfortunately, some of the the advice she has received as to how to do this demonstrates one thing more than anything else: when it comes to class prejudice, it’s earnest bourgeois reformers who habitually head the pack.
It’s police overreach season again on free speech and non-crime hate incidents, or NCHIs. On Remembrance Day morning, we had Essex police’s surreal doorstepping of journalist Allison Pearson, demanding an interview about a long-forgotten Tweet by her they refused to identify. Pearson has said the police told her it was a NCHI, though the force says it
There’s a beguiling simplicity to the idea behind Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, published yesterday. If someone is terminally ill and likely to die within six months and wants to accelerate the process, surely it’s only kind that the state should give two doctors the ability to help them do it
Universities in the UK desperately needed Bridget Phillipson’s announcement this afternoon of a rise in tuition fees. The Education Secretary has said they will rise from £9,250, to £9,535 next year and £10,500 by 2029. This was necessary if only to offset the effect of last week’s Budget announcement of a 1.2 per cent rise
The East Riding of Yorkshire is flat, prosperously agricultural and slightly off the beaten track. Deeply conservative, it isn’t the place you would normally look for originality. Over the weekend, however, its county council announced an inspired experiment. It wants to see what happens if it gets rid of large numbers of its street lights. Not the
The firearms officer Martyn Blake was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba this week. Kaba was a serious wrong ‘un: a violent gangland enforcer with a rap sheet as long as your arm going back to the age of 13. During the trial this information was kept under wraps, on the basis that Kaba’s past was irrelevant
Adam Smith-Connor was this week convicted of a heinous offence, slapped with a conditional discharge and a costs order for £9,000. The actual crime in question? The 51-year-old army veteran was praying silently, on his own, for the soul of a child which he had, now much to his regret, aborted many years earlier. The
In Labour’s manifesto this year, Keir Starmer cannily sought to reassure any Brexiteers out there by ruling out a return to the EU single market. But, being a lawyer, he carefully inserted a small-print proviso. The Labour leader said that he did not rule out doing much the same thing by realigning Britain piecemeal with EU standards
Nobody should be surprised that Boris Johnson favours a referendum on leaving the ECHR, as his book now makes clear. Boris is an instinctive populist and maverick, who cordially despises the educated progressive establishment which argues for continued membership. He is also right. Intellectually, the case for remaining in the ECHR gets ever flimsier Intellectually, the
The fees English universities are allowed to charge home students in England are fixed by government fiat. At £9,250 per year, they are some of the most expensive in Europe. Shortly after the election Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson denied any plans to raise them. She appears to have changed her mind, saying the fee has been ‘eroded’
There are not many women in prison, but those who are inside show worryingly high rates of mental illness, suicide and self-harm; their families suffer badly while they are inside, and when they are released, few of them come out rehabilitated in any real sense. Given this, you can see why the new Lord Chancellor,
The fleet of border control cutters responsible for patrolling our waters (and at times for dealing with irregular migrants on them) is showing its age and needs renewing. Unfortunately we now know that the exercise will cost £300 million rather than the original estimate of roughly £50 million, and will be delayed until at least 2030. Why
Our universities are in a mess. Too many degrees lack intellectual quality and utility, and leave those doing them with little but disappointment and debt. Nor is the debt limited to students. Foreign student numbers, on which many institutions rely, are drastically down, and it is an open secret that three big names (Cardiff, York, and Goldsmiths)
The decision to scrap one or two-word Ofsted inspection grades for England’s schools is good news for teachers – but bad news for just about everyone else, not least parents and pupils. Many school staff have never liked the labelling of schools as ‘Outstanding’, ‘Good’, ‘Requires Improvement’ and ‘Inadequate’. They say that it doesn’t give
It’s a curious political world. Few who voted Labour last month actually wanted Labour policies, or for that matter had more than the haziest idea what they were. Now the Labour leadership is returning the compliment. It is increasingly obvious that it has neither much idea what electors want, nor any great desire to provide
The longer it continues in office, the more reactionary and beholden to vested interests this government turns out to be. So far it has surrendered to the establishment on immigration, on the EU, and on higher education (blocking any awkward notions of making administrators respect free speech). Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, now appears to
The Labour party is in a bind over cars. Its instincts – collectivist, green, managerialist – strongly favour anti-car measures like low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) with roads strategically blocked off, and 20 mph speed limits. Unfortunately motorists overwhelmingly disagree. In Wales, the new government under Eluned Morgan has learnt this to its cost. Faced with
University hopefuls trepidatiously opening their official A-level emails this morning will on the whole be happier than last year. All the indications are that they are more likely to get a college place, and indeed have a better chance of making their first choice. The reasons for this are complex, but largely boil down to
