With the general election looming, and a change of Government looking likely, it’s encouraging to see that 61% of visitors to my website would choose Vince Cable to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer. George Osborne lagged behind on 22%, and just 16% of voters opted for the current Chancellor, Alistair Darling.

Let’s hope that the General Election results are equally as encouraging for the Liberal Democrats!

The final swansong by the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee before it became the new Science and Technology Committee was its controversial report on students and universities. At the heart of the Committee’s conclusions lay a paradox. We have in our universities some of the best brains in the world; skilled researchers and academics fearless in challenging and debunking orthodoxies. But when it came to higher education examining its own accepted beliefs, we found, in the words of the report, concerning levels of “defensive complacency”.

With the number of new swine flu cases tripling from around 3000 per week at the beginning
of the month to near 9000 new cases last week it is interesting to see that 77% of those people who visit my site think that the government are handling swine flu well.

A-level students celebrate their results. But with 40,000 graduates likely to be out of a job by the end of the summer, the value of a university degree is being questioned.

AS this year's A-level results are published, thousands of young people across the country will be asking themselves the same question: is it really worth going to university?

The summer recess has at last arrived in parliament and for most MPs there has been a collective sigh of relief following one of the most challenging parliamentary sessions since the days of Oliver Cromwell! The endless round of summer receptions and thank you parties were conspicuous by their absence and instead MPs have reflected on an extraordinary year. A year where we saw a financial crisis of truly epic proportions with our whole banking system on the edge of collapse; the economy judder to almost standstill; and the housing market lose some 20% of its value.

The House Magazine
20th July 2009

A Cabinet reshuffle always heralds a crop of new ministers, a few surprise choices and the odd interesting new Secretary of State but June 5th saw a new phenomenon the ‘department reshuffle’. Less than two years since DIUS was heralded as the future of innovation it was gone – swallowed up together with BERR into the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills under the leadership of Lord Mandelson. A super department to ‘lead the fight against recession and build now for future prosperity’ was how NO 10 Downing Street described the move.

The election of Speaker of the House of Commons took on an air of unusual importance on Monday as ten hopefuls entered the race to be the ‘reforming speaker' who would wrestle power back from the executive to parliament and crucially re-connect the House of Commons to the British people.