Once again the Prime Minister has made an unfounded and inappropriate attack on Oxford. Why are there so few black students, he asked? I have rehearsed the arguments before, in my 2011 post, Oxford Blues Whites and Blacks (http://lordsoftheblog.net/2011/04/12/oxford-blues-whites-and-blacks/) and, sadly, nothing has changed. Black potential students still achieve fewer 3A*/A A-level grades than white; and only…
Earlier this week I had the honour to Chair the APPG on Conflict Issues as we hosted Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire who has been a member of the Canadian Senate but, more famously, was Force Commander of UNAMIR, the UN peacekeeping mission deployed to Rwanda before the genocide in 1994. Lieutenant-General Dallaire warned…
Rail monopoly news – 25th January 2016 4th Railway Package: co-operation agreements will neuter it + CER goes for North Korean-type control! Fourth Railway Package Trilogue. Amid some improvement, the UK Government still tries to retain ‘alliances’ or ‘co-operation agreements’ between Infrastructure Managers and one or more Railway Undertakings – in order to be nice…
Ministers are being bombarded on all sides by irate politicians worried about the performance of the passenger railway in their constituencies. From those Tories in the constituencies south of London stretching to the sea, the performance of the trains has been heavily criticised; ’trains are always late, we can never get a seat, they close…
In general our press and politicians are very quick to discern and condemn conflicts of interest that might affect decision making, especially financial – Sebastian Coe and Nike being a recent example. It is the perception of conflict that matters, not the actuality. Yet Poland, whose former PM Donald Tusk is now President of the European Council, has…
