"Bunting notes that William Beveridge, original architect of the British welfare state, envisioned a role for 'friendly societies' - non-governmental providers - for the provision of healthcare. But this was a road not taken. Instead, a highly centralised national health service prevailed, which adopted a medicalised approach to care, valuing technical expertise over human values." John Tomaney praises Madeleine Bunting's Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care.
Jon Burke shows how we can make 21st-century streets greener, happier and safer.
Culture, heritage and creativity are essential to our future national prosperity argues a new report from the Local Government Association.
"Even in the 18th century, when the draining of much of the old Fens surrounding the Ouse Washes was already well underway, Daniel Defoe is drawn to ‘the uncouth Music of the Bittern ... so loud that it is heard two or three Miles Distance’ as the main point of note on his way through the Holland district of Lincolnshire." Michael J. Warren on the importance of birds to our sense of place.
"A book about a boy becoming initiated into the mysteries of adult life (sex and its frequent thematic partner, betrayal), it is itself the kind of novel that introduces youngish readers into the mysteries and subtleties of fiction. Reading the novel is part of the process of learning how to read novels." Geoff Dyer reads L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between.
It's my contention that Tony Blair was the biggest foreign policy dunce of the last 100 years. He thought, wrongly, that dialogue and engagement with the likes of Putin, Gaddafi and Erdoğan would change and moderate their worldview somehow. What a waste of time
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