The cost of funding public sector workers' pensions is set to rise to the equivalent of more than £1,000 for every household within a decade, experts have calculated.

Trust in politics is low. We will make a start in changing this by being open and transparent, publishing every item of council spending over £500. It's your money; we'll be straight with you. We should be accountable when spending your money. I've seen this work in other authorities. People consider their actions more carefully when they are laid open to wider scrutiny. The v...

The Watcher's Council is a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote, with the results appearing here Friday. So, let's see what we have this week....enjoy! Council Submissions Mere Rhetoric - Obama Giving Up On “Crippli...

Dan Washburn has more on China’s war on golf: The most generous estimates put the number of golfers in China at a few million—statistically zero percent of the population. While the game is growing in popularity, in many developers' eyes...

A report claims that two thirds of convicts serving prison sentences of less than one year go on to re offend costing the economy some £10 billion every year. This is the equivalent of £400 for every household in Britain. As usual, this is the "evidence" that the hand-wringing liberals use to justify community "punishments" as, they claim, this is proof that prison doesn't work. H...

THE number of Scottish offenders sent to prison has risen to its highest level in a decade, according to new statistics.

Every war takes its time to produce a good film or even a piece of journalistic analysis that goes beyond running commentary. Apocalypse Now came years after the end of the Vietnam War and it took seven years before this year's Oscar winner, The Hurt Locker, could be produced. The newspapers are full of excellent reporting from Kabul, with The Times Anthony Loyd, The Guardian's Jon Boone...

The latest dividing line from the man who keeps thinking of politics as his own personal playground battle is to say the Tories would enjoy austerity. The polls warn us that a hung parliament, or thanks to the anti-English and anti-Tory bias in our electoral system a Labour minority govt ( the favourite of every Lib Dem except perhaps Nick Clegg - whose tried to work with Brown once a learnt the h...

The Left, as it now too courts the religious Right, is abandoning gay people in every way but lip-service.

Every dog owner in the UK would have to take out insurance under government proposals to crack down on dangerous breeds.