One aspect of the Labour government's "spend spend spend" policy that perhaps hasn't received as much coverage as it should, has been the cost of the Cabinet Awaydays, of which two have already been held in Birmingham and Leeds, and another is planned for later this week, in Liverpool. The second of these trips out for the Labour Cabinet members, at public expense, apparently cost somewhere in

Daniel Drezner has a question for readers: Question to readers: is 2009 the year that China's government collapses? Or is it just another year in which there will be a crackdown of a mass uprising? Because those may be the...

Why is the government so reluctant to legislate against the gambling industry? Gerry Sutcliffe, the sports minister, today announced plans to impose a statutory levy on the industry to raise £5m a year (not an enormous sum) to fund measures to deal with the problem of gambling addiction. But if you read the small print of the announcement, you'll see that he's not committed to usin...

By Paul Goodman MP, a Shadow Communities and Local Government Minister. The Times reports today that three youths tried to set fire to a synagogue last Saturday – the Jewish Sabbath. The Community Security Trust, a Jewish charity, describes an...

Gordon Brown's decision to hold a cabinet meeting outside of London cost the taxpayer up to £200000 new figures suggested yesterday.

Over at Shadow Government, Chris Brose expands on Steve Walt's already controversial Gaza thought experiment.

From today's FT: Sir, It seems that Robert H. Wade (Letters, January 2) has fallen prey to what Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) called the mother of all fallacies: the failure to examine the effect that a policy has on all groups, both in the short run and the long run. In calling for government assistance to bail out failing industries one must ask: “Where are the funds coming from?&rdquo...

George Osborne says in the Evening Standard: Our economy sucked up the savings of millions of Chinese workers, like a national vacuum cleaner, and spent them - often on the very goods those Chinese workers were toiling away in their factories to make. And the message from the Labour Government was: don’t worry, we’re borrowing recklessly,

The original New Deal only cost $500bn (today's money) Here in the UK we're at last getting some fiscal blue water between Labour and Tories. Gordo wants to spend us out of recession, whereas Dave wants us to save. As Dave told us yesterday: "We need to make a really big change: from an economy built on debt to an economy built on savings, from a country and government that has lived bey...

With the government's long-delayed decision on a third runway at Heathrow rumoured to be imminent, the intrepid women and men of the Climate Rush will be making their suffragette-inspired opposition felt at the airport next week. MPs return from their winter holiday on Monday 12 January, so that evening at 7pm the Climate Rushers will hit Heathrow Terminal 1 for a peaceful picnic. Terminal 1,...