New figures published today have shown the steep falls in the detection rates of a range of serious crimes including murder, firearm offences, knife crime offences and rape. A fall in the 'sanction detection rates' means fewer offences are resulting in a prosecution (charge, caution or warning). The figures, which come from written answers from the Mayor of London, show sanction detectio...

Ed Miliband will call next week for the cap on benefits to be lower outside London and the South East, with ministers stripped of the power to set local rates.

            The media is contrasting the  US growth rate which hit 2.8% per annum in the last quarter of 2011 favourably with the stalling economies of Europe. What they are not doing, however, is picking up on the different composition of growth.             In the UK the public sector ma...

Hilary Benn MP, Labour's Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary, responding to Government proposals on local government finance and business rates, said:

Council inspectors should start monitoring what private sector employees eat at work in order to help improve the country's health and to reduce sickness rates, a report has concluded.

While all eyes are fixed on Italy's ever-increasing borrowing rates, a far larger problem may well be emerging. The EU bailout fund, set up to help countries who can't borrow, may itself have trouble borrowing very soon. A sale this morning of 10-year bonds by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) had a very muted response, barely bringing in the €3 billion it was meant ...

That's if slop is a euphemism for massive amounts of debt and out of control government spending that includes cradle to grave entitlements! The rhetoric out of the G-20 and the political games in Greece are smokescreens for what will ultimately matter: EU sovereign bond yields! Because at the end of the day how high are the interest rates, for governments with massive amounts of existing deb...

High-LTV mortgage ates by postcode area

Something to be aware of. The United Nations will warn this week that the world’s population could more than double to 15 billion by the end of this century, putting a catastrophic strain on the planet’s resources unless urgent action is taken to curb growth rates, the Observer can reveal. That figure is likely to

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has been rebuked by the head of Britain's statistics watchdog for repeatedly using questionable figures to overstate his claims of cutting reoffending rates.