Politics

When the Cabinet system was first introduced, a council’s “overview and scrutiny” committee was intended to scrutinise, closely, the work of the executive – providing some sort of reassurance to the wider Council. Councillors were given “call in” powers, by ...

As junior doctors begin their fourth episode of industrial action, all the signs are that both their resolve and public support remain solid. The latest recruit to the doctors’ cause is the Patients Association, which has now indicated its formal ...

Heard the one about the immigrants taking “our” jobs? It’s one of those water cooler topics, something to chat about at work. The immediate answer is, “Which jobs have they taken? Because they haven’t taken your job, have they?” Still ...

As successive Governments have cut the state pension as part of their austerity policies, they have been left with the dilemma of how to cope with the inequalities such cuts build into society. Cuts to the state pension have not ...

London Mayor Boris Johnson is doing his best to plug the gap left by government cuts in local authority funding – by inviting service users to pay for their services direct. He has found £730,000 which he will use to ...

Labour’s John Biggs promised that he would be accountable to his electors and he’s making a start by coming out from the Town Hall to meet the public at sessions he has called the “Mayoral Assembly”. The Assembly is timed ...

On 23rd April – St George’s Day – last year, the first directly-elected Muslim mayor, Lutfur Rahman, a man who had won two boroughwide elections in Tower Hamlets, was dismissed from office at the stroke of a pen from a ...

Lutfur Rahman’s lawyers attended the High Court today to ask the Court for permission to apply for a Judicial Review into the Election Court’s ruling earlier this year that Lutfur Rahman should be removed from office. They were granted permission ...

As voters trudged to polling stations on 7th May 2015, they knew they were participating in the UK’s largest exercise in practical democracy by freely casting their vote for the political party of their choice. Now it seems that they ...

Shelter has been doing amazing work for years now – helping individuals with housing problems, and also campaigning for progressive housing policies. It’s an increasingly difficult job. We all know there’s a housing crisis, but government policies are making it ...