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I wrote earlier this week about selling social housing to tenants, and the circumstances where it could be a radical idea again, as perhaps it was in 1980. Of course, what we didn't know then was that local authorities would be forced to hold onto the money they made...

Last Monday the Sweets Way occupiers and protesters got another week from a pleasant County Court judge in which further to prepare their arguments as to why they should not be evicted from their homes on Sweets Way in the London borough of Barnet. The judge heard...

I’ve always believed that fairy tales have a role in understanding the contemporary world, and therefore of politics. This sounds a little sceptical or satirical, but I don’t mean it like that. You can use fairy tales as a positive way of extracting the underlying...

  A roomy green estate of 150 houses has been rapidly cleared of its residents, now scattered to other boroughs, other schools, other towns. A tiny number have taken over one house and are mounting a resistance to the ‘social cleansing’ they claim has happened in...

A document dropped through my door on Saturday. It was from the Allotments Association asking for our help in protecting the site of 50 allotments in the village.Apparently we need to get our allotments designated as a Local Green Space to protect them from the...

Take the NHS for example.  The political narrative is always about the dearth of resources available – and of course this is bound to be a problem. But it is odd, nonetheless, given that so much of what needs doing requires no obvious training – visiting,...

I had just finished reading the wonderful second volume of Alan Johnson's autobiography, Please Mr Postman, when an advert popped up on the computer for a company called Doddle. Doddle joins Yodel and Whistl, other delivery companies with babyish names, which are...

Sometimes a good idea turns round and bites you on the ankle. The Chancellor might be thinking this about the Office for Budget Responsibility which he set up in 2010 to provide an independent overview of the public finances . After the 2008 financial disaster these...

I can't now find the interview I heard today on the BBC about the prospects of deflation in the euro-zone.  I have a feeling it was Gillian Tett.  But whoever it was talked about the underlying psychology of deflation. She put it down to apathy.  People have to break...