Britain
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'Out here, a cascade of bad news this week was ignored by the unhinged government benches. Report after report revealed mismanagement of just about everything.'
Amid Tory disarray, Labour's critical moment looms | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free
Within two years, almost 7.1m of the nation’s 13m youngsters will be in homes with incomes judged to be less than the minimum necessary for a decent standard of living, according to a new report.
Majority of British children will soon be growing up in families struggling 'below the breadline', Government warned - UK Politics - UK
The north of England: The great divide
The Manchester metropolis: a rare bright spot IN 1962, as Britain pulled slowly out of recession, Harold Macmillan told an audience that he was determined to “prevent two nations developing geographically, a poor north and a rich and overcrowded south”. The price of failure, the Conservative prime minister said, would be that “our successors will reproach us as we reproach the Victorians for complacency about slums and ugliness.”
A tourist boat passes a giant 1977 portrait of the Queen and royal family taken during the silver jubilee celebrations, hanging over the Thames in preparation for the diamond jubilee.
Forget the Queen's jubilee. Let's have a knees-up for the Magna Carta | Peter Wilby | Comment is free
LONDON — It is winter, the middle of December, and I find myself making an odd phone call.
Mosquebusters - By Spike Johnson
Malise Ruthven Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Bringing Mecca to the British Museum by Malise Ruthven
WE JOURNALISTS are probably too bleary-eyed after a sleepless night to understand the full significance of what has just happened in Brussels. What is clear is that after a long, hard and rancorous negotiation, at about 5am this morning the European Union split in a fundamental way. In an effort to stabilise the euro zone, France, Germany and 21 other countries have decided to draft their own treaty to impose more central control over national budgets.
Britain and the EU summit: Europe's great divorce
Britain and the EU: The Failure of a Forced Marriage - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International
It was to be expected. And now it's official: The British have elected not to join the treaty governing Europe's new financial system . Prime Minister David Cameron refused.
Following in Henry VIII's Footsteps?
Would a new Act in Restraint of Appeals such as Henry VIII enacted against Rome in 1533 achieve a similar objective for Eurosceptics today of ‘repatriating powers’ from the EU?Here's something you definitely shouldn't do if you're even a tiny bit leftwing and suffer from high blood pressure: look at a document called the Forbes cost of living extremely well index . Forbes is an American business magazine, and its cost of living extremely well index is an annual survey of price trends for things popular at the very, very top end of the income distribution. The riveting thing about the CLEWI isn't the headline attached, because that tends to be the same every year.
Why the super-rich love the UK | Society
It's been argued that inequalities in wealth in Britain greatly exceed inequalities in income, an injustice which a tax on the value of property would begin to address. And there seems no doubt at all that property, even now, is insanely overvalued.
Philip Hensher: Is it a castle – or is it just a source of capital? - Philip Hensher - Commentators
Maria's front door has a house number – 48 – screwed in to the wood and its own letterbox, but it isn't possible for a postman to get here to deliver anything.
The woman who lives in a shed: how London landlords are cashing in | Society
A shop window in Leigh, Greater Manchester, advertises a closing-down sale.