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Ever since the welfare state was established in 1948, Britain’s elected leaders have grappled with how to pay for and deliver social care.
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In my view, Sunak’s plan positions young people as a problem.
Former PM Gordon Brown says more than 3 million children born after 2010 live in poverty.
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Targeting benefits at the most vulnerable sounds like good sense – but a wider support system could be more effective at tackling poverty.
People attend a protest against knife crime at the location in south London where 15-year-old Elianne Andam was stabbed to death in September 2023.
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Until government addresses the link between cuts to funding public services and the rise in knife crime, the violence children and young people are facing will continue.
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Public goods like clean air and a stable climate demand more democratic planning, not less.
Birmingham city.
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Birmingham’s spiralling budget deficits are the result of a decade of austerity and a disastrous implementation of a new Oracle IT system.
Incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon faces media on election night, October 14 2023.
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Beneath the obvious policy differences between Labour and National lies a tacit consensus on fundamental economic settings. Until that changes, political choice will be constrained.
Osborne and Balls pictured together in 2016.
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The former chancellor and shadow chancellor have revealed how their parties collaborated on devising some of the most damaging policies of the past 20 years.
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More than a decade of austerity in English local government has squeezed councils to their utter financial limits.
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Evidence shows austerity has wide-ranging consequences for health.
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It’s not always the case that poorer citizens want more public spending and richer people want less.
A sector on the verge.
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Numbers obtained through a freedom of information request reveal the dire state of the legal aid sector in England and Wales.
People march with a banner that reads in Spanish ‘Stop the adjustment, out with the IMF,’ in Buenos Aires, Argentina on May 9, 2023.
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The conditions placed on countries borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund have further disadvantaged these countries economically.
Immigrants and teachers of English for speakers of other languages protest at Parliament Square in 2015.
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Although English to speakers of other languages (Esol) is treated like any other subject, it can offer far more to those learners.
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Prioritising economic growth without a plan to curb exploitative business practices is not a solution. The UK needs a return to the forward-thinking social reforms of 1945.
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We talk about ‘fiscal responsibility’ but rarely are a government’s annual accounting exercises assessed in ethical terms.
People queue outside a bank in Lagos on February 22, 2023. Nigeria was hit with a scarcity of cash after the central bank began to swap old Naira notes for new bills.
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There are at least five errors that marred the currency redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria, most of which could have been avoided.
Financial worries stemming from austerity could span generations.
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Public spending cuts and the soaring cost of living will not only affect people lives now, but could trickle down through generations.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt: even in a crisis, don’t expect the government to play with a straight bat.
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Cutting infrastructure spending and maintaining the pensions triple lock are among the questionable moves in Jeremy Hunt’s statement.
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Used wisely, public debt could be a way to improve things for our children and grandchildren.