In the past few weeks, many have been foaming at the mouth with rage over benefits scroungers, with the government going as far as suggesting that the welfare state lead to the Philpott tragedy. But in truth, the scroungers playing the system and the skivers having children to...

David Cameron's speech about cracking down on immigrants' use of benefits, the NHS and social housing, and his proposals to curb immigrants' access to them, was a slap in the face for immigrants in the UK. The immigrants David Cameron and his supporters picture are shadowy caricatures: faceless...

Ken Clarke recently announced plans to end the right to compensation for prisoners injured in custody. The arguments in favour seem simple: prisoners have committed a crime, which negates their right to certain protections - including, seemingly, their protection from violence. This sends a clear message that prisoners...

If there is anything worth fighting for, it is knowledge. From the spark which lit the first fire tens of thousands of years ago, to the stone tools used by early humans to hunt and build, to the ideas which gave us democracy and ethics, to the revolutions in coal...

What first struck me about the Facebook 'rape' pages is not what they say, but who they speak for. 'You know she's playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleyway' frames the reader as the perpetrator of that act. Suddenly it becomes acceptable,...