Youth unemployment is a dire experience - bringing nothing but acreage of misery, despair and tedium. However it's altogether worse when all of the misery is preventable.

How can that be so?

Well because of two reasons: educators in Great Britain are firstly failing to provide young people with...

The old order equation of "university degree = well paid job" is well and truly dead.

In response to the death of the old order, university students have started to demand that university courses are tailored towards employability. Read all about about this in the Times (£)

Seven years ago I entered law school and five years later I left law school jobless. I also left law school without a day of practical experience; without an ounce of interview experience or even the faintest idea of what it was actually like to practice law.

I did have...

Fifteen years ago Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and other statesmen mediated the un-mediatable and created the Northern Ireland that we know today.

Some see the bargain as a grand failure. The creation of a parochial sectarian state suspended in a form of purgatory with a bloody history and no...

For the average young person, quite frankly it's not cool to be smart. Stick your head above the noisy herd and you risk setting yourself out for a barrage of scorn and ridicule.

What a sad and perverse state of affairs: that a young person should be punished for showing...

The UK editor of Vice Magazine, Alex Miller was right: Lady Thatcher's passing did usher in an almighty wave of dickheadism onto our streets.

And no more so than in Northern Ireland where in republican enclaves, we saw rejoicing and mass celebration. How crass.

When the news of...

Ok I get it: the title of this piece reads very high and esoteric. But please do bear with me. I really think we're onto something.

What I want to do today is to discuss Michael Oakeshott and explore how he can speak to schools and educators. But before we...

Ok, I think we can all agree on one thing: all theory and no practice makes Jack an unemployable boy.

Excuse the clumsy proverb, but the message is simple: whether the economy is up or down it's simply not enough for young people just to be exam-passing...

The George Osborne budget was tepid and utterly uninspiring. To paraphrase Fraser Nelson of the Spectator, the budget was devoid of substance and replete with gestures.

Making things worse is the raft of very unfortunate realities: UK growth forecast for 2013 has been downgraded to 0.6%;...

These days we're all hard pressed. But for young people it really hasn't helped that schools and universities are failing to properly prepare them for the world of work.

It's impossible to fully articulate the latent value of having a good education, of being well read, of being strong at...

Belfast is a changed city. No longer is it the viscerally divided place that it was decades ago. In many ways it's the archetypal western capital: a bustling metropolitan centre possessed of a growing body of outward looking people, coffee shops on every street corner, a splash of fancy eateries,...

Twitter and Facebook and other social media are an incredibly powerful force for good. They give every man and woman a soap box and democratise man's ability to influence. Thanks to new media people can share ideas and information, articulate a message and communicate with people in high and faraway...

I have a confession to make. In a moment of youthful indiscretion I chose to study law. It wasn't a decision informed by any regard for the actual profession: just the vague notion that being a solicitor or barrister would be a prestigious path to big pay. What a mistake...

The news that the British economy contracted in the last quarter of 2012 was utterly depressing. For young people it was especially unwelcome.

Youth jobless figures remain stubbornly high at 20.5%. But against a backdrop of austerity and a flat economy I can't help but...

Times are hard in Ireland. Households are massively indebted. Corporations are covered in red ink. The economy is flat and the Dublin government is struggling to keep afloat under the strict terms of the EU-ECB-IMF bailout programme.

In a few words: Ireland is one of the most economically encumbered countries...

Northern Ireland politics is difficult with a capital D. Just look at the rioting over the decision to restrict the flying of the Union flag. It's pedigree stasis state politicking. Two mutually opposing blocs at community and government level cancel one another out as they cling to mutually opposite symbols,...

The flag riots are just plain bad for Northern Ireland. Bad for business, bad for foreign investment, bad for community relations, bad for the image of Northern Ireland abroad and bad for the collective future of its people.

But I genuinely feel bad for the loyalist rioters. The scenes...

The politics in Northern Ireland is positively precarious. Its a politics of symbols, flags and traditions - of mutually opposing narratives and conflicting long term aspirations. In a sentence its a province dominated and divided by petulant identity politics.

This problem of petulant identity politics has been illustrated graphically by...

When Gillian Tett appears on TV, often BBC Newsnight, Twitter comes ablaze with Tett-tweets. A veritable blaze of Twitter sound bites that shower the former US managing editor of the Financial Times with love, praise and affection.

The warm glow of tweets praise Ms. Tett for her good looks, her...

The ugly scenes of rioting that have returned to Belfast's streets 14 years after the signing of the peace agreement are a sorry sight. But they tell a story of poor political leadership and of a demographic section of society left behind.

The riots follow a democratic decision taken by...