The government has claimed today to have made £5.5bn worth efficiency savings and that these have been "independently audited".

First, definitions. "Efficiency", in this context, is usually defined as the relationship (ratio) between the cost of inputs and the amount and quality of outputs. So if, and only if, we...

Is the civil service accountable to parliament?

Margaret Hodge MP, the formidable chair of the powerful Public Accounts Committee of parliament says "yes". Sir (now Lord) Gus O'Donnell and other ex-Mandarins say firmly "no". Ironically, emerging in the week that Norman St John-Stevas (Baron St John of Fawsley) died, this...

Does the SNP really want a free, democratic, Scotland? If so they are everything they can to ensure it may, just, become independent but is unlikely to be a genuine democracy.

Consider the following scenario: the SNP Government imposes a referendum on their terms, with their question and to their...

A British Home Secretary faces a media firestorm over a major blunder in one of the Home Office's Executive Agencies. A senior agency official is blamed to shift attention away from Ministers. He resigns and hits back, hard and sues the Home Office and wins.

Theresa May (Home Secretary) and...

My trade union, UCU, is campaigning against the establishment of "private" universities in the UK. They have a point about the way in which this is being done, which is in my view with reckless disregard for quality and probity issues which could damage the whole UK higher education sector.

So, the riots have come. They had an almost inevitable quality to them - indeed last December I outlined one scenario for when they would happen (see The Great Train Wreck of 2013).

I was partly wrong about their nature and way out on the timing (I was...

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude claimed yesterday (Monday 1 Aug 2011) that the government has made 'staggering' savings of £3.75bn in the 10 months May 2010 to March 2011.

So just how staggering, and credible, are these claims?

COMPARISONS

Well, first let's just compare them - that would be about...

The long delayed government White Paper "Open Public Services" finally arrived, although few noticed as it was drowned out by the sound of Rupert Murdoch's empire collapsing.

Launching the White Paper on the day Southern Cross collapsed was devastatingly unfortunate for the Government. It was an example of the 'mixed'...

When I was a Trostkyist, back before the last Ice Age, one of our favorite slogans was "workers control". It is therefore somewhat weird to hear Tory and Liberal Democrat ministers extolling the virtues of 'liberating the workers' to run public services, and how they will improve as a result....

The explosive story about phone hacking, and now police bribery, involving the News of the World (NoW) and Rupert Murdoch's News International (NI) is fast escalating into a political crisis for the Coalition government.

Without rehashing all the details here are the most salient facts:

- NoW journalists systematically used...