On Monday 29 April the 'revolution' began. The government's Universal Credit Scheme designed both to simplify the benefits system and disincentivise dependency on it began... in Ashton-under-Lyne. According to The Guardian this historic shift would affect 'a few dozen' people on the Monday, increase at a rate of...

Maybe I've just become too horribly middle class to care or too suburban to notice, but it seems that the Dickensian poor are still with us. Fortunately there are charitable souls out there, at least in the thoroughly proletarian Labour Party and left-liberal commentariat, who have found time in their...

Everybody loves libraries don't they? Earlier this month was National Libraries Day and the good people @IlikeLibraries are doing all they can "to help save libraries any way possible, and to promote them to the point where they are all safe from council cuts". Ahh .. the cuts!...

This is the time of year when homelessness - or, at least, sleeping rough - comes to public attention. Those charities concerned with getting people fed and sheltered who would otherwise be sat in doorways as the rest of us spend money we don't really have on seasonal goodies, do...

Tis the season of good will. Or twas. I couldn't help feeling that the sleigh bells rang a little hollower this time around. Not because Santas were getting the sack (ho! ho!) for not being CRB-checked. No, it was that confirmed child abuse paranoia would reach beyond Santa's grotto.

'Can everyone please calm down about child abuse?' pleaded Claire Fox, of the Institute of Ideas, in one of the few sane and sober commentaries I'd read on the subject. If only those foolish enough to spread suspicion and rumour on the back of the perverse dynamics of...

It's the favoured statistic of fear-mongers everywhere. 1 in 4 of us will experience a mental health problem in the course of a year. 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence at some point in their life. In the United States, according to one campaign...

I have recently come to the conclusion that nothing does what it says on the tin any more. Or at least what is written on the tin has ceased to have much to do with what's in it. This has particularly come to mind over the past week. There was...

Maybe its because I've hit 40 that I've developed this 'what is the world coming to?' response to much of what I hear in the news. You know the feeling? Its similar to the one when you don't recognise any of the celebs on the front of Hello! magazine any...

I was recently at University College London to hear a talk on behaviour change. "Nudging methods ... have become increasingly popular" read the blurb. "Underlying all of this, however, is the nagging question of whether it is ethical, desirable or sustainable to be nudging people in a...

The past couple of weeks have been a once-in-a-lifetime treat as we've witnessed the spectacle of incredible sporting feats performed by the world's greatest athletes on our very own doorstep. Indeed, as a resident of E17 I was only a javelin throw away (or so) from the action. I was...

Ok, I'll admit when I first read a headline not so long ago that Riots may be controlled with chemicals, I got the wrong end of the stick. Or should I say baton? I thought that given their humiliation on the streets of London, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool...

The Big Society has been in the news once again only to take another beating, this time from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams has waded into what should be a debate about state and society, but is instead a wholly predictable moan-a-thon by the left-liberal commentariat. There'll...

Is there a crisis of compassion in health and social care? If the shocking scenes featured in Panorama's Undercover: Elderly Care are anything to go by, the answer is surely yes. The interim report from the Commission on Improving Dignity in Care for Older People, the...

I was pleased to hear recently that I am not alone in arguing that the charity sector needs to reclaim its independence.

According to Matt Scott of the National Coalition for Independent Action, it has 'become predatory rather than collaborative' as the big beasts of...

I attended Autism, Ethics and the Good Life on World Autism Day. It was the day after April Fools Day. On hearing some of the stranger arguments put forward by speakers I was tempted to check my diary.

Dr Tim Cadman, at Institute of Psychiatry, King's College...

As we get ever more accustomed to austerity, with the granny-taxing budget of last week only the latest attack on living standards, it is perhaps worth revisiting the welfare discussion anew.

The passing of the Welfare Reform Act was in some ways welcome. It is right that 'jobseekers' who...

While they are, if claims coming out of last week's summit are to be believed, to blame for the rise of al-Shabab in Somalia, the role of gangs in last summer's riots was, at the very least, negligible. That much is acknowledged by pretty much everybody. It has...

I'll be going to the Paralympics in London this summer. I'm really looking forward to it but, if I'm honest, this is as much to do with the fact that I couldn't get a ticket for the 'proper' Olympics. And, if my reading of a poll conducted by...

For those of you who are still wondering what was really behind those riots that shocked the nation last summer, we now have a new explanation. It's nothing to do with the gaping 'social deficit' described by David Cameron, or a "feral underclass" of state dependents, described by Kenneth Clarke,...