HRH The Prince of Wales
: Responsible Business and Enterprise
Máirtín Ó Muilleoir
: Obama's Belfast Visit Highlights a City Transformed
Gordon Brown
: Stand With Malala for Education for All
Karren Brady
: What I Hope for My Daughter's Career
Ivan Lewis MP
: The G8 Summit - A Great Moment for Britain, A Great Test for the Prime Minister
As one civil servant told us, ministers are extremely busy and rarely get time to read a newspaper article, let alone a research paper. They want any 'action points' to be clearly expressed in a two-page document.
Social science research is about knowledge, or what I prefer to call the materialisation and seeding of ideas. Lots of ideas flourish, both good ideas and bad ideas, and in social science we have plenty of good and bad ideas which are sustained.
To some extent the Government will have achieved its goals. The HE sector will be smaller with fewer choosing to go to University. This will clearly benefit the Treasury and BIS given their concerns over the cost of the student loans system.
Poynter had an interesting post earlier this week on a study about errors in news reports. The researchers looked at 2,000 stories in the Swiss and Italian press, and contacted people quoted in those stories.
But many view children's literature as beneath them. If it's not for 'grownups', it's not worthwhile. But, wait, here's a sneaky little problem: what about all the 'grownups' who read and enjoy Rowling's work and other children's books? Shouldn't we explore why these works appeals to adults who are apparently supposed to know better?
Last week I had an exchange with Tom Murphy, organiser of the ABBAs online poll to find the best aid blogs, on the issue of gender and blogging.
The government's TechCityUK initiative has been making headlines with its aim to rapidly grow the cluster of start-ups in London's Old Street area - dubbed 'Silicon Roundabout' - into a world-class hub for technology innovation.
The problems within the higher education system are multiple, and these need to be considered if we are to expect students to willingly put themselves in three times more debt. The pool of 18-year-old with the financial support to go to university on a whim without a concern for its relative value will be vastly reduced.
I feel like the interview is going well. One of the panel looks down at my CV. He reads my address and postcode 'London N8, that's Crouch End'. He looks up 'Would you move to Glasgow?'
If writing is a process of crystallisation, reading is quite the opposite, that is, a process of the most spectacular transformation. It was reading that transformed a young man from Stratford Upon-Avon with no formal university education into the most revered writer in the English language.
