May 16 2012

What people want and need from their homes needs to be considered in the design of modern housing

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Posted in: Public Services and the Welfare State, Rebecca Roberts-Hughes

Rebecca Roberts-Hughes discusses new research on what people need and expect from their homes. The research is based on interviews with a number of households, each providing valuable anecdotal information that will be considered in the design and building of new and better housing. 

“If you’re buying a new home as a young family you’d want to be able to evolve with that space.” This was the view of one first time buyer who took part in our new research The way we live now, which aimed to find out what people need and expect from their homes today. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) asked Ipsos MORI to film five households and hold a series of discussion groups with prospective buyers, to find out how people use the rooms and spaces in their homes, and what they look for when choosing a new place to live.

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Posted by: Posted on May 16, 2012 by Blog Admin   Tagged with: , , ,

May 15 2012

Quota rules would be more effective than proportional representation in moving towards greater gender equality in the Commons

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Posted in: Fairness and Equality, Rosie Campbell, Sarah Childs

The UK Parliament is astonishingly poor in terms of female representation with just over 20 per cent women MPs. Rosie Campbell and Sarah Childs argue that while a PR electoral system could help to redress the balance, the single most important factor related to higher levels of women’s representation is the use of quotas.

It is a widely held view that the first-past-the-post electoral system disadvantages women and that electoral reform would improve the representation of women in the UK Parliament. In Westminster elections party candidates are selected constituency by constituency – too often women are selected for the party’s less winnable seats. Only on election-day does it become obvious that the House of Commons is once again over-represented by men. Proportional representation (PR) is, however, neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for improving the political representation of women. This is not to say that a more proportional system is not desirable but the surest and most immediate way to guarantee a fairer representation of women in elected bodies is to apply quota rules, irrespective of the electoral system.

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Posted by: Posted on May 15, 2012 by Blog Admin   Tagged with: , , ,

May 15 2012

How may race have been implicated in the Rochdale “grooming case”?

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Posted in: Emmanuel Melissaris, Fairness and Equality, Media and Communications

Emmanuel Melissaris explains that – from a legal standpoint – race is either completely irrelevant or not proven to have any relevance in the Rochdale case. However, it may be connected to it indirectly and this is what much of the surrounding debate has focused on. Dangerously, many are tempted to generalise and condemn whole communities and sadly this has been facilitated by the construction of the case in the press.

I do not want to take a stance as to whether and – if yes – how and to what extent race played a part in the so-called Rochdale grooming case in which a verdict was recently reached. Only the court was in position to do this. Neither will I attempt any hasty sociological arguments. What I want to do is frame and disaggregate some issues which tend to be conflated. In particular, I will distinguish between four separate questions. First, were the crimes of a “racial” nature, i.e. did the convicted offenders’ criminal responsibility depend to any extent on their attitude to people of other ethnic origins? Secondly, could race have had a bearing on sentencing? Thirdly, are there any sociological circumstances linked to ethnic background, which allowed the offenders, and may allow others, to form the attitude that they did towards their victims? Fourthly, did the “debate on race” cloud the judgment of agents in the criminal justice system handling the cases at its various stages?

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Posted by: Posted on May 15, 2012 by Blog Admin   Tagged with: , ,

May 14 2012

Another hung parliament? The difference between a Labour or Conservative Government in 2015 may come down to a handful of Midlands’ votes

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Posted in: Lewis Baston, Party politics and elections

The Conservatives could lose 100 parliamentary seats if they ignore the rot in their vote share that is spreading across Northern cities and boroughs writes Lewis Baston. Another strong vote for UKIP could also gift Labour some vital Midlands seats.

The pattern of votes cast in recent local elections suggests that the northern and southern electorates are continuing to polarise. The Conservatives’ results in the 2012 local elections in many big cities and northern suburbs were very bad indeed.

In several metropolitan boroughs the Conservatives polled a lower share of the vote in 2012 than they did even in 1995, when John Major’s government was hit by its worst set of local government losses at the hands of recently designated ‘New Labour’. It may not be surprising that the Conservative vote has decayed since 1995 in several northern core cities: Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle, but their vote was also lower this year in Birmingham, Sefton, Knowsley, Sandwell, Tameside, Bradford and Wolverhampton than it was at their 1995 nadir. This is a total of 11 out of the 36 boroughs. Continue reading →

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Posted by: Posted on May 14, 2012 by Blog Admin   Tagged with: , , , ,

May 14 2012

Cohort size matters: democracy is in danger as young people’s disenfranchisement accelerates

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Posted in: Craig Berry, Fairness and Equality

As the electorate ages, intergenerational inequality grows. Craig Berry explains that young people are in some ways being ‘out-voted’ by older cohorts, a problem that will only get worse and may undermine the legitimacy of representative democracy itself.

Young people are more affected by the outcomes of the democratic process than other cohorts; their youth means that by and large they will live with the consequences of political decisions for longer. Furthermore, young people are at a crucial life-stage – undertaking education and training, embarking on careers, forming families – where the impact of political decisions will have a decisive and cumulative effect on their socio-economic circumstances and life chances across their lifecourses. The growing power of ‘the grey vote’ appears to have had real consequences for the ability of young people to make themselves heard within the democratic process, but more worryingly, may begin to undermine the legitimacy of democracy itself.

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Posted by: Posted on May 14, 2012 by Blog Admin   Tagged with: , ,

May 13 2012

Book Review: Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders in Britain

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Posted in: Book Reviews, British Politics and Policy, Timothy Heppell

The Labour party comeback at last week’s local elections raised the possibility that the current leaders of the coalition may actually be standing on shaky ground. However, as the book Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders in Britain argues, parties have moved to make it harder to evict their leaders. Timothy Heppell feels the book distinguishes itself by examining the institutional obstacles in place which make it hard for parties to eject their leaders, rather than giving undue attention to personality clashes . 

Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders in Britain. Thomas Quinn. Palgrave Macmillan. February 2012.

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Just how secure are David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg as leaders of their respective parties? Given the level of criticism that they have received, both from the within their own parties but also from political journalists, what are the prospects of their forced removal before the next General Election, or after?  Those interested in understanding how secure they are from the threat of eviction, would be well advised to read Thomas Quinn’s recently published book Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders in Britain.

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Posted by: Posted on May 13, 2012 by brumley  

May 13 2012

Book Review: Back From the Brink: 1,000 Days at Number 11

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Posted in: Uncategorized

Thinking he would be merely a ‘footnote in history’, ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling instead found himself at the centre of the worst banking crises in over a century. Scott Levin reviews Darling’s autobiography Back from the Brink and finds he does not pull all of his punches as he adds yet another chip into the already mangled armor of Labour’s post-Blair years. 

Back from the Brink: 1,000 Days at Number 11. Alistair Darling. Atlantic Books. September 2011.

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Churchill famously wrote, “A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.” Of course, as the great Prime Minister knew far too well, history doesn’t always unfold according to plan.

Enter a bland, dry-humored, Scottish barrister. Alistair Darling saw himself destined to be nothing more than a “footnote in political history” but perhaps the buoyant and wry economic gods had something entirely different in mind. Just months after becoming the caretaker of the treasury, the financial distress that would scar his tenure sparked into flame as the UK witnessed its first bank run since the 19th century.

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Posted by: Posted on May 13, 2012 by brumley  

May 13 2012

Book Review: Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party: From Iron Lady to Kitten Heels

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Posted in: Book Reviews, British Politics and Policy, Krista Cowman

Studies into female Conservatives are sparse compared to that of their Labour counterparts. The term “Conservative feminist” is still for many the ultimate oxymoron. Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party attempts to address this gap in the literature by examining the political choices and associations of female Tories. Krista Cowman thinks the book captures a party on the verge of change and offers a clear and concise picture of how it shifted its focus to its female members, merging quantitative and qualitative approaches into a highly readable account. 

Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party: From Iron Lady to Kitten Heels. Sarah Childs and Paul Webb. Palgrave Macmillan. November 2011.

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More than two decades have passed since Beatrix Campbell published her path-breaking work The Iron Ladies with its subtitle that summarised popular and academic approaches to women and conservatism, ‘Why do women vote Tory?’ Yet in the intervening years little has been done to answer this question.

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Posted by: Posted on May 13, 2012 by brumley