Kate comments Articles

It always pleases me that International Women’s Day coincides with Fair Trade fortnight. The timing’s great, and the connection obvious. Though forming slightly more than half the world’s population, women continue to control only a small fraction of its assets.

Demos spreading in Wisconsin against cuts there – partly inspired by student protests here – are part of a growing movement that Labour must be part of and sustain if it is to return to power.

Let’s be clear: local government funding decisions are highly politically driven. Under the ConDem government, funding is being skewed to help the better-off authorities, those that are Tory-controlled.

There’s something unremittingly depressing about the tone the government’s been taking with its new welfare reform bill. Gone is the language of ‘breakthrough Britain’, the ‘dynamic benefits’ of Iain Duncan Smith. Instead, the prime minister’s Toynbee Hall speech to launch the bill was all about penalties, shirkers, fraud.