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Len Shackleton

8 May 2012

5 comments

I am looking forward to the Olympics as I’m sure you are. But I’m also sure I’m not alone in wondering quite why we have needed to spend £9.3 billion (the Public Accounts...

Compulsory retirement: more confusion

Len Shackleton

27 April 2012

9 comments

Age discrimination is one of the fastest-growing categories of Employment Tribunal claim. In the last full year for which figures are available, there were 6800 claims, as against only 5200 the...

Whatever it is, I'm against it

Len Shackleton

11 April 2012

comments

There is a scene in the old Marx Brothers film Horse Feathers where Groucho leads a bunch of academics in gowns and mortarboards in a song which goes: ‘I don't care what you have...

The creeping nationalisation of childcare

Len Shackleton

27 March 2012

3 comments

Two recent news stories indicate the pressures leading us away from a sensible policy on childcare and towards higher levels of public spending - in an area where the state was not...

An OFFA top universities ought to refuse?

Len Shackleton

22 February 2012

2 comments

The appointment of Professor Les Ebdon to lead OFFA, the Office of Fair Access, has been met with concern both from politicians – the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee rejected...

Cameron is wrong to pressurise firms into putting more women on their boards

Len Shackleton

14 February 2012

1 comment

David Cameron’s trip to the Nordic-Baltic conference seems to have reinforced his view that companies should be pressurised into putting women on their boards. At present he favours Lord...

Cable’s proposals will harm business and politicise pay

Len Shackleton

24 January 2012

2 comments

Vince Cable’s proposals on executive pay do not really amount to a great deal, but it is worrying that the coalition now seems to have firmly accepted that top pay in the private sector is...

Mark Blaug, 1927-2011

Len Shackleton

12 January 2012

comments

Mark Blaug was the leading historian of economic thought of his generation, and the successive editions of his Economic Theory in Retrospect make the insights of the classical economists accessible...

Top Pay under fire again

Len Shackleton

9 January 2012

3 comments

The Prime Minister says that the government intends to act on what it sees as excessive executive pay. Apparently we “can’t tell people what they should be paid but (should act) where...

Higher spending and new entitlements: coalition policy on early education

Len Shackleton

2 December 2011

1 comment

Despite the increasingly worrying position of the public finances, the urge to spend more appears to be hardwired into politicians and can be resisted only with the greatest of exertions. One area...

Regulation is deterring employers from taking on new workers

Len Shackleton

16 November 2011

1 comment

The labour market statistics released today do not make the greatest reading. UK unemployment rose by 129,000 in the three months to September, with youth unemployment rising above a million. As...

Unfair dismissal laws only first step on way to labour market reform

Len Shackleton

28 October 2011

1 comment

The Coalition is already planning to lengthen the qualifying period of employment before people can claim they have been unfairly dismissed from one year to two years. It is also proposing...

Rooney tunes?

Len Shackleton

22 September 2011

comments

The Professional Footballers Association is pressing for the implementation of the Rooney Rule in English soccer. This is nothing to do with the Manchester United superstar of that name, but is...

Childcare conundrums

Len Shackleton

8 September 2011

comments

The Daycare Trust and Save the Children have published the results of a survey suggesting that almost a quarter of parents with young children have gone into debt to pay for childcare. It...

Economic reflections and the riots

Len Shackleton

15 August 2011

3 comments

In many ways it is too early to draw conclusions for public policy from the riots which the country has experienced in the last week or so. But this does not seem to have deterred our ever-active...

To be critical of wasteful public spending is not to be ideological

Len Shackleton

18 July 2011

comments

I was disappointed, but hardly surprised, to see a lot of abusive web posts following the publication of Sharper Axes, Lower Taxes. The main drift of these usually anonymous comments was that the...

Pay gap between public and private sectors has increased

Len Shackleton

5 July 2011

1 comment

The Office for National Statistics has published a new estimate of the size of the hourly pay gap between the public and private sectors. It shows that, after correcting for factors such as the...

The Pupil Premium is not the issue in improving our schools

Len Shackleton

10 June 2011

1 comment

One of the Coalition’s headline educational initiatives has been the introduction of the Pupil Premium, additional funding to schools for each ‘deprived’ child (the Department for...

L’affaire Strauss-Kahn

Len Shackleton

19 May 2011

5 comments

I take no pleasure at all in reading about M. Strauss-Kahn, and of course remain agnostic about the truth of the lurid allegations against him. However I have a couple of observations which are...

Time for a rethink on tuition fees policy

Len Shackleton

11 May 2011

2 comments

David Willetts has added to the confusion surrounding university fees with a proposal to allow higher education institutions to admit extra home (UK and EU) students if they pay ‘full’...

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