Claudia Wood on how health, housing and care can work together to cope with an ageing population.
Today I attended a seminar hosted by the Papworth Trust, discussing the implications of new research they have launched related to housing adaptations and care. A few months ago I blogged about how a holy trinity of demographic change, medical advances and a policy shift away from residential settings had catapulted housing to the top of the agenda when it came to health and social care. Growing numbers of older and disabled people – all expecting to live more independently ...
Claudia Wood argues that recycling old arguments against the Living Wage misses the point about the real solutions to poverty.
An interesting recent comment piece in the Telegraph suggested that the Living Wage is not an effective way of helping the growing numbers of working poor – and that tax cuts and reductions in utilities and childcare costs are a superior solution. This conclusion is based on the well-trodden argument that inflating wages will have an adverse impact on the demand for labour and the health of the economy. In short, increasing the costs of wages means employers won’t be able to affo...
Janani Krishnaswamy explains why the scope of the draft communications data bill must be clarified.
Privacy has always been ill-defined in British law. In an era when the public openly share personal information and also make paradoxical statements about their privacy concerns, it is increasingly difficult to measure online privacy. In the present climate, privacy groups and intelligence experts have different concerns of privacy. This makes the debate over the current draft Communications Data (CD) Bill extremely tricky. The Bill that has just been scrutinised by a joint committee i...
Chris Tryhorn introduces a report which asks the public what they think the 'public interest' is.
In all the debates on media ethics that have been raging since the phone hacking scandal broke and the Leveson Inquiry got going, how often have you heard the phrase ‘the public interest’? Whenever anyone is trying to justify a piece of journalism or inveighing against the iniquities of the press, you can be sure they’ll mention it. But has anyone actually asked the public themselves what they think this public interest is? That was the question Duncan O’Leary and I ...
Jamie Bartlett on the complexities of law and social media.
Nick Griffin was highly irresponsible and nasty when he Tweeted, yesterday, the address of the gay couple that sued the B&B owners last year. Along with their address, he appeared to suggest that his followers – online and offline – appear outside the couple’s address to ‘cause drama’.He is, of course, the latest in a long line of people Tweeting stupid things, confused by the difference between public and private spheres. A camp...
Claudia Wood on how to re-establish the contributory principle to the welfare system.
Frank Field commented yesterday that our welfare system was broken and required radical reform based more strongly on the contribution principle – so that benefits are paid according to contribution, not need. Critics have made remarks such as Frank being a 'Tory in all but name', as if helping those 'in need' is somehow antithetical to Conservative values and that paying according to 'need' or 'contribution' are mutually exclusive. I don’t think ...
Jamie Bartlett explores the reasons why people support the French populists.
As part of our series exploring the online support for right-wing populist parties in Europe, we surveyed supporters of the Front National. Over 2,000 Facebook fans of the FN responded to our survey, undertaken in August last year, and the results will be out shortly. In one question we asked why they decided to support the party ('Qu'est-ce qui a motivé votre adhésion à Front National?'). We entered the approximately 1,000 answers to this question into a Wor...
Claudia Wood on how to interpret our recent polling results on controlling benefits.
Ever since the Government announced its programme of welfare reform, we at Demos have done a great deal of work on changing attitudes to the welfare state. We have looked at the impact of austerity on disabled people and investigated how middle-earners could be better served by our welfare system. We are currently pursuing research on the squeezed middle’s experience of the benefits system and the reasons behind changing generational attitudes to welfare. This week, as part of a wider ...
Max Wind-Cowie introduces Demos's unique 'Dragon's Den' on immigration and integration, to be held at Conservative conference.
Does the cap fit? Are those who are already here well integrated? Should we worry more about the growth that migrants are said to bring, or the damage they are said to do to trust in politics and in fairness? The truth is that, two and a half years into a Government that was elected - in part - on a commitment to reduce net migration 'from the hundreds to the tens of thousands' we still need to talk about immigration. It's not that the Government hasn't tried - they have. ...
Duncan O'Leary provides a five-point reaction to Ed Miliband's speech to Labour party conference.
It’s the old ones that are the best. ‘I want a Britain that is one nation, with shared values and purpose, where merit comes before privilege, run for the many not the few, strong and sure of itself at home and abroad’ argued Tony Blair in the 1997 Labour manifesto. Ed Miliband returned that theme yesterday in his highly effective speech in Manchester – and I’d make five observations: Jon Cruddas. At a Demos fringe on Monday Cruddas set out his view that e...