Daily Archives: 3 March 2006

Duncan Brack on Equality

musings, , ,

I’m surprised this article on Equality by Vice Chair of the Meeting the Challenge working group Duncan Brack hasn’t provoked any discernable debate so far. No doubt everyone has had other distractions this week. I certainly don’t have time to deal with it in depth right now.

It is laying down the gauntlet to quite a serious ideological debate however. Brack’s argument is that inequality lies at the heart of the problems we face with health, quality of life and crime issues, while other commentators such as Andy Mayer are quite contemptuous of such notions.

I’m not saying I agree with every word that Brack has written – I certainly don’t share his warm feelings towards the egalitarianism of income tax – but I do think it is a serious challenge to the classical liberals within the party that they need to answer.

Parliament should have more say over fun

musings,

Given my previous posting about scrapping the Ministry of Fun, I think this story is worth linking to.

I remain sceptical as to why the Government needs to be involved with culture and sport at all, and why it can’t be devolved to Parliament, especially while we have a license fee funded public service broadcasting service. As the Lords say, the relationship between the Beeb and government is just a little bit too cosy.

UPDATE: I appreciate this story is about the DTI (which itself bring the DCMS into question), but can anyone explain to me why the music industry can’t sort this out itself and needs government intervention?