Britain’s role in the new Cold War | Dominic Lawson
If there was ever any hope that the pandemic would have put a pause to the Chinese state’s ambitions, that has been dashed in spectacular fashion by the full absorption of Hong Kong into the jurisdiction of mainland China. The newly introduced security bill, which focuses on disrupting succession movements and opposition to Beijing’s CCP, means that Hong Kong will be subjected to the same strict security-intelligence regime as exists on mainland China.
A tale of two parliaments and an assembly: how the present devolution settlement holds the UK back | Sam Hall
Devolution is also systematically dysfunctional. The Welsh Parliament is too small, the Scottish Parliament is dominated by a single party, and in Northern Ireland the First Minister does not even get to pick his or her top team. Sixty MSs are elected to the Welsh Parliament (Senedd) which some have claimed is insufficient to adequately scrutinize the work of the Welsh government because some MSs need to be on multiple committees and therefore cannot build up enough expertise.
Operation Hong Kong | Dan Mikhaylov
The gradual yet imminent Chinese usurpation of Hong Kong is a sword of Damocles looming over both the city’s residents and the international community. Its blade can become lethal, provided its existence is unaddressed. The mere fact that China is due to acquire control over the much troubled area of Hong Kong does not presuppose that it may obtain it before 2047. Giving way to breaches of the Sino-British Joint Declaration will only strengthen the CCP’s belief in its impunity, embolden it to grow more daring in its geopolitical ambitions, and provoke further diplomatic confrontations.
Christendom has only itself as an ally in a world of woke | Sam Hall
To attack Christians in this country is very anti-establishment and very woke. Telling some Hindu Nationalists in a former British colony that they are bigoted, ignorant thugs for attacking someone on the grounds of religious belief? Not so much. Ironically no-one in the woke brigade wants to be accused of being a colonial sympathising racist bigot in the process, do they? That kind of anti-Christian bigotry is far easier to get away with as a result.
Reintroduce the grammar schools: with a few small alterations | Alex Brown
The main selling point of grammar schools is that they promote social mobility and this is certainly true. Evidence from the Education Policy Institute suggests that disadvantaged students who did not attend grammar school in areas of selection achieved 1.2 grades lower than their grammar school-attending counter-parts. This is clear empirical proof of the success of grammar schools at a younger age in terms of education. But looking further to later life in terms of earnings one study has suggested that grammar schools absolutely benefit the earnings of those who attend them, using the lives of students from the 1950’s and later as evidence.
Football, money, society: pick the odd one out | Dan Mikhaylov
State intervention, or rather state oversight, is all the more necessary, after PIF had obtained power over Newcastle United. Unlike rich businessmen from abroad, who spend their own money and whose efforts to bolster our economy should go neither unnoticed nor unrequited, the PIF is spending state money. It is directly controlled by Saudi Arabian elites… It is one thing for a private firm from a country, whose values conflict with our own, to sponsor sporting events in Britain. It is another for a government agency, even if armed with nothing but soft power, to roam freely within our country’s boundaries.
How China uses globalisation as a weapon | Dominic Lawson
It may seem obvious that allowing a ruthless military regime to have dominance of the globe’s most vital goods (including, ironically, the world’s medical supplies) is dangerous. But very often, people require disaster to wake them from their complacency. For too long, economic globalism has been treated like a fact of nature. Instead, we must remember that it is ideology and like all ideologies it can be expunged. Because if it isn’t, we risk this current crisis becoming nothing more than a speed bump in the building of a world ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.
London: what went wrong | Tom Colsy
England’s capital is far from a Hellish dystopia. It is, however, a city that chose the vulgar over the beautiful for economic benefit, spat on its rich array of national tradition and culture, and is day-by-day less representative of the country it represents - in character, culture, architecture, or population. It is for the most part, as Benjamin Disraeli would say, a place of modern ‘aggregation’. A shell of a city. A warm and welcome home for no one, but a mere stopping point for the temporary collection of workers and international capital- with increasingly little underneath. London has chosen its path.
The state of British education: requiring old solutions and missing morality | Alex Brown
All successive governments have done is throw money at the problem. The one time some real change was in sight, it was with David Cameron’s academy system, and even he managed to poorly execute it in pursuit of marketisation. It may come as no surprise that I intend to discuss the problems facing the British education system today then; from bottom to top, for all ages, as well as outline how the solutions of educational diversity and reintroduction of morality offer a new opportunity to restructure the system in favour of tried and tested methods because fundamentally there is no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ when it comes to education, only modify it.