Oliver Letwin’s memo was a Thatcherite document, not a racist one

Oliver Letwin, September 2013 by Policy Exchange

The annual cache of old Whitehall documents provides much-need rations for the starving press over the quiet weeks around Christmas and New Year, and this year a memo from 1985 concerning race riots is proving particularly nourishing.

On the menu is Oliver Letwin, current chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (a trust fund for Lizzie Windsor) and former policy wonk in the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher, for penning a memo in November 1985 on the social malaise in inner cities that led to riots in Tottenham and Brixton.

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The Department for Education might allow Christian propaganda, but it doesn’t demand it

Leamington Church, February 2014 by barnyz

Much hullabaloo erupted on Monday over the education secretary Nicky Morgan’s policy update on religious teaching in schools, which swatted atheists aside whilst pushing Christianity to the fore.

Morgan was forced to revise the policy following a court ruling in November that found atheism, humanism and other non-religious views were being excluded unlawfully from the religious studies curriculum at GCSE level.

The resultant updates have since led to some amusing headlines from newspapers both sympathetic and hostile to faith-heads, which on first sight would lead one to believe the Tories are launching some mass Christian propaganda exercise.

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Podcast Ep. 28: 2015 Year in Review

RD E28 Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter and David Cameron

Jazza, Jimmy and John – contributors with names not beginning with J currently being unavailable – talk through a review of 2015 in politics and current events.

From Islamic terrorism to the decline of The X Factor, via feminist films, Donald Trump and the Tories, it’s all here. So enjoy listening to the lads wind each other up for one last time this year.

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Is the EU merely ‘a continuation of Germany’ by other, sneakier means?

The argument that the EU is a cunning scheme by which Germany can finally achieve its ambition of constructing an empire across the breadth of Europe has always struck me as rather cheeky.

On the surface it appears hysterical, and indeed many of its proponents would likely be attacked as such by the ungenerous (and leftwing) critic that came across this suggestion.

…but on the other hand, there is something to it – especially in a week when the German chancellor Angela Merkel has been declared Time’s Person of the Year.

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Podcast Ep. 27: Angela Merkel, Donald Trump and Diversity in Publishing

Angela Merkel, March 2014 by DonkeyHotey

Leena Norms from JustKissMyFrog on the Internet joins Jazza and Jimmy for a ruckus of vaguely informed debate about politics, culture and news.

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