Author Archives: Matthew Green

Matthew Green

Opinion: Our NHS – the good, the bad and the ugly

By Matthew Green | Wed 13th February 2013 - 10:37 am

nhs sign lrgIt is a week since Robert Francis’s report on the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust exposed massive failures in the NHS, from top to bottom.

The silence from the political left is deafening. Of course there has been the usual horror and condemnation, and calls for heads to roll. But this wasn’t just a case of lax professional standards, which can be sorted out with a bit of culture training, it was complete system failure from cleaner up to Prime Minister.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 23 Comments
Matthew Green

Opinion: We need better housing for a better Britain

By Matthew Green | Wed 11th January 2012 - 8:55 am

Want to make a real difference to the country’s problems? Commit serious resources to social housing.

Being in government doesn’t half expose the difficulties of politics. The easiest things for politicians to change are laws, taxes and benefit entitlements. But these seem so ineffective against the major problems that our society faces.

Reforming taxes does little to rebalance inequality – an inadequate treatment of the symptoms that does nothing to change the causes. Raising benefits does little to help the wellbeing of those trapped in poverty. Cutting them does not so much restore incentives as kick people while they are down. Talking about it just makes …

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Posted in News | 25 Comments
Matthew Green

Opinion: The Lib Dems need to move into the 21st Century

By Matthew Green | Tue 28th June 2011 - 1:31 pm

I attended my first English Council at the weekend, the little-known body nominally supervising the party’s administration in England. Amid the constitutional amendments and letting off steam about the evil Federal party, it was possible to reflect on the huge challenges the party now faces. Inevitably most of the attention is on policies and messaging. This is vital but not sufficient. But we also need to catch up with the way politics is now done. I don’t think enough people appreciate the implications of this.

We can overdo the analogies between politics and warfare, but some …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 20 Comments
Matthew Green

Opinion: Liberals shouldn’t be scared of Murdoch

By Matthew Green | Mon 7th March 2011 - 11:36 am

Trying to stop Murdoch from consolidating his hold on BSkyB was always going to be difficult. That is mainly because the case for stopping him was rather weak in the terms that governments are allowed to intervene in such matters. Murdoch already has practical control; he does not dominate the total television market, with the BBC and ITV still strong. The case rested on the proposition that he would further dominate the news market as a whole. But what really drove the campaign against Murdoch was fear and loathing. Liberals should have no difficulty with …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 18 Comments
Matthew Green

Opinion: issues around sex offenders need better political leadership

By Matthew Green | Thu 17th February 2011 - 2:35 pm

David Cameron is “appalled”. The Supreme Court has ruled that those that get put on the Sex Offenders Register for life should have a legal right of appeal to be taken off it, if they no longer present a threat to the public. Or “Paedophiles win right of appeal against offenders’ register” as I thought I heard BBC Radio 4 News say this morning. At least the BBC don’t seem to be repeating their provocative headline in their online news coverage. What are we to make of this?

There are more difficult issues …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 10 Comments



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