Tag Archives: standard of living

David Boyle

Opinion: The demise of the middle classes

By David Boyle | Wed 22nd January 2014 - 8:55 am

I was on a policy panel recently, when I heard somebody dismissing the idea of ‘choice’ in public services as a sop for the middle classes.

Now, there are two rather odd aspects of this.

The first is that, depending on what you mean by choice – and every political party has its own distinct meaning – it isn’t actually true.

The polling I carried out during the Barriers to Choice Review showed that nearly 90 per cent want ‘choice’.  It is just that they are often muddled about what that actually means.

The second is that I hear this kind of sentence in …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 27 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Dan Falchikov
    Well said: "David Howarth’s Being Liberal explores the Liberal disposition: open-minded, suspicious of abuses of power, uncomfortable with hierarchy, treatin...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    This is the clearest statement of the case I have read in a while, and "competence is not a destination" is the line worth repeating. One worked example from ...
  • Simon McGrath
    @jennie "“Liberals have always been suspicious of too much power in too few hands.” *looks at direction of travel of internal party mechanisms the last fiv...
  • Jack Nicholls
    Roz, I can't think of anything you ever write that I don't heartily agree with, frequently in letter and always in spirit. We've started (literally just started...
  • Peter Dunphy
    The challenge of empowering local communities/councils etc is not that this will allow the house building or wind farms or railway lines that we need - they wil...