Daniel Aaron Lazar

UK public spending since 1963

Government spending has spiraled. See how much it has increased

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David Cameron’s coalition government: visualising the full cabinet list

A graphic illustrating who’s who in Cameron’s cabinet and in each government department

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Ask Aristotle

In the name of government  transparency and accountability The Guardian offers the Aristotle program which allows the user to track the record of any given MP.

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UK General Election 2010

A whirlwind tour of the UK election campaign from Slate

Britain’s teeming but invisible average earners will decide the coming election. Neither David Cameron nor Gordon Brown seems to understand them. Read about the impact of class on the 2010 election and beyond.

A dynamic, interactive election results map from the Economist

A graph showing how a proportional representation system would have changed the general election result

A chart showing which political parties national newspapers have supported in every general election since 1945 – and who they are endorsing at the 2010 election

Bagehot offers his take on the effect that this election will have on Britons (“Farewell Free Stuff”)

A look into Labour’s Future

In “Learning How to Share” the Economist offers a comparative perspective on coalition governing.

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Devolution: Wales points the way

Pessimists about politics might consider the following facts. Thirty one years ago yesterday, St David’s Day 1979, Welsh voters humiliatingly rejected the Callaghan government’s Wales devolution act in a referendum by 79.8% to 20.2%. Nearly two decades on, however, Welsh voters narrowly supported the Blair government’s Wales devolution act in a new referendum by 50.3% to 49.7%. Today, according to a St Davids Day BBC Wales/ICM poll, only 13% of Welsh voters now want to see the Welsh assembly abolished, while only 18% are satisfied with the limited powers conferred on the assembly in 1998. Most Welsh people would like to see not less or no devolution – but more. By 56% to 35% they say they would vote for an assembly with full legislative powers in a referendum now scheduled for next year.

Read on at the Guardian

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Explaining Gordon Brown’s enthusiasm for electoral reform

Mr Brown announced that the House of Commons would vote next week on legislation mandating a referendum, to be held by October 2011, on switching from the first-past-the-post system (FPTP) hitherto used in Westminster elections to the “alternative vote” method (AV) used in Australia.

Bagehot Explains

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Whatever: Snapshot of a jaded, liberal nation

BRITONS interested in politics (about a third of them, apparently) face a raucous punditocracy eager to assure them that their countrymen are becoming more liberal or more conservative, more cynical or more idealistic, usually according to the personal political views of the sage in question. Those looking for something more authoritative might be interested in the annual Social Attitudes Survey, which distils the responses of over 80,000 people to a variety of questions on politics, economics and society.

The most recent, based on interviews in 2008, was published on January 26th. It describes an increasingly jaded, increasingly liberal country, still attached to big government but dubious of official attempts to help the poor.

read on from the Economist

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Local Politics and Nuclear Power in the UK

BRITAIN, and especially England, is occasionally compared to North Korea (only half-jokingly) as one of the most heavily centralised states in the world. Whitehall bureaucrats micromanage schools and hospitals; local government is dependent on the Treasury for most of its funding. But one bastion of local power has for years stood apart from the trend towards central control: planning, the process by which building projects are granted or denied permission to proceed. Objections from stubborn locals can derail or delay everything from small wind farms and shopping centres to huge projects of national importance. The most notorious example is probably Heathrow airport’s fifth terminal, which languished in the planning system for year upon year before eventually being approved in 2001.

On November 9th all that seemed set to change, as Ed Miliband, the energy and climate-change secretary, delivered the first of the government’s “National Policy Statements” on infrastructure. These will inform the work of the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), an independent body set up last month. Led by Sir Michael Pitt, a veteran planner and local-authority boss, it will take over responsibility for planning nationally important projects from March 2010. Decisions that used to take years will, in theory, take just months or even weeks, with public involvement drastically curtailed.

Read on here

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Salmond, SNP and Bluffing

TO JUDGE from the awe with which he is regarded by his rivals, Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) is a politician of wizard-like cunning. Look, they say, at the scandal over the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Saltires were waved in Tripoli and brickbats hurled from Washington; yet, even as he insisted the decision was Scotland’s alone, Mr Salmond contrived to deflect much of the blame onto Gordon Brown. Their deep fear is that Mr Salmond will conjure Scotland into independence.

Read on from Bagehot

This is a rick editorial that dances across many of our APCG themes.

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Question Time: October 22, 2009

Here’s a link to a show called  Question Time session of the British National Party on YouTube

Here is a link to the real Question Time on Parliament

Cameron vs. Brown. Ouch (May 2007)

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