Professor Mark Harrison from the Department of Economics explores the link between the fall of economy and the rise of right-wing politics.

Civility is a nebulous word. The dictionary defines it as “formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech.” More generally, it is often used as a means of belaboring what often seems like the increasingly destructive nature of public debate with its nasty ad hominem attacks and its displays of vitriol which are often out of all proportion to the offense.

The current furor regarding the validation of degrees at a distance by the University of Wales – a unitary institution accrediting degrees in the United Kingdom and abroad – is a sure sign that some form of regulation of higher-education quality standards is not only desirable but necessary. In particular, the problems at the University of Wales are likely to affect the international reputation of the blameless Welsh universities that are not part of the institution and this clearly cannot be right.

"To prevent further crises of equal severity in the future, Keynesians would argue for strengthening the tools of macroeconomic management. Hayekians have nothing sensible to contribute. It is far too late for one of their favorite remedies – abolition of central banks, supposedly the source of excessive credit creation."

"Forgive the martial metaphor, but the English higher-education sector currently feels a bit like the British experience of the Second World War from September 1939 to May 1940. This was a period of relative but threatening calm before serious hostilities began, which came to be known here as “the phony war.""