These days most of us work in offices, and we aren’t happy about it. Hunched over our computers, we spend almost the entire day sitting down – apart from the infamous bout of exercise in the gym that, in reality, only about three per cent of us do. Most of our work consists of emails, …

‘What a snotty so-and-so. She seemed to say that she shouldn’t stack shelves because she was too intelligent.’ That was the reaction of Iain Duncan Smith, secretary of state for work and pensions, to one of the critics of his ‘work experience scheme’. Ministers and others have been out across the media in the last …

Just a few weeks ago the prime minister told his European rebels that even though they would not get a referendum he would ensure there was a serious repatriation of powers from the EU to the UK. This week we found out what David Cameron meant. Yesterday The Guardian and the FT carried a story …

The chief executive of a charity which organises business mentors to work with struggling charities and social enterprises felt let down when he read the sting in the tail of the Social Action Fund application form. By sponsoring a diversity of innovative approaches to motivate ‘the giving of time, money, knowledge and assets’ the Fund …

Vince Cable, secretary of state for business, told the Liberal Democrat party conference last month ‘What I will not do is provide cover for ideological descendants of those who sent children up chimneys.’  But as secretary of state, he is responsible for the actions of the UK at the International Labour Organisation where our country’s …

Simply portraying the Tories as rabid rightwingers will not work. Labour needs a strategy to counter the Conservatives, but it has to emerge from a real understanding of voters’ concerns, argues Peter Watt I am thinking of opening a free school. No, really. I am going to set it up to teach real people how to …

With Labor Day over, the race for the White House in 2012 has kicked off and at the top of everyone’s agendas are jobs. The August report card for employment was awful with not a single job created in the entire month. Currently there are 14 million unemployed persons in the USA – 9.1 per …

The Children’s Society recently worked with a father in Bradford who is set to lose out as welfare reforms relating to the universal credit kick-in. He is a full-time father of three after losing his wife to swine flu last winter. Two of his children are disabled – a four-year-old girl with Down’s Syndrome and …