Conservative Party and devolution. Labour and tuition fees

Two headline-grabbing political policies from the two main parties:

Conservatives

Cameron promises to give the Welsh Assembly more powers, including being able to call itself a Parliament and being able to raise its own income tax. Interesting for G and P students in unit 1 considering how Cameron has changed the Conservative party since the days of Thatcherite concentration of power in Westminster.

Labour

Miliband promises to lower tuition fees for University students to £6k from its current £9k. Again - interesting to consider how this fits into the narrative about the Labour party and its move away from / back towards more left-leaning policies.

The BBC's Robert Peston analyses the fiscal implications of all of this here.

Republican Conservatism according to Rolling Stone

I've just come across this piece from Rolling Stone Magazine which explains an aspect of modern tea-party-inspired Republicanism:

The entire narrative of modern conservative politics casts the United States as a fast-disappearing Eden of freedom and democracy that's under siege both here and abroad, surrounded by a constellation of enemies united (for some never-fully-explained reason) in their passionate hatred for the simple, God-fearing, freedom-loving American.

While this rock'n'roll magazine is by design fairly liberal, it is certainly food for thought for anyone contemplating the nature of Republicanism (although for my money I don't think that quoting Fox News and saying that it can be very anti-liberal is especially surprising).

Protests in the snow against a pipeline. Picture credit - BBC

Elsewhere, the President has done his third veto about the "Keystone" pipeline between Canada and USA - essentially to make the point that only the President can make international agreements and not Republicans in Congress.

Embedded is a great video explaining why the pipeline is so controversial: