Excellent seminar over the last couple of days, getting to grips with the uk’s national health service. I learnt, amongst many other things, that the nhs is not so much interested in health (which consumes about 1-4% of its budget) as in illness, which is very lucrative. My hospitals, in common with others, get paid for the more people we get through the doors, which is a stark contrast to chinese doctors, who get paid by all their patients until they get ill. The nhs, which has done marvels over the last few years, but on a rapidly increasing budget, is now entering a phase of contraction, which is not going to be easy to manage, but nor, I think,…

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Trekking across the desert from mitzpe ramon, overlooking israel's largest crater, and introducing the family to this outpost of the sahara. Last night we took a jeep out to see scorpions, porcupine, a fox, a hare and a gerbo, which our eldest held in his hand as it was transfixed by our headlights. Today we drove across the crater, saw fascinating rock formations, made tea from herbs, rode camels and spent a few hours at a beduin village. Israel's attitude to beduin is indulgent, as many used to serve in the army, though less today, "we are losing the beduin" our israeli guide told us. A few weeks ago, in an interesting contrast to the flotilla, a group of hundreds…

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A sweltering 38c today (way over 100f), in the shade, in the evening. Too hot to stay in the pool, certainly for the kids, so stayed in the shade, visiting masada in the afternoon, and bumping into various from the kids' school - it's that sort of holiday. Reading "the master and margharita" a rather heavy russian tome, bequeathed from my last trip here, and enjoying it, with a cocktail or 4, when the kids are in bed, when the hot wind is not blowing the eyelids to sleep. Staying on what was once a kibbutz (ein gedi), and off tommorow to the heart of the desert to meet camels and beduin and for a nightime walk. Drinking a litre…

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Having a lovely time in tel aviv, hanging out by the sea and eating and drinking all manner of good things. Highlight was a guided tour of the world's bauhaus capital. The school was german (1919 to 33) but although there are examples the world over, no other city centre is built in the style, as this was just when tel aviv was being built: the population in 1920 was just 2000 people and lots of sand dunes. Bauhaus was deeply egalitarian and utopian, all about building things that are not decorative but purely functional and so cheap to produce for the masses. The square, simple style is evident everywhere here, and the story of its decay, being ignored and…

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With immaculate timing, we are off on holiday to israel. We were going to go to the lake district in cumbria, but decided it is just too dangerous. Instead we're off to cyprus and then will take a boat towards the holy land. No, actually we're spending several days in tel aviv with my brother (who's there for 6 months), a few days by the dead sea and a couple of days in the middle of the desert, with camels and beduin. I bristle with contradictions on trips to israel, as I have the strongest of views about policies such as the blockade - see here. This is not a mad right-wing government, as the old "centrist" administration also followed…

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Iain duncan smith was the butt of many jokes whilst an active politian, but matured in obscurity, with his centre for social justice now putting him at the heart of reform. There’s good work on early years, highlighting in an unusual setting both that deprivation is intergenerational and that it is all but carved in stone by the time a child reaches school. By helping prevent at source expensive social ills such as crime, poor health and low attainment, investing in deprived children and their families in the earliest years is the gift that keeps on giving. Another point well made is that children should only start school when they are ready. Both one of mine and all my hungarian…

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I’m not sure the name will resonate to many outside the uk, but the place is as much a part of my childhood as the lettering that runs through the rock whose distinctive but teeth-rotting characteristics are those of this once-thriving seaside playground. We used to drive up every single year in september to see “the lights”, back when it was the only place that strung flashing colours along its “golden mile”. It was somehow a highlight of the year to sit for hours in traffic watching humpty dumpty repeatedly fall off a wall. My parents had a wonderful trick: knowing the time the lights were turned on, they hurried me and my sister down a side street and we…

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Just back from two days in brussels, the first time in two years work has taken me off the island, which, given I have a somewhat key strategic role in a supposedly major european city, already tells a tale. It was an excellent trip, making new colleagues in new areas of interest, and meeting old colleagues-turned-friends. I spoke some french, wore my eu badge with pride, talked about the eurogroup and learned tremendous amounts about how what I was doing some years ago analysing the drafting of the lisbon agenda, translates on the ground to programmes that cities like mine are trying to draw funding from to realise the goals of lisbon, now renamed europe 2020. On balance, I love…

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Wow, despite my optibutsceptism, we may over the weekend have moved a significant step forward towards ever closer union, in the euro area at least. The ecb has traded one of its prized stances, with unprecedented disagreement from a key member of the governing council (the german axel weber). “Sterilisation” might be a way to square the circle, but that all depends on the quantum in play. There is no denying that a rubicon has been crossed. So what was given in return ? That part of the fine print remains under close discussion, and pending announcements from portugal and spain about swingeing cuts will not hide the need for a change from the usual routine of a good commission…

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