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The ethics of bankers' bonuses

Bankers are in the news once again – thanks this time to the eye-watering sums we hear will be finding their way to the top team at Barclays.  Before we allow the heat of the debate to crowd out the light, it would do us all good to pinpoint what exactly we find objectionable here and what we would like to see done differently.


The logic of university fees

The government’s plans to reform undergraduate fees assume that English universities will form themselves into a recognisable hierarchy. But this is a forlorn hope. The increasing number of league tables has added to, not diminished, the contestability of who ranks where by providing conflicting sources of apparently authoritative data. In more ways than one, English universities simply do not know their place. When it comes to setting fees, what is at stake is not just revenue but reputation: allowing these two to mix together, under conditions of uncertainty, creates an incentive for universities en masse to gravitate to the maximum fee.


Rising to the top

The question of whether the professions are becoming more, or less, socially mixed is much in the minds of commentators and politicians at the moment. In this short piece we look at the professionalising of the political selection process, in the light of last autumn's Labour leadership contest and the appointment of Ed Miliband's first shadow cabinet.