Alex Singleton

I hugely enjoy watching Right On, the weekly Telegraph TV politics programme presented by Guy Ruddle, previously a presenter at the BBC. The programme combines Telegraph commentators with the television-producing expertise of ITN, the same company that makes news for ITV1 and Channel Four. I find it compelling viewing. Here’s the latest episode:

On Telegraph.co.uk today, I’ve written a piece about David Cameron’s speech yesterday on government IT procurement. My take is that Cameron’s political philosophy is in full view here:
What is David Cameron’s political philosophy? Some people wonder if he has one, pointing to his work as a PR man. Yet in among his matching of Labour […]

Here’s my piece from Telegraph.co.uk on a new beer that attacks the Prime Minister:
I’m yet to see the poster barring Alistair Darling from entering pubs, but on a visit today to a Wetherspoon pub I had a pint of Welton’s Casablanca beer. It is a real ale brewed in Horsham and its marketing at the […]

How can we make Britain’s railways work better? On Telegraph.co.uk, I suggest that competition between train operators is key, pointing out two very good examples - Hull Trains and Grand Central - neither of which is a franchise holder. But I argue that the government is not championing competition:
The tragedy is that this sort of […]

On Telegraph.co.uk, I cover a new proposal by the Conservatives:
The Conservative plan, reported by Andrew Pierce in today’s Daily Telegraph, to take failing schools out of the grips of local authorities would hugely benefit pupils stuck at England’s worst-performing schools. The model is similar to the charter schools system operating with success in parts of […]

One the Telegraph’s Brassneck blog, I take issue with new IPPR research and suggest that parents - not politicians - are key to protecting children online. Read it here.

On Telegraph.co.uk I suggest replacing council tax, arguing that the current tax is unfair:
Council tax is not just wrong because it is too high, however. It is wrong in principle, too. Those who spend their money on conspicuous consumption normally pay tax only once on their spending (in the form of VAT and duties at […]

On Saturday I had a piece on Telegraph.co.uk on ‘David Cameron and the forgotten man‘. I picked up on William Graham Sumner’s idea of ‘the forgotten man’, the middle-class person who falls between the affluent on the one hand and the welfare recipient on the other.
Incidentally, for a number of years I had Google as […]

On Telegraph.co.uk, I say no:
To use the licence fee to take sports rights against a purely commercial broadcaster like ITV is a horrendous waste of money. It is unfair because it uses taxpayer funding to force up prices and out-compete the private sector. Moreover, despite the BBC spending a reported £150 million for the five-year […]

Following criticism of the way MPs are expensing their shopping at John Lewis, some politicians are arguing for higher salaries. On Telegraph.co.uk, I take them to task:
“You’ll be hard-pressed to find a chief executive who’s on less than £100,000,” [Labour MP Martin Salter] says.The comparison shows the vanity and delusion of backbench MPs. The sort […]