The American Spectator

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After 300 years the break-up of the union with Scotland has never looked more probable. It would have been out of the question ten years ago. The British Spectator commented: "It is unsurprising, perhaps, that many Scots should wonder whether Edinburgh deserves a place alongside Vilnius or Bratislava as a world capital. But such pretensions are dangerous rather than quaint."

Nearly a third of university physics departments have closed since Labour came to power. In 2005 there were only 3,000 undergraduates studying physics, and less than a third of teachers in state schools had qualifications in physics. The number of school physics candidates at A-level has collapsed from 46,606 in 1985 to 28,119 in 2005 (It had been about 50,000 in 1980 with a smaller population). The number of trainee teachers with physics qualifications fell by 70% between 1993 and 2000. Chemistry departments have also closed at some of Britain's best universities. Destroyed science-teaching, a boom in astrology, and Islamism may make a great combination for the future. Niall Ferguson, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, wrote recently that: "The more that has been spent on British secondary education, the worse the outcomes have been. According to an OECD study published in 2005, fully a quarter of the UK population aged between 25 and 34 are 'low-skilled' in terms of their educational attainment -- five times the proportion in Japan.â€

"It's the economy, stupid," has seldom been less true. Despite economic growth, there are long-term social and cultural crises, which it may or may not be the responsibility of government to tackle, but which government is certainly able to influence.

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