Colleen Becker

What should local authorities do when faced with youth unemployment, child obesity, increased gang activity, and rioting teens? Cut children's services!

As councils respond to the Coalition government's austerity agenda, a gamut of programs and facilities has come under the knife. These range from Sure Start Centres for under-fives...

"Broke, sleep deprived, ignored by the press, and in the end snubbed by the voting public...underdog campaigns were typically about as fun as smallpox," is how author Robert Draper described the electoral long shot.

Yet, with every election, individuals with little or no chance of success willingly...

Those Tea Party types are so promiscuous. Conservative Republicans have been spoilt for choice in the primary election cycle, with Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich all vying for their support. Bachmann founded the House of Representatives' Tea Party Caucus in 2010, and she was...

Reasons for participating in America's Occupy movements are as disparate as the individuals who gather at their various sites. The majority of participants consider themselves politically left of center, but they have not pledged their support en masse for any specific party. Some protesters raise objections to the very concept...

How inclusive is the Obama administration? Published just last month, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ron Suskind's new book Confidence Men depicts the early years of the Obama administration as a testosterone-driven boys' club "hostile" to the women in its employ, with one adviser claiming she felt like a "piece of meat."...

It's the little things that count. When President Obama unveils his jobs plan on Thursday, this will likely be the message underlying his key proposals. "Only the little things remain," might be a more appropriate slogan, since his debt ceiling negotiations left him with few options for stimulating the economy....

When David Cameron rolled out his "Big Society" program, which transfers the roles, duties, and power of government organizations to communities, vigilante groups were not what he had in mind. He described the initiative as one that would empower volunteers to take over local institutions like museums and give ordinary...

The American national debt is extravagant, so vast as to be almost unimaginable. Everyone agrees that something must give and at this point, Republicans and Democrats face two options: raising taxes or cutting public programs. The current impasse over the debt ceiling is due to the reluctance of representatives from...

Observers of the American economic crisis might characterize Republicans' refusal to raise the nation's debt ceiling as mere brinkmanship orchestrated to undermine President Barack Obama's leadership. This same audience might dismiss Tea Party members as wing-nut extremists, with figureheads like Sarah Palin reducing its relevance to that of a circus...