AFK Monday 12 Oct to Thurs 15 Oct
I’ll be Away From Keyboard from early on Monday, 12 Oct until late on Thursday the 15th, spending a few days with old friends in Edinburgh. During that time I shan’t be posting on...
Author: Brian
Will everyone please stop obsessing about debt and start worrying about unemployment?
In a Comment is Free article about the Tory obsession with the level of Britain’s national debt, Ken Livingstone aptly quotes the distinguished Conservative economist Sir Samuel Brittan writing in the Financial Times on...
On being nasty to the ‘first lady’ (not)
In today’s Observer the columnist Catherine Bennett makes a spiteful attack on Sarah Brown, the prime minister’s wife, principally for her failure to denounce the practice of female genital mutilation when she spoke briefly...
That was my week that was….
More disconnected reflections on the past week’s news and experiences: I’m no great admirer of Gordon Brown, but once again you have to feel sorry for him. His visit to New York for the...
Jobs, debt and cuts: which and when — an election quiz
Try to stifle that yawn at the prospect of yet another discussion of cuts: if we’re not careful, that’s what the general election is going to be about. What it should be about is...
Lockerbie: full marks to Scotland’s Mr MacAskill
I have no doubt that the Scottish National Party’s Mr MacAskill, Justice Secretary in the devolved government of Scotland, was right to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of complicity in the Lockerbie...
Indeterminate sentences and Baby P
Fresh and yet more noxious light has been cast on the working of the indefensible régime of IPPs (indeterminate sentences for public protection) by the sentences passed in May on the three people convicted...
How progressive are the Tories really, Mr Reeves?
Today’s (2 August 09) Observer has a longish article by Richard Reeves, the Director of the think-tank Demos, in which we are invited to accept that “The “Prog[ressive] Cons” have seized control of the...
Protest demonstrations and the police
[Note: The following comments on police behaviour at protest demonstrations were originally sent in an e-mail by “a young man who blogs under the handle Jamblichus” (his own description) and arose out of some...
Change in the electoral system isn’t necessarily ‘reform’
A new post on LabourList provides a useful summary of the various alternatives to our current system of First Past the Post (FPTP) for elections to the house of commons currently being hawked around...