Last autumn our most debased and shameless tabloid newspaper, Murdoch’s Sun, denounced with its usual fake indignation a ‘comedy workshop’ at an English prison, attended by a convicted Muslim terrorist and other assorted evil-doers. ...
An open letter to my MP, Sadiq Khan, MP [but now see update appended below]: Dear Sadiq, Here is an appeal with which you, as a former civil rights lawyer of great distinction, will...
During and after the recent conflict in and around Gaza, the media in the UK and many other commentators commonly referred to Israel’s ‘blockade’ of Gaza, imposed by closing the frontier crossing-points between Gaza...
In an uncharacteristically short letter published in today’s Guardian I have compared the outrage of our system of indeterminate sentences with Cuba’s practice of locking people up on the charge of being a “social...
Some things won’t change as much as we had hoped, even under President Obama: The Americans are still holding more than 14,000 Iraqi detainees in other facilities [besides Abu Ghraib], in conditions that have...
Two and a half years ago I posted on this blog a provocative extract from a BBC interview with Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu about Israel’s attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon and the issue of proportionality....
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Today’s Guardian publishes yet another letter from me calling for a fully-fledged federal system for the UK (if you have a sense of déja vu,...
Twitter isn’t the tedious waste of time and energy that Facebook is (in my view, anyway). Twitter is like a shared mini-blog in which every item posted is short and pithy and you decide...
Eagle-eyed Matt, frequent and welcome contributor to these columns, has sent me this disturbing message, which needs to be read with the Los Angeles Times article mentioned in the first sentence. (The article is...
There’s been a lot of snow today in our corner of south-west London: around 6 or 7 inches (I still can’t quite come to grips with snow in centigrade) from the stuff that fell...