Category: Miscellaneous

The Scottish independence referendum: two points of controversy

The UK political parties have suddenly woken up and discovered an imminent threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom:  the Scottish SNP government’s pledge to hold a referendum on independence for Scotland within...

No blogging or emails for a month

I’m going to take November off.  For some time now I’ve been having tiresome problems with my hands and fingers — nothing that wouldn’t quickly be put right by becoming ten years younger, but...

End indeterminate sentences: please act urgently now (with update 14 Oct 2011)

Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs), which keep thousands of people indefinitely in prison long after they have been punished for their offence, inflict needless misery and injustice on IPP prisoners and their families. ...

Labour should be backing Clarke, not trying to get him sacked

Yesterday Ed Miliband and the usually equally reliable shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, demanded that the prime minister should sack Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, over his remarks about rape and his proposals for...

Pippa and Kate in the words of the poets

Oh, no, not that wedding again? Calm down, dear, it’s only a footnote.  According to the tabloids and the internet, Pippa Middleton, sister of the new Princess William formerly known as Kate, stole the...

Royal wedding: does it matter? In some ways, yes

It was magnificent and on the day it went without a hitch.  Good luck to William and Kate, whose patent happiness together made a few million others happy too, a matter not to be...

“Quepasa”: an apology

I have unwittingly been instrumental in causing dozens, possibly hundreds, of innocent people, including some complete strangers, to receive messages purporting to contain invitations from me to become my “friend” on a website called...

Labour’s defence policy seems about to go disastrously wrong

Because of the horrors unfolding in Libya, voices are again being heard calling for ‘humanitarian intervention’ by the west to protect the defenceless Libyan population from their deranged ruler.  This activist climate seems to...

Coalition ‘welfare’ policy: back to the workhouse

I’m appalled by the qualified approval by Labour party shadow ministers[1] (and a distinguished Guardian commentator) for IDS’s savage attack on those who for one reason or another can’t work.  As Martin Kettle remarked,...

Four Last Songs at the Prom

If April is the cruellest month (and I could never see why it should be), September, signalling the decline of summer and the approach of autumn, is surely the saddest.  So Strauss’s Four Last...