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...
Category: Politics
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...
The threat of UK disintegration: time for a federal alternative (with update 13.ix.09)
On the always stimulating Our Kingdom website (“a conversation on the future of the United Kingdom“, part of the City University‘s[1] OpenDemocracy network) there’s an interesting if somewhat academic debate in progress about the...
Nursing in the NHS: a scandal of our times
The standard of nursing in many (not all, but many) NHS hospitals is appalling. Almost everyone has experienced, or knows friends and relatives who have experienced, atrocious and negligent treatment by nurses in NHS...
On Ethiopian famine reunion, Stephen Grey and other pieces and bits
Some random jottings about current happenings: I was slightly disconcerted this morning, lying in bed half-asleep with the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on in the background, suddenly to hear my own voice for...
More on al-Megrahi and Lockerbie
Today’s [London] Times rather sportingly publishes my letter, sent last week, disputing all three of a Times editorial’s reasons for condemning the decision of the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, to release on compassionate...
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...
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...