Hands off the limited powers of the Lords!
In exchange for accepting a mainly elected House of Lords, Tony Blair wants to impose fresh limits on its already limited powers: curing one disease and infecting the system with another [More >>>]
Category: Politics
Norman Kember comes home: foolhardy or rational?
Norman Kember, released from his Iraqi captors by the SAS and others, asks in his homecoming statement: was I foolhardy or rational? One of the easier questions, surely [More >>>]
Detention without trial, Mark 4
The government’s bid for power to detain indefinitely people with untreatable severe personality disorders is the fourth manifestation of an inexhaustible appetite for detention without charge or trial, contrary to human rights obligations and centuries of tradition [More >>>>]
Who is this ‘strong thinker in terms of right and wrong’?
Description of a head of government (try to guess which one) with a strong belief in his own motives [More >>>]
Peerages: a job, not an honour
Selling peerages for party donations isn’t new, but it stinks. It would smell less bad if we recognised that a peerage is a job, not an honour, or should be [More >>>]
Democracy Now: an American TV debut
Democracy Now, the American TV and radio program for civil liberties and war-and-peace issues, broadcast from London last week. I took part in a panel discussion on civil liberties in the UK (More >>>)
Tessa and the tax avoidance man
It’s hardly credible that in this enlightened age people with leftish views should think it immoral and unsocialist to arrange to pay no more in tax than legally necessary (More>>>)
Helena Kennedy: Power to the People!
The so-called Power Report contains many useful and stimulating proposals, along with one nonsense (that the voting age should be reduced to 16): but is it as revolutionary as its ambitious title suggests? (More >>>)
Pity about Bush and the New Orleans levees
The story about George W. being warned before Katrina struck of the danger of the hurricane breaching the New Orleans levees turns out to be wrong: pity! [More >>>]
The Prime Minister in breach of the ministerial code?
By accepting that the Cabinet Secretary should investigate the financial affairs of the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell MP, the prime minister has breached the ministerial code of conduct himself [More >>>]