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...
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...
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...
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...
[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...
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...
A new website, OpenLeft, founded by James Purnell MP, former cabinet minister (the one who in his resignation letter invited Gordon Brown to ‘step aside’ as party leader and prime minister), under the auspices...
Jack Straw’s Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill is a feeble affair: the term ‘rag-bag’ might have been invented for it. It lacks not just vision and any trace of radicalism but even a coherent...
J and I are still reeling from the effects of the film Katyn, the latest product of the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda, and indisputably a masterpiece. Watching it is a gruelling experience, but...
In a recent post on a number of current issues, I mentioned my belief that the police had been justified in arresting Damian Green MP for questioning, and searching his parliamentary and other offices,...