Flying to New York: not my day
I have posted on Twitter my account of the most memorable features of J’s and my flight from London to New York on Virgin Atlantic a couple of days ago. My Twitter posts (‘tweets’,...
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Allow to die, or kill?
Another dispute between parents who wish their child’s medical treatment, however hopeless, to continue, and the hospital doctors, who judge that treatment is burdensome and pointless and should be terminated, has just been decided...
European jokers
Psssst! Heard the one about the Frenchman, the German and the Portugoose…? Or did someone mention Broon?
Americans debate torture
Some of us on the eastern side of the great ditch have been bemused by what appears to be a certain ambiguity in American attitudes to torture. Waterboarding and other ‘harsh’ interrogation techniques had...
Death of the last of the Diplomatic Superstars
‘Diplomatic Superstar’ is how a friend described Nicko Henderson in e-mailing to me the website addresses of the obituaries in the Times and the Daily Telegraph of Sir Nicholas Henderson, GCMG KCVO, who died...
Musical but not comedy in English jails — Straw
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: Stop Government abuse of personal information (with triumphant update 8 March 09)
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...
Gaza’s borders are Israel’s too
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...
More on the scandal of indeterminate sentences
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...
New US administration: new broom or déja vu?
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...