Coming off the bike
I fell off my bike yesterday (it skidded from under me when I braked and changed direction on a wet and slippery road) and inflicted a fair amount of damage on my knee, thigh...
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North London’s Rachel breaks out into verse
Don’t miss the brilliant verses by Rachel North, 7/7 bombing victim, on New Labour’s assault on our civil liberties [More >>>]
Kalinka online
Thanks to Councillor Bob Piper of Sandwell Labour Party (who he?) for providing a link, in his blog, to a wonderful clip of the Red Army choir doing a rousing performance of Kalinka [More >>>]
The Hain manifesto deserves a salute
Peter Hain’s Observer article of 17/09/06 reads like a manifesto for a leadership bid and contains clear if coded criticisms of some of the most objectionable features of the Blair premiership. It would be tragic, not just for him, if despite his many merits he were to be disqualified by his South African and Liberal pasts, both wholly unobjectionable [More >>>]
Call me intolerant and I’ll hit you
Did the Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman really say: “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”? Too good to be true, surely? [More >>>]
More on a hung parliament: some intriguing implications
The implications of a hung parliament after the next election are intriguingly complex and unpredictable, with all sorts of possible manoeuvres and outcomes that few seem to have foreseen [More >>>]
Things that might have been better expressed
A few examples of remarks, written or spoken, about which the author might usefully have had second thoughts [More >>>]
Clare Short and the hanging of parliament
Clare Short is standing down as a Labour MP in order to campaign at the next election for a hung parliament leading to proportional representation: a wholly misconceived idea, unfortunately [More >>>]
Martin Amis on Islamicist ‘horrorism’ and faith
Martin Amis’s Observer Review essay (10 Sept 06) on Islamicist terrorism and its roots in religious faith should be required reading for anyone interested in this key phenomenon of our age and its implications for all religious faith [More >>>]
“Persistent Vegetative State”: some background to last week’s story
Media reports of last week’s discovery of brain activity indicating a response to the spoken word by a patient diagnosed as in Persistent Vegetative State mostly ignore the exciting work done in the past decade in London in establishing genuine communication with patients misdiagnosed as in PVS [More >>>]