Jon Gaunt’s attempt to overturn a decision by Ofcom to uphold a complaint against him on the grounds that this constituted an ‘unlawful interference with his freedom of expression’ has been dismissed by the Court of Appeal in ruling which shows that the current Master of the Rolls, […]

There are some religious and quasi-religious claims that one can always dismiss as bullshit without even bothering to go to the trouble of investigating the evidence that believers wish to put forward to support them. For example, any claim based on the use of a piece of astronomy […]

Dr. Brooke Magnanti has posted a rather interesting commentary on the problems of defining ‘sexualisation’ over at her Sexonomics blog in response to the the publication, last week, of the Bailey Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood. Unfortunately, so far as the Government are concerned, I […]

Yesterday evening saw something of a first for libel tourism in England and Wales as the official Bahrain News Agency announced that the Bahraini government intends to sue The Independent newspaper for libel over its coverage of the brutal suppression of pro-democracy protests in the tiny Gulf state: […]

What is it with Christian nutjobs and bananas? You may recall that perhaps the most embarrassing creationist video of all time involved Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron’s musings on the perfect god-given design of the ‘atheist’s nightmare’ – the banana. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfucpGCm5hY[/youtube] And now, Nadine Dorries is running around […]

Another week, another bullshit story of the alleged persecution of Christians hits the headlines at the Daily Torygraph: Christian sacked after abortion leaflet row A Christian mental health worker has been sacked after passing colleagues a booklet warning of the physical and psychological damage some women suffer after […]

There has been a rather interesting announcment from the Advertising Standards Authority: Since 1 March we’ve received a large number of complaints about claims on homeopathy websites, mostly about claims for the efficacy of homeopathy in diagnosing, treating or helping certain health or medical conditions (e.g. arthritis). The […]

One of the finest indictments of the banality of artistic censorship of the last 20-30 years wasn’t written by a novelist or a playwright or an academic. It wasn’t presented in a lecture theatre and it wasn’t published by a broadsheet newspaper or an upmarket literary periodical. Strange […]

Westminster’s resident village idiot, Nadine Dorries is back with yet another prime example of the adage that its better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak  and remove all doubt. The object of Dorries’ ire, on this occasion, is Julian Fellowes who’s recently cast a […]

Attempts to defend Nadine Dorries in public are, for fairly obvious reasons, few and far between but even by the usual piss-poor standards of the DDA (Dorries Defence Association), Ed West’s recent missive at the Telegraph lowers the bar for drooling imbecility: If you ever wonder how human […]