Ministry of Truth

Bob Piper’s on sparkling form this morning in relation to Phillip Gould’s letter in the Grauniad; ‘This is the moment of New Labour’s victory‘, responding to Neil Lawson’s article from Thursday; ‘Labour has run into the sand and can’t depend on Brown to dig it out‘. I can’t […]

Perhaps the least surprising revelation in the whole Lib Dem leadership debacle is that Charles Kennedy ha been receiving treatment for a drink problem, not simply because its been pretty much the worst kept secret in politics for the last two or three years but because the mere […]

Like many other bloggers I’ve noted and given some thought to the debate on political correctness triggered by Anthony Browne’s pamphlet for the right-wing think-tank Civitas, ‘The Retreat of Reason’. I will get around to commenting on Browne’s actual work in due course but in the mean time […]

I don’t know. You take a few days off to redesign your blog template into something altogether more spiffy and all hell breaks loose as former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, releases a number of documents, including two that the Foreign Office wanted expunged from his upcoming […]

This is one of those classic stories that just make you go WTF? David Letterman, he of the TV show, is presently fighting a restraining order taken out against him by a woman in Sante Fe who claims that he has been sending her ‘code words’ by television. […]

Portrait of Sigmund Freud – by Salvador Dali At the risk of waking up to find a horse’s head strapped to a red leather couch amongst my Christmas presents I’m going to let you into a few trade secrets. By training I’m a psychologist. No, that’s not a […]

Carol singers have become the latest group to defy a ban on unauthorised protests around Parliament. About 100 singers tested the limits of the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by singing in Parliament Square on Wednesday evening. The law bans demonstrating without police permission within a […]

Oh goody, the Fabian’s have come with an 11-point plan for a new definition of ‘Britishness’ (yawn), let’s see what they have to say Write down the constitution While we now have a Human Rights Act, the lack of public debate over its introduction means that it is […]

I want to be clear about something before I start here; it is a public scandal that a mere 5.6% of reported rapes result in a conviction. What is equally scandalous, however, is this figure appears set to used, yet again, to justify a further assault on the […]

Of all the ‘heavyweight’ daily newspapers in the UK, its seems invariably to be the Independent that is most ambivalent about bloggers and blogging. While the dear old Grauniad offers near enough an open house on its content, which is why its probably only second to the Beeb […]