Ministry of Truth

As regular visitors to the Ministry will know, I written a couple of posts on the thorny subject of rape statistics in the last 18 months, one looking primarily at prevalence and under-reporting, the other at data relating to the overall performance of the criminal justice system, which […]

For a while, I’ve been pondering over writing a post on the subject of rape humour and when it can and cannot be justified. I got as far as digging out a rather good paper on humour during the Holocaust, which goes some way to illustrating some of […]

It’s not often that a paper in a medical ethics journal manages to generate a major shitstorm but a new paper by Alberto Giubilini (Monash University) and Francesca Minerva (University of Melbourne) has managed to do precisely that and the clue to understanding why is probably obvious from […]

What’s the difference between a blogger and newspaper columnist? The answer, more often than not, is that a blogger actually takes the time to investigate a story before committing their thoughts to teh Interwebs, unlike newspaper columnists, many of whom seem to think that the fact that they […]

The Telegraph’s sting operation on a small number of abortion clinics has, of course, provoked the usual frenzy of overblown commentary from Nadine Dorries and her anti-abortion buddies, including an article at ConHome by the Delusional Member for Mid-Narnia which nicely illustrates the rather casual nature of her […]

So, at least one of the mysteries surrounding the documents leaked from the Heartland Institute has been solved after Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute of Oakland, California issued a statement via the Huffington Post explaining the circumstances in which he obtained the […]

Yesterday’s Telegraph was, as most people will already have seen, awash with stories relating to a sting operation by the newspaper in which a couple of doctors were apparently caught turning a blind-eye to requests for sex-selective abortions. Before we go any further, we should get the facts […]

Over at the Richard Dawkins Foundation, the great man himself has posted a fascinating and, to say the least, illuminating account of a telephone conversation with a reporter from the Telegraph which speaks volumes for the rather desperate state into which the newspaper has fallen in recent times. […]

Coverage and analysis of leaked Heartland Institute documents published by DeSmogBlog has, for perfectly understandable reasons, focussed squarely on what their contents appear to tell about the organisation’s active involvement in the promotion of climate change denialism, netting the story the inevitable #deniergate hashtag on Twitter. I say […]

I must admit that I’m somewhat surprised to see some people making a meal the sight of Sayeeda Warsi cosying up to the Pope and buying wholesale into the Catholic Church’s absurd rhetorical attacks on so-called ‘militant secularism’. Warsi is, of course a Muslim, and its this – […]