Ministry of Truth

Sometimes it’s not so much what newspapers print as what they don’t print that matters. Last week, for example, the Department of Health published what was supposedly “new” guidance on sex-selective abortion, if a simple restatement of the existing legal position, which remains entirely unchanged, can actually be […]

I think I said most of what I have to say on the subject of bringing more female writers in to work on Doctor Who last year and I really can’t see that much has changed or moved on in last twelve months, other that maybe that Jane […]

Harry G Frankfurt’s classic monograph “On Bullshit” begins with a very simple but striking observation: One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. There is indeed and much of it is, sadly, to be found on the pages of national […]

A couple of days of ago, the travel sections of the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail – or, as I prefer to think of them, Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber – both ran what were essentially advertorials for the same new product; “Harmonized H20 UV“, which is being marketed […]

[This is the first of two articles looking in depth at testimony given to a Pennsylvania District Court by Gail Dines while acting as an “expert” witness for the US Department of Justice and, as you might well imagine, it’s a pretty long article so for the sake […]

*** Warning – Very long post ahead. Get supplies before sitting down to read *** Last time around I followed the trail of just one dubiously provenanced Internet porn ‘statistic’ from its first appearance in 2003 on a US website owned by tech entrepreneur and content filter salesman, […]

As a quick trailer, I’m currently working on an article which looks in detail at a ‘fact and figures‘ page published by Gail Dines on her ‘Stop Porn Culture’ website in which, amongst other things, she cites a number of ‘statistics’ sourced from Jerry Ropelato’s ‘Internet Filter Review’ […]

I guess a lot of people are going to be scratching around today looking for profound things to say about Tony Benn. Me? I’ve just a got simple little story to tell. Many years ago, when I first got involved in political campaigning, the group I was involved […]

Over at the Daily Telegraph Max Pemberton, who’s also a doctor, has written an opinion piece on abortion which, amongst other things, neatly illustrates the kind of problems that can easily arise if you’re gullible enough to believe everything you read in the newspapers. The problems with Pemberton’s […]

One of my favourite George Carlin routines deals with the subject of euphemisms and it includes one of the great “cut the bullshit” observations of all time: Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It’s as simple as that. The CIA doesn’t […]