Ministry of Truth

It’s Budget Day and while even the Beeb’s news site is struggling to keep up with the server load, I find myself in something of an ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ mood… so I thought I’d top of my recent run of posts on the Tories and all […]

This last series of events/post set me to pondering the following question – just what significant contribution, if any, have conservatives made to the development of what might loosely be called ‘on-line culture’? To hear ‘Call Me Dave’ Cameron and Gideon George Osborne talk you’d think – if […]

After digressions into the misreporting of a minister’s well-intentioned efforts to encourage a healthy debate and the fallacy of the Tory Party’s efforts to claim ownership of ‘open source politics’ and a few other things beside, I think its time to make a considered contribution to Tom’s discussion […]

Having mentioned Nick Davis’s book ‘Flat Earth News’ and his concept of ‘churnalism’ – the verbatim or near verbatim reproduction of wire reports and press releases without referencing their source – one might also note than some bloggers are by no means averse to indulging is such practices. […]

Every so often, bloggers exhibit a penchant for either coining new words/phrases, like bansturbation, or suggesting apt and usually amusing redefinitions of the exists words/phrases, and I’m no less prone to this than anyone else hence: National Press (n): 1. An organised hypocrisy The blogging story of the […]

I know that the whole school admissions process is a hot issue, but it seems that things are shaping up to become even more contentious: Secondary schools have been flouting the admissions system by charging parents money to secure a place of their choice, the schools secretary admitted […]

And the lesson for today is ‘How to try to get yourself out of the shit with your customers and fail miserably 101‘: Broadband provider TalkTalk has confirmed that it will allow customers to ‘opt in’ to Phorm’s controversial new advertisement system. TalkTalk is one of three UK […]

Today is one of those rare occasions on which I have a little bit of niggle at DK over a post or two at his place which don’t, in my opinion, do him justice. By and large he’s an intelligent sort and writes with a degree of wit […]

Name a famous Kevin… Keegan? Kline? Costner? How about Kevin Brennan..? Who? Kevin Brennan, the MP for Cardiff West and current Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Children Families and Schools… No? Never heard of him? Well sit back and relax because you’re about to…and […]

It is, I would suggest, an axiom of dealing with this current government that whenever they go on a major PR offensive the first thing you should do is look around for what’s being quietly snuck out the back door in the hope that no one will notice. […]