Ministry of Truth

Following meekly in the undistinguished footsteps of the Queen of Complacency, Polly Toynbee, Johann Hari, writing in the Indy, has turned his attention to the always thorny issue of government, databases and personal data, and put up a sterling effort at becoming Polly Pot’s ‘Prince Consort’… The Seventies […]

It’s long been known, locally, that the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star newspaper is no great friend of the political left, so much so that it long ago earned itself the nickname of the ‘Excess & Swastika’ for the rather obvious right-wing bias of much of its content. Even […]

According to Iain Dale, ‘Nadine Dorries is a Tory MP with a sense of humor’ – which is news to me (not the sense of humour but the fact that she’s a Tory MP). Still on the strength of these comments, I can’t help but agree with his […]

The British Medical Journal is not one of my regular online haunts, admittedly, but I couldn’t resist looking in after spotting this article on the Beeb’s website. The NHS should provide more faith-based care for Muslims, an expert says. Muslims are about twice as likely to report poor […]

Religion seems to be a topic I simply cannot get away from at the moment, there being much that is written else on the subject that merits comment, either because it is very good or very bad – the ‘middle ground’ seems rather absent in this present debate, […]

Apropos of my last post on Richard Buggs’ piss-poor efforts to promote Intelligent Design as a scientific theory over at Comment is Free (link in the previous post), one of the many comments on the article raises what I consider to be quite an interesting point. If we […]

While the Groan’s policy of allowing a right of reply to articles posted on Comment Is Free is a good one, it does mean that they do occasionally end up giving space to articles that are no more than a complete pile of shite. Over the weekend, it […]

With the very real prospect of a government climb-down on the implementation of the upcoming Sexual Orientation Regulations in England, Wales and Scotland on the horizon, the very last thing that we need is the distraction of Exeter University’s Evangelical Christian Union’s impending legal action against the University […]

The other day I mentioned a little project I’ve been quietly working on, that of turning some of the ‘thoughts’ of ‘Steve Freedom’ (aka local BNP Councillor, Simon Smith) into a few usable campaign materials for, well, anyone campaigning against the BNP in their local area. I think […]

Stephen Hawking’s foreword to a ‘A Brief History of Time’ contains a brief but quite illuminating note on the attitude of the publishing industry towards ‘popular’ science books, one in which he relates how he was advised by the editor assigned to his book that each mathematical equation […]