You can get rid of dogshit. As I was picking up dog mess on Hampstead Heath recently – my own dog’s mess, I hasten to add – my thoughts naturally turned to ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson and the current Labour Party leadership crisis. The image of this creature selling his interminable, self-serving, platitudinous and badly-written account [...]
Category Archives: Policy
New Labour gambles on turkeys not voting for Christmas in May
March 30, 2010 – 2:39 pm
The UK media have been scratching their pointy heads of late as the opinion poll gap between New Labour and the Tories has closed to indicate at best a hung parliament. Despite looming and actual strikes, a record budget deficit with no prospect of recovery, real and impending tax rises, unemployment levels at a 30 [...]
Methadrone IS dangerous. Knock it on the head right now
March 29, 2010 – 12:12 pm
Shilly-shallying about what to do about Chinese designer ‘plant food’ drug Methadrone/Mephedrone/MCat is another unwelcome example of how New Labour’s passive/aggressive approach towards protecting citizens’ rights does the reverse. It’s enough to drive a man to spliff. Last October, former NL drug czar, the (perhaps) aptly named Professor David Nutt resigned/was sacked from the Advisory Council [...]
Australian researchers discover the heaviest element yet known to science
January 31, 2010 – 9:35 am
This report came to me by email, so it must be true. Queens University researchers have discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together [...]
Update: Abdullah and Karzai accused of Afghan election fraud
August 23, 2009 – 8:48 pm
This morning, in a cynical volte face, Abdullah Abdullah, the leading challenger to incumbent, President Karzai, declared that the Afghan election was rigged, having previously declared himself the winner. Earlier speculation that the two candidates identified by a Free and Fair Elections spokesman as responsible for widespread intimidation and ballot-rigging in the Afghan election (Thus passim) [...]
Afghan elections declared free but not fair by EU fudgepackers
August 23, 2009 – 11:54 am
While resisting the temptation to say ‘we told you so’ (Thus passim) – it is glaringly evident that, as predicted, the Afghan elections were neither free nor fair. Except that by an extraordinary contortion of logic and semantics, the EU monitors have declared that they were ‘generally fair but not free.’ Well, thanks for putting [...]
How the Tories wordgrabbed Progessive and sent Mandy Mental
August 12, 2009 – 2:16 pm
Yesterday, unlike ‘Lord’ Mandelson, I saw George Osborne deliver his case for the Tories as the party of ‘Progressive Politics” at centre-left Demos think tank HQ. The hounhymns were confounded. Phil Collins – no, not the former drummer of progressive rock group Genesis but the former speechwriter for failed prog rock singer, Tony (Ugly Rumours) [...]
Pay attention, class. This is an important revision course on UK student tuition fees
July 26, 2009 – 11:21 pm
Both Labour and Tories are backing plans to more than double student tuition fees to £7000 within four years. Labour shamelessly abandoned its 2001 election manifesto promise that ‘it will not introduce top-up fees and has legislated against them’ – then introduced them in 2004. The Dearing Report, commissioned in 1996 under Tory PM ‘Sir’ [...]
We have ways of making you talk, Mr Blair
June 21, 2009 – 2:35 pm
It used to be difficult to shut Tony Blair up, especially on the subject of Iraq. Remember his epic war speech to Parliament, when the phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ was repeated more than 15 times? Now he only speaks for $400,000 a pop to neocons or lectures the Pope on theology. He might yet [...]