The good news is that Jacqui Smith didn’t issue a warrant. The bad news is that Plod didn’t ask for one. Michael Martin, aka Gorbals Mick, embattled Speaker of the UK House of Commons, admitted today that the Police had no warrant to search the office of Tory MP Damian Green. Jill Pay (the first [...]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Political correctness stayed the hand of the nanny state
Baby P’s face is now so familiar to me I could sketch it blind. But his face now represents much more than a story about the tragic death of a baby, an abusive family or the failure of one local authority. It says something about our national approach to children, social care and families. By Julia [...]
The Small Print is on Page 198, Table B10…
You can read all 237 pages of the UK Government pre-budget report if you really want to, but to save time, cut to the chase o page 198. This tells us what the Government earns, spend and the difference between the two, and explains the headlines we have been reading. The biggest one shows UK Government [...]
Take me to the river…
As the furore over Mumbai resolves into Indian rage towards Pakistan, it is worth taking a step back to look at what the tensions between these countries are about. Traditional explanations centre around partition, and about the holy status of Kashmir in the Hindu imaginary as a place of heaven, portrayed as a form of [...]
RBS, HBOS, B+B, Northern Rock all owe us a huge debt. Give them a hard time.
By John J Kelly I made a rare visit to my bank last week, and was reminded why. I needed to send £62.00 to Switzerland. After a lot of wasteful form filling, I was charged £20.00 for this ‘service’, which will take 4 working days to process. The exchange rate is likely to operate on [...]
Send in the snatch squads
Last week the government claimed that ‘over 80%’ of sex workers were slaves, a claim hotly denied by the English Collective of Prostitutes. Harriet Harman, Deputy PM, spoke on Woman’s Hour urging Womens’ Institute (WI) members to report newspapers carrying escort advertisements, since the oriental and East European escorts on offer may be the victims of trafficking. [...]
That BNP members list in full – and why it's wrong to use it
It would not be fair to publish the names of all 13,500 (far) right-thinking folk whose names were leaked by a disgruntled former British National Party sorehead last week. I’m actually feeling sorry for them. I might send them a seasonal card – White Christmas, perhaps? Then again, perhaps I won’t, but you can. The [...]
God in one ear, Cheney in the other. "W" The Movie.
George W Bush comes off lightly in the new biopic, ‘W’ to the dismay of pinko liberals everywhere. Oliver Stone was scripted to serve up a tale of a neocon Golem, spoiled rich son of a former CIA Director turned one-term President whose legacy was that he did not annex Iraq. He fixed the polls in [...]
SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES ARE UNBUSINESSES. THIS IS NOT GOOD FOR BUSINESS. IF WE LIKE THEM, WE SHOULD PAY.
Despite the success of Facebook, which even I use, and twitter, which I certainly don’t, these sites may find it hard to make money in a falling stock market and advertising recession. Then what? They attract huge traffic and perform a useful function, but so do telephone networks. People are used to paying a subscription [...]
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