Contrary to the received wisdom, Lord Carrington’s resignation over the Falklands war was not a case of a minister resigning as a penance for the misdeeds of his officials, as often asserted recently in the Charles Clarke context [More >>>]
A comment on an earlier post asks why we can’t save money by deporting foreign nationals who commit crimes straight away instead of only at the end of their sentences. I suggest six reasons why not [More >>>]
The home secretary uses ‘responsibility’ in two opposite senses in his struggle to keep his job [More >>>]
The immortal H L Mencken makes a prediction about the Presidency of the US [More >>>]
Apostrophes in search of a greengrocer
The London Times Style Guide corrects one misuse of ‘beg the question’, only to impose another which, being commoner, is even worse [More >>>]
It’s tempting to speculate that the weird ambiguity on faith schools in the Guardian’s Good Friday editorial might be deliberate, despite Polly’s assault on them on an earlier page [More >>>]
A well-sourced article revealing the power of the Israel lobby in the US and published, not in the US but in the UK’s LRB, has raised a storm of accusations of anti-semitism, confirming a main thesis of the article [More]
Alan Milburn tells Andrew Marr that he will, but doesn’t think he will, challenge Gordon Brown for the leadership but that we must all cross that bridge. Confusing? [More >>>]
The dangers of widespread deaths in the UK from bird flu caught from birds are limited, but those from a human-to-human flu pandemic all too real. Department of Health information and advance planning are impressive and thorough [More >>>]
