[Note: The following comments on police behaviour at protest demonstrations were originally sent in an e-mail by "a young man who blogs under the handle Jamblichus" (his own description) and arose out of some comments on a rather different but related subject in this blog.
Jamblichus wrote as follows:]
The notion that the police “predictably” [...]
A new post on LabourList provides a useful summary of the various alternatives to our current system of First Past the Post (FPTP) for elections to the house of commons currently being hawked around in much of the vaguely left-of-centre press, especially in the Guardian and the Observer. Polly Toynbee in particular seems quite unable [...]
A new website, OpenLeft, founded by James Purnell MP, former cabinet minister (the one who in his resignation letter invited Gordon Brown to ’step aside’ as party leader and prime minister), under the auspices of the think-tank Demos, describes itself as “a project aimed at renewing the thinking and ideas of the political Left. We [...]
Jack Straw’s Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill is a feeble affair: the term ‘rag-bag’ might have been invented for it. It lacks not just vision and any trace of radicalism but even a coherent theme. Gordon Brown began his premiership with the promise of constitutional reform as his keynote, either an enticing or an alarming [...]
J and I are still reeling from the effects of the film Katyn, the latest product of the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda, and indisputably a masterpiece. Watching it is a gruelling experience, but a hugely rewarding one. Although theoretically on general release in the UK, it’s not easy to track down any of the [...]
In a recent post on a number of current issues, I mentioned my belief that the police had been justified in arresting Damian Green MP for questioning, and searching his parliamentary and other offices, for evidence about the official material which a mole in the Home Office had been leaking to him without authority for [...]
In recent days the Department for International Development and the Conservative Party have each published major policy statements on international development and aid, the former in an impressive new White Paper (pdf file) and the latter in an almost equally impressive policy paper, OneWorld Conservatism (pdf file). It’s heartening that on the overwhelmingly pressing problem [...]
Perhaps at last something buried deep in the so-called middle east peace process is beginning to stir. First the doggedly right-wing and famously obstinate Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the first time accepts the principle of a two-state solution — Israel and Palestine existing side by side in mutual recognition. Then he announces his [...]
Several propositions are acquiring the status of well-known truths from frequent repetition, despite all being false. For example, –
Proposition 1: The News of the World phone-tapping scandal will run and run, eclipsing even MPs’ expenses (predicted by an enthusiastic Andrew Neil, a former Murdoch editor). I very much doubt it. The principle [...]
Bloggers who entrust their political views and comments to the blogosphere must expect to be misrepresented, misquoted, misunderstood by-mistake-on-purpose, quoted out of context and otherwise have their case distorted by other bloggers of a different political persuasion. So there’s no point in complaining when it happens. But there’s currently an interesting example of [...]
