The sudden burst of media interest in the fading possibility of Tony Blair being chosen to be something erroneously described as “President of Europe” has given rise to an extraordinary number of misconceptions and misunderstandings. In a post in the admirable website LabourList — admirable in many ways, not just because it publishes articles and [...]
There’s been no shortage of strongly argued reactions to the BBC programme Question Time, starring the malodorous British National Party’s leader Nick Griffin. (You can still watch the whole thing online here.) We’re forcefully told that the BBC should never have provided this invaluable platform, a place on the BBC’s flagship Question Time panel, to [...]
Last August I posted a piece here about the scandalous injustice of “indeterminate sentences for public protection” (IPPs): it’s at http://www.barder.com/696. It prompted 37 comments, several of which starkly illustrate the human cost of this wicked system. One comment, by ‘Mary’, urged readers of this blog to sign a petition to the prime minister urging [...]
As every UK newspaper-reader and television-watcher ought to, but probably doesn’t, know, since the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876, the judicial work of the House of Lords has been done only by the 12 most senior judges in the land, the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary—or ‘Law Lords’[1]. From 1 October this year (2009) the functions [...]
I’ll be Away From Keyboard from early on Monday, 12 Oct until late on Thursday the 15th, spending a few days with old friends in Edinburgh. During that time I shan’t be posting on Ephems or anywhere else, nor responding to comments here or on http://www.labourlist.org/home. See you again soon! Brian
In a Comment is Free article about the Tory obsession with the level of Britain’s national debt, Ken Livingstone aptly quotes the distinguished Conservative economist Sir Samuel Brittan writing in the Financial Times on 1 October: The British political classes are going through one of their occasional bouts of masochism, with party leaders vying with [...]
In today’s Observer the columnist Catherine Bennett makes a spiteful attack on Sarah Brown, the prime minister’s wife, principally for her failure to denounce the practice of female genital mutilation when she spoke briefly to introduce her husband before his main speech at last week’s Labour Party conference. You might, I suppose, agree with Ms [...]
