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 >>>]
Charles Taylor was eased out of the dictatorship of Liberia on the promise that he would be allowed sanctuary in Nigeria. That promise was broken by his arrest in Nigeria to be put on trial for war crimes. This will make it much harder to persuade future dictators to step down peacefully because they won’t trust promises so easily broken [More >>>]
Ministers claim to be honouring their promise that ID cards would initially be voluntary by linking inclusion in the ID database to passports and claiming that passports are voluntary. It’s true! [More >>>]
In exchange for accepting a mainly elected House of Lords, Tony Blair wants to impose fresh limits on its already limited powers: curing one disease and infecting the system with another [More >>>]
