‘Observer’ oddities
Monday, March 24th, 2008Examples of several eyebrow-raising items in yesterday’s ‘Observer’ newspaper, with commentary [More >>>]
Entries in March, 2008
How to break the government’s control of parliament
Friday, March 21st, 2008The power of the whips to control the votes of their MPs by the threat of de-selection and the end of a political career is at the heart of the government’s almost total control of parliament. Three suggestions for breaking its grip and an invitation to suggest more — but please not PR! [More >>>]
On blasphemy, religious hatred and the law
Monday, March 17th, 2008Repeal of the blasphemy law will have little or no effect. The (unnecessary) law on incitement to religious hatred is confined to *threatening* words or behaviour *intended* to incite hatred, so literature and criticism of religion as such seem safe [More >>>]
Abortion: the viability test is dead but it won’t lie down
Sunday, March 16th, 2008The ‘viability test’ for determining when in a pregnancy abortion should be banned has been comprehensively discredited as fallacious and dangerous, but both Labour and Tory leaders, as well as the anti-abortion lobby for its own doctrinaire reasons, continue to support it [More >>>]
Latest languistic lapses
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008Another collection of linguistic barbarities from the media and the Web. The horror! The horror! [More >>>]
Wagging our finger at the Russians: bad idea
Monday, March 3rd, 2008Tim Garton Ash urges us to demand that Russia observes standards of behaviour which we fail to observe ourselves, as my letter in today’s Guardian shows. Relations with post-Soviet Russia have been consistently bungled by the west [More >>>]
