So, here’s the question of the day – should the Ministry of Defence allow Prince Harry to be deployed to Iraq? The key word here is ‘allow’ - he wants to go, and that’s admirable. But surely Harry isn’t naive enough to think that just because he wants to go to Iraq like an ordinary [...]

Filed under: defence, foreignpolicy, iraq on April 27th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Although the charms of Norway, detailed below, are alluring, my vote goes to Finland for appointing the world’s first women-dominated cabinet with 12 women and 8 men. I know, it’s ridiculous that this should be note-worthy; I can’t believe we didn’t have these kinds of ‘firsts’ decades ago. But there it is. [...]

Filed under: democracy, gender on April 26th, 2007 | 4 Comments »

It’s not a coincidence that one of the Scandinavian countries, Norway, is the first country to declare that it will has set a date for achieving carbon neutrality, 2050. While the semantics of ‘carbon neutral’ reveal that it doesn’t mean that Norway will produce no emissions at all but will manage this target by [...]

Filed under: climatechange, environment on April 21st, 2007 | 8 Comments »

Today is the second reading of the Mental Health bill in the Commons. This will replace the 1983 Mental Health Act, which has been in the pipeline for a long time. Understandably, mental health professionals and lobby groups are keen to make this bill as good as possible, seeing it will probably be [...]

Filed under: health on April 16th, 2007 | No Comments »

Picture the following. During a time of heightened tension in the Gulf, a U.S warship, USS Vincennes, falls into a skirmish with Iranian patrol boats over its incursion into Iranian waters. Shortly after the skirmish it sees an incoming jet on its radar and fires two missiles. It’s too late when it transpires that [...]

Filed under: foreignpolicy, history, iraq on April 8th, 2007 | No Comments »

About a month ago, after receiving a large volume of emails on the topic, the journalists whose discussion forms the highlight of my week in the form of Slate’s Political Gabfest were forced to explain their reasons for referring to Hillary Clinton as ‘Hillary’ while others, such as John McCain, were respectively cited as ‘Senator [...]

Filed under: barackobama, culture, election2008, gender, hillaryclinton, johnmccain, uspolitics on April 5th, 2007 | No Comments »