It’s a terrible day for Pakistan, a terrible day for democracy, and a terrible day for Islam. This is just one more reminder of an obvious fact: a vast, vast majority of the victims of Islamic extremist terrorism are Muslims. In nearly every case the casualties are Muslims, and the people having their democracy [...]
Filed under: democracy, jonathanbirch, religion on December 27th, 2007 | No Comments »
Remember September, when Northern Rock nearly collapsed? Savers withdrew around £2bn in savings, prompting the government to guarantee customers’ money up to a total of £100 000 per person. Estimates at the time suggested the taxpayer was crediting Northern Rock to the tune of about £20bn. But Northern Rock (naturally) lends out far more than [...]
Filed under: gambling, gordonbrown, jonathanbirch, labour, ukpolitics on December 24th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
… when they contain the word faggot? Perhaps that sounds like it warrants an obvious “No†from such a keen subscriber to the Free Speech Fanclub as myself. But not really. To start with, it’s worth remembering that BBC Radio 1 is often heard by children, and denying children access to explicit lyrics is presumably [...]
Filed under: bbc, freespeech, jonathanbirch on December 18th, 2007 | No Comments »
It is commonly said that all politicians are the same. And, sadly, in and amongst all the outrageous generalisations, the oversimplifications, and the downright crude arguments, there is some truth to it. While I often find myself exploding in impassioned fits of political idealism whenever anyone dares to confront me with such cynicism, examples do [...]
Filed under: andrewnoakes, ukpolitics, uspolitics on December 13th, 2007 | 4 Comments »
What do Nick Clegg and I have in common? Yes, that’s right, we’ve both used the bottom left-hand corner of the Varsity Comment page to offload a few political bugbears. Look in the online Friday 23rd November issue on page 10 and you’ll see it. Someone ought to, if only to make poor Mr Calamity [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch, libdems, ukpolitics on December 11th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
