At 8.05 this morning, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg unveiled his latest pet project: the Your Freedom website, an internet forum in which members of the public are invited to discuss the laws they would like to see repealed and the civil liberties they would like to see restored. At 8.30, I signed up, fearing [...]
Filed under: civilliberties, conservatives, davidcameron, jonathanbirch, ukpolitics on July 1st, 2010 | No Comments »
Before the election, a ministerial post must have seemed a distant pipe dream to Clare Fellow Julian Huppert. Now, a few dramatic weeks later, it still is, but the pipe is considerably shorter.
19 Liberal Democrats have jobs in David Cameron’s government. As the new Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge (and one of four Clareites [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch, libdems, ukpolitics on June 10th, 2010 | No Comments »
Interesting times. With an extraordinary Con-Lib coalition about to be finalised, David Cameron and Nick Clegg must be all but salivating at the prospect of imminent power as a forlorn Gordon Brown skulks off into obscurity and Labour braces itself for a spell in opposition.
It looks like a catastrophe for the outgoing government. But [...]
Filed under: conservatives, davidcameron, jonathanbirch, labour, ukpolitics on May 11th, 2010 | No Comments »
It’s a scandal: in the 2008 US Presidential Election, 47% of the votes counted for nothing! Rather than granting each candidate a slice of power proportional to his or her vote share, America inexplicably uses an antiquated “winner takes all” approach. Consequently, over 50 million voters received no representation whatsoever in the White House.
That [...]
Filed under: electoralreform, jonathanbirch on May 4th, 2010 | 2 Comments »
With today’s resolution to Debbie Purdy’s court battle to have the law on assisted suicide clarified, there is now an inescapable feeling that matters are coming to a head regarding the issue in this country. A tide of opinion polls, news stories and incessant letters in newspapers show that this debate just won’t go away [...]
Filed under: humanrights, ideas, jonathanbirch, society on July 30th, 2009 | No Comments »
Here’s what I wrote a month ago:
It turns out that some MPs have been claiming hefty expenses to which they are technically entitled under the current rules, even though they don’t really need the money. This must have come as a terrible shock to all those who thought MPs were selfless ascetics who spurn all [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch on May 13th, 2009 | No Comments »
An aide to the Prime Minister spreads some nasty gossip in a private email to a blogger. The blogger’s emails are hacked, the emails are leaked to another blog, and the aide resigns. It’s a juicy and very modern tale of a spin doctor getting a taste of his own medicine. But is it really [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized, bbc, conservatives, davidcameron, jonathanbirch, journalism, labour, ukpolitics on April 12th, 2009 | No Comments »
Two signs of the times this week. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt comes out in favour of assisted suicide; and a seriously ill baby, “Baby OT”, dies after the High Court orders an end to its assisted breathing. Behind both developments, an underlying intuition that death is preferable to a painful life.
I worry where this utilitarian [...]
Filed under: ideas, jonathanbirch, religion on March 21st, 2009 | No Comments »
Creative Commons licensed photograph courtesy of Flickr user jgraham.
Even after eleven years, there’s still something a bit shocking about tuition fees. If the vice-chancellors get their way, fees will rise to at least £5000 per student per year. It’s a policy that flaunts its pragmatism on its sleeve. I still think fees defy any principled [...]
Filed under: barackobama, education, jonathanbirch, labour, religion, ukpolitics on March 17th, 2009 | No Comments »
Creative Commons licensed photograph courtesy of Flickr user photoverulam.
If there’s one thing more irritating than excessive political correctness, it’s excessive whining about how political correctness has “gone mad”. So I’ll try not to take that line here. But I’m a little baffled by the complaints over Emmanuel’s British Empire-themed May Ball, and the subsequent backtracking [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch on February 16th, 2009 | 5 Comments »
