The Home Secretary was not making it up- he did have a cat. She also may ‘know the stories about the Human Rights Act’ but stories alone are what they are.
The case concerning Maya the cat was judged in 2008 and then first misreported in 2009 thanks to the Sunday Telegraph despite the judiciary’s [...]
Filed under: clarepoliticsnews, conservatism, conservatives, europe, humanrights, ukpolitics on October 9th, 2011 | No Comments »
Something good is going come out of the riots: people care about them. No news event since the 1980s has had people so aroused to read the news and try to really understand what has been happening. The events of recent weeks are a challenge to all traditional partisan narratives, and, to put it simply, [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized, conservatives, davidcameron, labour, spendingcuts, tonyblair, ukpolitics on August 16th, 2011 | No Comments »
The “phone-hacking scandal” needs a good name. “Hackgate” or “Phonegate” just won’t cut it — that nomenclature is for little controversies that one wryly compares to Watergate in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. This one actually is like Watergate, and its consequences could be no less far-reaching.
The one thing the scandal isn’t really about — not [...]
Filed under: conservatives, culture, davidcameron, jonathanbirch, journalism, media, ukpolitics on July 18th, 2011 | No Comments »
It’s easy to be seduced by the prospect of change and fairness. After all, who wouldn’t say “Yes to Fairer Votes”, as supporters of the Alternative Vote arrogantly exhort us to do? Are we really expected to believe that all supporters of First Past the Post are deliberately resisting greater fairness? Fairness, of course, depends [...]
Filed under: constitution, democracy, electoralreform, ukpolitics on May 4th, 2011 | No Comments »
In 21st Century Britain, monarchy is faring rather better than democracy. As public trust in politicians sinks to new, unprecedented lows, the Royal Family is enjoying a weird and immensely tedious resurgence in popularity. I don’t know if these things are correlated. But, either way, they are pretty alarming signs of the times.
The upshot [...]
Filed under: democracy, electoralreform, jonathanbirch, ukpolitics on April 21st, 2011 | No Comments »
Track the course of the polls since the General Election, and you see a beautifully symmetric picture. At the top, Labour, seven points adrift in May, are neck and neck with the Tories. Below, the Liberal Democrats, level with Labour on the eve of the election, are in a dance of death with the thin [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch, libdems, nickclegg, ukpolitics on November 30th, 2010 | No Comments »
Before I set off on what is almost certain to quickly degenerate into a bad tempered, cynical right wing rant, fuelled by 6 hours of Anglo Saxon reading, it’s probably best to say a little bit about myself. I am a 2nd year historian at Clare, but more importantly I am something rarer than a [...]
Filed under: education, tuitionfees, ukpolitics on November 7th, 2010 | 5 Comments »
There wasn’t much to laugh about in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but for Lord Browne there must have been at least a glimmer of consolation. With the persistent gaffes and rapidly accelerated departure of his successor, Tony Hayward, Browne became only the second most disgraced BP chief executive of the last five years.
His [...]
Filed under: education, ukpolitics on October 12th, 2010 | No Comments »
New Labour was pronounced dead on Saturday as Ed Miliband professed his desire to take the party in a different direction. The era of Blair, Brown, and Miliband senior is over, and so now seems the perfect opportunity to reflect on its record, beginning with the election of Tony Blair as Labour leader in 1994, and [...]
Filed under: crime, defence, education, gordonbrown, health, labour, tonyblair on September 30th, 2010 | No Comments »
I’ve spent the last few days squirming on behalf of India, a country I fell in love with during the four months I spent there in 2008. There have been many stories of India’s apparently imminent failure to deliver a successful Commonwealth Games, stories that I know will provoke utter mortification in that intensely patriotic [...]
Filed under: davidcameron, davidmiliband, foreignpolicy, india, media, sport on September 24th, 2010 | 1 Comment »
