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 »

After the thrill of the election campaign and the euphoria of the first TV debate came the disappointment of election night for the Lib Dems as they lost seats and failed to make great inroads into the vote share. Given that they now sit in government, with five ministers around the cabinet table and (at [...]

Filed under: conservatives, libdems, nickclegg on September 22nd, 2010 | 2 Comments »

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website, an internet forum in which members of the public are invited to discuss the laws they would like to see repealed and the civil liberties they would like to see restored.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 »

When the exit polls came in on election night I saw the same reaction from everyone watching: total shock. Their astonishment was not at the projected hung Parliament we had all been expecting, or at the Tory lead over Labour, but at the thought that the Lib Dems, whose ascendancy had apparently been the story [...]

Filed under: conservatives, labour, libdems, ukpolitics on May 22nd, 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 »

The surge of support for the Liberal Democrats over the last week is proof of an extraordinary political coup, pulled off by the Labour Party. When people cast their votes on May 6th they will cast them not for or against the government, but for or against the Conservatives. David Cameron is the central figure [...]

Filed under: conservatives, davidcameron, labour, libdems, ukpolitics on April 23rd, 2010 | 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 »

Photograph courtesy of Flickr user the hanner
British Airways flight 038 has absorbed the attention of newscasters this week. It crashed or, in pilot parlance, it required an emergency landing. At any rate, they’re all heroes now: the pilot, the cabin crew, all of them. A microphone has been directed at some passengers, allowing them to [...]

Filed under: conservatives, robertstagg, socialjustice on January 20th, 2008 | 5 Comments »