Category: Politics

I’m getting terribly bored with this, but the PM will insist on continuing to push an utterly pointless cause. It’s ID Cards – or the really big database – that I’m talking about. He’s back on the offensive again with a piece in the Telegraph today. He seems not to have won over those readers…

Is it me, or does it seem that chipped bins (RFID, I assume) are causing more anxiety in middle England than ID cards? “You can chip me all you like, but I draw the line at my dustbin,” seems to be the unspoken sentiment.

Fascinating piece in this morning’s Guardian with a new poll showing the Tories leading Labour by nine points now. Tony’s got to be worried. How long’s he going to hang on and let the Tories extend their lead? What I find especially interesting are some of the other questions that were asked at the same…

Today’s Guardian has an impassioned piece by Henry Porter on why ID Cards are such a bad idea and are part of a fundamental change in our relationship with the State. Read it. The Sunday Times had a big report at the weekend about how internally, nobody at Whitehall believes the system will work. “I…

Very scary.

For a while Turkmenistan has been a country of fun and a source of jokes for writers everywhere. For example here are a couple of mentions in The West Wing:- BARTLET: Well the President of Turkmenistan just officially extended the date of adolescence to twenty-five. (Swiss Diplomacy) WILL: What about Turkmenistan? JOSH: It’s a nation…

It’s suddenly struck me how Bush might be thinking that US can cut its oil imports so significantly by 2025. If Iran becomes the 51st state, then its oil won’t count as imported. Simple. Of course, by 2025 we’ll be so short of oil, that imports will be cut by the shear expediency of the…

Great news.

Yes, while Crow suns himself in Egypt, anyone who has to cross London to get to or from a New Year’s Party is out of luck. You might be able to use a train, and there are always buses, but the strike goes on. I’m pretty reasonable about strikes. If I think the union’s have…

The Heathrow Express is both a good and a bad thing. Bad, simply because it’s expensive. Good, because it gets you very rapidly from central London (well Paddington) to Heathrow. But with security checks in place it’s going to take a bit longer to reach Heathrow, and some of the speed advantage of the system…

On Tuesday, The Sun ran a front page showing the picture of a bloodied bomb victim from the July London bombings alongside the headline: “Terror Laws: Tell Tony He’s Right”. Except that the man who appeared on that cover, bloody and bandaged is one John Tulloch. And those certainly aren’t his words or feelings. Read…

It’s being re-edited to be shown as a film at Cannes!