I’ve just found myself shouting at the television as I happened to have the misfortune to see part of a programme on BBC1 called Dom’s on the Case that looks at healthcare provision in the UK. There were 2 main parts to the programme that I found particularly twisted. First...
So Welsh has been used for the first time in a meeting of the Council of the EU today. Woo hoo. Let’s all jump up and down and beat the nationalist drum! Ordovicius is happy and Alun Ffred Jones who spoke Welsh at the Culture Council stated “Welsh is one...
I don’t know enough about economics to comment on practicalities of the current economic turmoil, but I want to instead reflect on the way the media – especially in the UK and USA – needs to change its vocabulary when reporting on what is going on. Take today’s BBC News...
What a change. Gordon Brown, the politician known for seldom showing face at ECOFIN in Brussels when Chancellor (and for reading his papers rather that listening when he did), is now suddenly taking the EU seriously. No more lecturing other European capitals that the UK has the only financial system...
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has caused a stir by promising today to persevere with his plans to abolish Council Tax in Scotland and replace it with a 3p in the pound increase in income tax. As far as I’m concerned he’s right. This will probably draw howls of derision...
In 2006 this blog was ranked 10th best left-of-centre blog in the UK in Iain Dale’s blog list (2006 and 2007 scores here, 2008 here). Last year it was 40th, and this year it’s in 100th position, despite me investing at least as much time writing the blog now as...
At Kön/Bonn Airport yesterday as 3 NATO surveillance planes took off one after the other, bound for Afghanistan I subsequently discovered, but reason for reflection nevertheless. I picked up a copy of Süddeutsche Zeitung when boarding my plane and one particular article caught my eye, a column entitled “Für Georgien...
Labour MEP Glyn Ford submitted a written question to the European Commission, asking how the €162,387,985 EU Solidarity Fund (EUSF) money should be spent. I’ve twice posted about this matter before, when it looked like the Treasury would try to keep 2/3 of the money for its own uses to...
Preachers on street corners, ads in the underground and on the sides of buses – you can’t spend a day in central London without being confronted by some sign that religion should be your only salvation. In frustration I’ve had a rather sporadic go at this in the past –...
Two top secret papers about al-Qaeda and on the state of Iraq’s security forces were left on a London Waterloo to Surrey train yesterday, found by another passenger, and passed to the BBC (BBC News Story). Serious enough in itself. Only today in Westminster MPs were voting on whether to...
A Tory Councillor in Southport has defected to Labour (more from LabourHome), apparently citing David Cameron’s opposition to 42 day detention of terror suspects without trial. Strikes me that there must be more to it than that – would a national issue like that prompt someone to defect? It also...
Welt am Sonntag reported yesterday that David Miliband might be a candidate for the EU Foreign Minister High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the foreign affairs position created by the Treaty of Lisbon. A FCO spokesperson has made a very bland statement that Miliband is...