Inquest travesty
This week the inquest into the death of Thomas Rawnsley, the young man with Down’s syndrome and autism who died in 2015 in a privately-run care home, Kingdom House, where he had been placed...
Category: Politics
“Liberals think conservatives are evil, while conservatives just think liberals are wrong”
Yesterday I saw a thread by the American comedian Jeremy McLellan (known to the Muslim community for opposing some Islamophobes a couple of years ago) which identified what he saw as the main difference...
Justice matters, and it costs
Last Friday some of the tabloids led with a story whingeing about the money that was spent on the defence of the men convicted of manslaughter in the case of PC Andrew Harper, who...
Mandatory life sentences for manslaughter?
A few days ago I got a link on my social media to a story about a campaign for the law to be changed so that there would be a mandatory life sentence for...
Corbyn, Brexit, and Labour’s civil war
I still follow a number of Labour ‘left’ accounts on Twitter and among these there is a common explanation for the 2019 election result, which is that Corbyn’s decision to adopt a second referendum...
Why is Boris Johnson popular? Is he?
Last Monday, a piece called Why Boris Johnson just keeps on winning, by the pro-Brexit academic Matthew Goodwin, appeared on the Tory-dominated opinion website UnHerd, which examined why the Tories continue to be several...
How do we solve a problem like the police?
Since the killing by four Minneapolis police officers of George Floyd, a former work colleague of one of them, there have been worldwide street protests and a revival of the Black Lives Matter movement...
Nothing brave about Starmer’s cave-in
Today Keir Starmer, the Labour leader elected earlier this year, caved in to pressure from the Board of Deputies of British Jews to sack the shadow education secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, who had shared an...
Not our brothers’ keepers
Last week a young woman named Ellie Williams (right) from Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, posted a long message on Facebook describing having been kidnapped by a group of local Pakistani men and taken to an address...
Bread with few roses, as the government push us back to work
Yesterday a draft of the government’s guidance for “getting Britain back to work” was obtained by BuzzFeed: seven documents giving various advice for how companies might minimise the risk for staff coming back to...
Putting the NHS on a pedestal
Last night, for the third Thursday night in a row, people came out of their front doors to clap in support of NHS workers and carers. For the first time, as far as I...
Boris Johnson’s vision: tabloid mob rule
There is an article in this week’s New Statesman from Danny Kruger, newly-elected MP for Devizes (right) in Wiltshire, replying to two pieces from last week’s edition which called Boris Johnson’s government aimless in...
Lib Dems blame everyone but themselves
Last Sunday the Liberal Democrats’ acting leader Ed Davey (who is my MP), interviewed for the Guardian, claimed that the biggest factor in his party’s lacklustre election result last month was Jeremy Corbyn; he...
Labour leadership, Antisemitism and Islamophobia
This past Monday the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a body elected by parts of the Jewish community (not all of it), launched their “ten pledges” campaign, a set of demands for candidates...
Imprisoned by his disability?
Today a blind man in the UK who has been convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl some years ago in Cheshire was sentenced to seven years behind bars and told he could not...
Why did they stay in the Labour Party?
Last week Douglas Murray, a self-proclaimed neo-con best known for a speech in which he called for life for Muslims to be made more difficult across the board in the wake of the terrorist...
Was it Corbyn? Was it Brexit?
So, just over a week ago the Labour Party crashed to one of its worst defeats in its history, gaining only 30% of the vote (down from over 40% in 2017) in a general...
Don’t be fooled about the Tories’ “values”
Tomorrow (or today, depending on when you read this) there is a general election in the UK. We have a prime minister who is a notorious dilettante, a racist, a serial liar and a...
What “royalty loyalty”?
In an article posted yesterday on UnHerd, Paul Embery (a self-proclaimed “Blue Labour thinker” and fire-fighter) claims that a recent poll for the site by FocalData on support for the continuation of the monarchy...
It’s not all about Brexit
Last Friday the Guardian printed a letter from a number of famous people who informed us that because of ‘concerns’ about anti-Semitism, they would be ‘unable’ to vote Labour in the forthcoming (12th December)...