This Blog is emphatically against any sort of armed intervention, missile strike or whatever in Syria. It can only make matters worse. There is no doubt that the apparent chemical attack is shocking. There is no doubt either that the Assad regime could have been quicker to let in the UN Inspectors. There is, however […]
The Tories are closing the gap with Labour, UKIP may have peaked and is beginning to attract negative publicity and the economy is showing positive signs of modest recovery. There is now a real prospect that in May 2015 things will be looking a lot better. The Tories will claim to be the architects of […]
This country is not used to fixed term parliaments and rarely experiences a five year government. It has only experienced coalition previously in wartime. It is therefore not surprising that Labour has to feel its way forward as the Opposition party. At the beginning the Coalition had a free ride, while Labour elected a new […]
Nobody gains from the crisis now splitting Egypt apart. Neither the army, nor the Muslim Brotherhood nor the millions of neutral Egyptians who just want their normal country back. Meanwhile hundreds die. The West is confused as to how it should react. Morsi’s presidency was clearly a disaster for all Egyptians who do not support […]
Since the end of the Cold War, U.S foreign policy towards Russia has been uneasy. There have been several attempts to re-calibrate, re-set or whatever words you like to use, but none has quite worked. Americans cannot understand this. It is, in fact, quite straightforward. For a good while after the collapse of the Soviet […]
This blog has set these four countries, each in various stages of state failure, together because they share several common factors which many readers will be able readily to set out. There is one element which particularly concerns this blog. They are all, to a greater or lesser extent victims of the abject failure of […]
Before we judge the worth of the marginal growth in the economy in the second quarter we must consider two factors. Before the crash a good deal of economic activity was heavily leveraged and driven by debt; therefore in part it did not truly exist, any more than wealth devalued by massive debts. It is […]
Another night of wanton civil disorder because Orangemen are not allowed to march past the homes of those whom they wish to humiliate, provoke and offend is an unacceptable exhibition of prejudice within the borders of the United Kingdom and it is now critical the the Coalition, especially its Tory majority, round on Unionist politicians […]
This Blog has never favoured the Protestant Unionists of Northern Ireland and after last night it favours them even less. The Orange Order is a shocking throwback into historical conflict which infects each new generation with a virus of prejudice and intolerance, which gives its members and the mobs who trail them a licence to […]
Clearly things are getting out of hand in Egypt. It is still possible for tension to diffuse, not least because Egyptians are not an ethnicly divided people living in a country whose borders cross tribal boundaries and were set by historic agreement between colonial powers, as is the case with Syria and Iraq. Egyptians are […]