There is no relationship in history which has been so dissected and discussed as that between the US and the UK. Sometimes dismissed as a fiction, but a mandatory point of reference for contact between the two governments of whatever political stripe, this peculiar bond defies definition. This blog will now try to do just that. President […]
There is a report that the numbers of parents taking their children directly to hospital A&E, when they have ailments such a fevers, has risen sharply. The government is said to be working on an after hours strategy. This is all absurd. GPs used to be available to their patients 24/7. As a consequence of […]
This blog was among the first to recognise the global significance of the Queen’s Ireland triumph. What has happened is simple. She has morphed from a ceremonial figurehead and tourist attraction into a political monarch of extraordinary authority. This does not mean she has become partisan, favouring one group above another which would breach the spirit […]
For too long the law has been used not just to protect and organise a just and civilised society, but as a tool of enrichment and the protection of privilege. In a modern age of celebrity there are those who, sometimes with quite modest talent or skill, but with either a fashionable persona or a lust for power, […]
At last someone in government has begun to really spell out the issues with the U.K. economy. For too long politicians of every stripe have tended to portray the economy as temporarily stalled, but able to pick itself up and carry on. This is just not possible, as this blog has pointed out time after time. The […]
There is now real opportunity to move forward in the Middle East. This is not because some breakthrough in negotiations has occurred or is in prospect. It is because the established order and balance, which has stood unchanged for decades and which Israel has relied upon to fashion its policy, is now falling away in the phenomenon dubbed the Arab Spring. […]
In terms of political significance for the people of these islands, the visit of the Queen and Prince Philip to Ireland is one of the most important and historic of her long reign, perhaps the most significant of all. It is certainly the most overtly political. This could never be just a goodwill trip where the Queen was above politics. […]
We cannot recall anything quite like the astonishing situation surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn since the arrest of Jeremy Thorpe, the then leader of the Liberal Party in the UK, for conspiracy to murder. Thorpe was tried and acquitted. The court scenes were dramatic as his defence counsel (George Carmen) undermined the prosecution case, but the Not […]
Following a recent download of Explorer 9, we were unaware that this caused the WordPress Spell Check facility to malfunction. This resulted in two or three posts with an unusual number of typos, until the problem was spotted. These have now been corrected and while the boffins work on the problem, we are using our alternative browser, Google Chrome. […]
There has been a call by the head of the UK Armed Forces for NATO to widen its targets to include civilian infrastructure otherwise ‘Col Gaddafi may hang on to power’. There are several points of contention. First, under the conventions of the UK Constitution, military officers carry out policy, they do not make it. […]