Mid-Staffs the NHS and the U.S. If this heading baffles, read on. The public enquiry into, literally, hundreds of deaths at this Staffordshire hospital, due to inadequate care,  has begun. Everyone even vaguely connected will be called to give evidence, including senior NHS managers and even Ministers. It will be held in  public. This is all very good […]

Bishops off to Rome There has been a certain amount of propoganda among the players in Church politics  (that other form of politics so closely woven into the history of our democracy in these islands) that the good old Cof E is actually a Catholic church. In the sense that the word catholic means open […]

Andy Coulson There is a story eddying round this man. What did he know about phone tapping when he was Editor of the News of the World? He says nothing. Few now believe him. Not many care. This blog does. On the narrow question of whether he should carry on at  Number Ten, the answer […]

The Environmentalists This is a new thread where this Blog identifies an issue to think about, but for the moment reserves its position.There was an interesting programme on Channel 4 (U.K.) last night which explored how environmentalist campaigners had, with the best of motives, opposed things like nuclear power, GM crops and so on, which  […]

University Fees On the face of it the Coalition’s plans are reasonable and fair, yet I am much troubled by this, because however it is structured, there will be issues and it cannot be right to start working life in debt. It is too much debt that has landed people, business and the government in trouble. […]

Mid Term Elections. What has happened. There are several interpretations of the mid term outcome, depending on your perspective and priorities. At a practical level it was a Republican victory and a defeat for the Obama Presidency. But it was neither a stunning victory nor a shattering defeat. It was not untypical of results at this point […]

Defence Accord Britain and France are today signing up to defence co-operation initiatives. The last time we had a military pact with France, outside Nato, was Suez and the time before that was WWII, when France was beaten by the Nazis. Neither of these examples give encouragement. Yet this is a very good move. First of all […]

Yemen and Al Qaeda and the U.S. It is now officially recognised, as this Blog predicted months ago, that the Yemen is now a major base of Al Qaeda and more potent than the core organisation in the Pakistani tribal areas. This underscores the point, which the politicians and the military of both the U.K. […]

Economic Recovery in the U.K. and the U.S. There are signs that things may be picking up both here and in the U.S., although there is a long way to go and the path will not be smooth. Something, however, is happening which makes this recovery different and much more difficult for politicians to control, […]

Terrorist Alert Tariq Ali, when answering a question on last night’s edition of  Any Questions, made the very simple point that there is no way the terrorist threat will reduce while we continue to pursue our current foreign policy. He is so right. It is also right to maintain the highest practical level of security precautions […]