On Newsnight last night, Blairite fatster Sion Simon MP demonstrated that he is too stupid to be trusted with glue. And Jeremy Paxman demonstrated that he no longer has any credibility, but we’ll get to that later. Well, let’s deal with the fool before the knave. Simon was on the show to defend the government…
Read More Sion Simon: Ignorant.Whilst I’m on the topic of last night’s TV: what the fucking fuck is fucking Jeremy Paxman doing pretending not to know the basic facts on the Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act 2001? Recap: this legislation made it possible to deport or lock up foreign nationals on the basis of secret evidence, which did not…
Read More Paxman, and many others: Sick.Via comments at Our Word, Rob makes this excellent point. It’s always struck me as a serious tactical mistake for those on the left to argue against laissez-faire on the grounds that it deprives people of economic security, because this hands a powerful rhetoric of liberty to the right, who basically only care about it…
Read More The freedom to get crushed by a crane jibTories? Tories? Did someone say Tories? Yes, they surely did..Teh Grauniad covers a speech by Alan Duncan, the shadow DTI Secretary, to the Centre for Policy Studies, on the topic of youth. Verbatim: We need to empower teachers so that they can exert the control too many parents are unwilling or unable to exert,” Mr…
Read More All you need to know about the ToriesApparently, Dick Cheney’s lawyers are actually trying to invoke in court this batshit insane doctrine they seem to have cooked up, that claims that Cheney is both part of the Executive and the Legislature, and that therefore he answers to neither. That’s just head-spinningly weird. They are arguing, in a sense, that a sort of…
Read More Schrödinger’s VeepWhat a sick business the affair of the A-10A tapes is turning into. Recap: the inquest into the deaths of the Household Cav soldiers killed by a US airstrike in Iraq in the spring of 2003 had learned that the MOD’s own board of inquiry, which sat in secret, had heard a cockpit voice recorder…
Read More Something’s happening, but you don’t know what it is..Sebastian Junger has a spectacular report in Vanity Fair on the MEND guerrillas in the Niger Delta. Seriously, read the whole thing – we have corrupt warlords, men with Czech machine guns, huge outboards, and a crazy look in the eye, communiqués issued by a mysterious online presence, people in the US phoning their friends…
Read More Never get out of the boatThe immeasurable SpyBlog has been doing fine work reducing the bamboozlement certain bloggers have been propagating regarding government e-mail addresses and the cash-for-peerages inquiry. (Shorter: “x.gsi.gov.uk” domains denote the top level of network security, not TEH SEKRIT EMAILS!!) But the Spy has found something, though – as well as the netblocks assigned to Energis and…
Read More Wardriving TonyJamie K, hence the Madchester title, takes issue with a Johann Hari column arguing in favour of National Service on the grounds that it will make politicians less likely to go to war. Two points: first, as a commenter points out, making the army less efficient as a way of preventing war is stupid. It’s…
Read More why not just bounce it and see just what goes wellOK, Slugger O’Toole quotes the complete lobby briefing by PM’s Spokesman Tom “Walter Mitty figure” Kelly. What struck me is not just that the Big Kahuna moving through the joint is a cop these days. That was obvious enough, ever since Angus McNeil and Norman Baker punched through the crust of elite consensus. No-one had…
Read More Sheena’s party, that’s a case in point