Today was the day that parliament had a rather long list of private members bills to debate. Originally there were sixty-four on the list. As this informative post from Kerry McCarthy tells us, they’d normally expect to get through about three of them. The MPs sponsoring the rest of the bills were pretty much wasting… Continue reading Nadine Dorries: Just Say No
Category: politics
Pod Delusion Plug
It’s Friday, which means there’s a new episode of the Pod Delusion out. I’m plugging it because I’m in it. The first report is me talking about Nadine Dorries and her bizarre opinions of humanism. There’s another story about her too as the Pod Delustion’s editor, James O’Malley interviews New Humanist’s Paul Sims about her… Continue reading Pod Delusion Plug
Dorries on Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism. That’s how Wikipedia starts its article on Humanism. Humanists (and I count myself as one) believe… Continue reading Dorries on Humanism
MPs on Twitter
Did you ever make a chance remark that plants a seed of an idea which then grabs hold of you and refuses to let you go until you’ve done something about it? That happened to me on Sunday. I was cleaning up some broken feeds on Planet Westminster when I tweeted: Cleaning up some broken… Continue reading MPs on Twitter
MPs and Facts
When an MP is in a discussion and mentions a fact to back up their argument, it would be nice if you knew that you could trust that fact. Unfortunately that’s often not the case. To pick an example at random, here’s Nadine Dorries from last week’s Any Questions (the link will work for a… Continue reading MPs and Facts
Alternative Vote
Tomorrow the UK will go to the polls to decide whether we want to replace our current “First Past The Post” voting system with the Alternative Vote. Before you go to the polling station, I’d like to take some time to correct some misinformation that seems to have inadvertently been spread by various members of… Continue reading Alternative Vote
The War You Don’t See
If people really knew the truth the war would be stopped tomorrow. This quotation from David Lloyd George, talking about the First World War, opens John Pilger‘s new documentary, “The War You Don’t See”, and it immediately sets the historical context for Pilger’s main argument. War has, of course, always been terrible and governments have… Continue reading The War You Don’t See
Bread and Circuses
The country is broke, students are rioting and it’s about to start snowing. But that’s OK as a scion of our great and glorious ruling family has announced that he is getting married next year. And, to demonstrate their benevolence, our rulers have granted the lower orders an extra day off from our toil so… Continue reading Bread and Circuses
Conversations with CateyMaxx
Summarising @Nadine_MP‘s “informed consent” ideas: A woman can’t have an abortion until a christian nutter has tried to scare her out of it? That’s the content of a tweet that I sent just before 6pm last night. I thought it nicely summed up the reasons behind Nadine Dorries’ recent speech in Parliament. I didn’t, of… Continue reading Conversations with CateyMaxx
Dorries Round-Up
Update (28th October): I’ve just been shown The Nardinia Chronicles, a new blog with a lot of detail about Dorries’ idiocy. A round-up of all of the blog posts that have been made about Nadine Dorries since she was cleared by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards last Thursday. If anything is missing then please let… Continue reading Dorries Round-Up