Earlier this year, I created a petition on the (then) government’s petition web site. The petition called for the government to fully implement the recommendations of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s Evidence Check on Homeopathy – basically calling on the government to stop wasting money on homeopathy. The petition was due to be… Continue reading Petition Closed Prematurely
Polite Discourse
So today was the day that I was called a “sack of shit” by one of the UK’s most popular political bloggers. It was all pretty silly really. I didn’t even really disagree with what he had written. I just pointed out that his blog entry had two completely unattributed quotations. It’s Iain’s blog, of… Continue reading Polite Discourse
Blog Nation 2010
Yesterday, I was at Liberal Conspiracy’s Blog Nation 2010 conference. This was a chance for left liberal bloggers to get together and discuss strategies we can adopt now that we find ourselves in opposition (or a minority partner in the coalition government). Sunny has already blogged his thoughts on how the conference went. He asked… Continue reading Blog Nation 2010
On the Intelligence of MPs
It’s easy to make cheap cracks about how stupid MPs are. The problem is that many of them seem determined to do nothing at all to counter this impression. Indeed, they often seem keen to reinforce it. David Tredinnick (Con, Bosworth) is a particularly good example. He is a proponent of “complementary and alternative” medicine.… Continue reading On the Intelligence of MPs
Iain Dale Talks Balls
Iain Dale has some new and interesting information about Labour Party leadership contender, Ed Balls. Apparently whilst he was at Oxford in the 80s, Balls was a member of the Conservative Association there. Except, of course, the news isn’t as new or interesting as Dale would have you believe. Dale quotes from an article in… Continue reading Iain Dale Talks Balls
Killing Maggie
It’s twenty years since she left office, but Tories still don’t understand the depth of the hatred that Maggie Thatcher engendered in a large proportion of the population. Amongst my group of friends we had a agreement that any of us who got within striking distance of her would do our best to do her… Continue reading Killing Maggie
BBC Radio Streams
I’ve just written this over on my BBC Radio Streams page: I’ve got email from a couple of people saying that the Real Audio radio streams were finally turned off overnight. This means that the few links left on these pages (and any links that you have saved from earlier versions of this page) will… Continue reading BBC Radio Streams
Programme for Government
Our new coalition government has released full details of its five year programme. They’ve even produced a web site that contains all of the information (although currently it seems a little broken and is just presenting a page where you can download a PDF). I thought it was worth digging into it a bit to… Continue reading Programme for Government
The Political Web
Long-time readers might remember The Political Web, a web site that I threw together at a BBC hack day a couple of years ago. The site has languished as I haven’t had time to do anything with it for well over a year, but last night I refreshed the database that powers it so that… Continue reading The Political Web
Unelected Prime Ministers
Over the last few days, there’s been a lot of nonsense talked about “unelected Prime Ministers”. It started off as scaremongering by the Murdoch press, but it soon started to be repeated by Tory supporters like Iain Dale. I’ve even heard people like Michael Gove and William Hague use the phrase in interviews. Of course… Continue reading Unelected Prime Ministers