I was on the BBC on Sunday morning discussing the government’s new counter-extremism legislation. Unusually for a discussion on this area the debate seemed to me to be constructive and engaging. Perhaps this is a reflection of the changed political weather. But there was one strange thing – which is why I mention it here –
I suppose if you’d told someone in Northern Ireland 25 years ago that the most contentious issue come May 2015 would be a gay cake they would have taken that future. If you’d gone back another 300 years and told John Locke he might not be so pleased, however, to find that his principle of conscience
Given that a horde of new MPs have recently descended on Parliament, it’s understandable that staff may have some difficulty remembering everyone’s name. Still, Mr S would have thought that any confusion could have been cleared up by simply looking to Hansard, which provides a report of proceedings of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. However,
One of the many old temperance beliefs that linger on in the field of ‘public health’ is known as availability theory. Put simply, this theory says that if you make alcohol more available, people will drink more and there will be more alcohol-related problems. As a result, the temperance/public health lobby always wants shorter opening
What are newspapers for? The answer, of course, is not just to tell us what’s going on and explain the implications, but also to select the most important items from the background noise. Over the last few years, though, we’ve started to get our news in a different way: through Google, where selections are made
If you’ve never watched Game of Thrones, it is a twee fantasy show in which men and women discuss politics at length, dance in Austen-like balls, and drink small amounts of wine by streams. Characters communicate as much by the angle at which they hold their fans or opera glasses as by the subtext of their artfully crafted bon mots. It has
Tristram Hunt is not standing as Labour leader and will instead back Liz Kendall, he finally confirmed at the end of a long speech this morning. The party’s Shadow Education Secretary had some fun forcing hacks to listen to his assessment of Labour’s failure, which took a while, before he announced this, saying: ‘It is
In what sense, precisely, has a bakery in County Antrim contravened discrimination law by refusing to ice a cake with a gay marriage slogan on it? The ‘gay cake’ case does have the useful function of identifying the partisan and idiot character of the Equality Commission, in this case, of Northern Ireland, which acted for gay
Peace appears to have broken out across Ukip, albeit after Nigel Farage has stamped down on those who criticised him. Suzanne Evans is the latest casualty of the Ukip wars, with her job as Head of Policy coming to an end. While Mark Reckless is rumoured to have been offered the role, Evans is stepping aside gracefully:
The name says it all. ‘Dying Without Dignity’ is the parliamentary health ombudsman’s report into over 300 complaints of the neglect of terminally ill patients by the NHS. The BBC this morning highlights two horrible examples. One mother had to call an A&E doctor to come and give her son more pain relief because staff on the palliative
David Cameron’s former director of strategy Steve Hilton is in town this week to promote his new book More Human. Mr S was a guest at the book launch in East London where Cameron was serenaded by a violinist while George Osborne and Ed Vaizey raised a glass in celebration of the tome. In his speech, Hilton couldn’t help but
From ‘The Trial Runs‘, The Spectator, 22 May 1915: LONDON is busy with rumours just now as to an imminent air raid upon the capital by German aircraft. It may be that some definite piece of information has leaked out of Germany, but it is just as likely that the rumours are due to one
Mark Reckless has been rather quiet during the recent Ukip wars. After losing Rochester & Strood to the Conservatives, it has been expected he would return to the party in some role or another. Now, it is rumoured that he will become the party’s new Head of Policy – replacing Suzanne Evans, who wrote the
Although Jeremy Paxman spent several decades working for the BBC, the presenter took an opportunity at a Royal Television Society talk today to cast doubt over its future. With the BBC’s charter renewal looming, the former Newsnight presenter said that the TV licence ‘can’t last’: ‘As platforms become interchangeable, as computers and televisions become indistinguishable, a tax on the
Of all the MPs’ wives, Karen Danczuk and Sally Bercow may have amassed the most column inches. So perhaps it’s not surprising that in the wake of Sally’s latest news, Danczuk has come to her defence. Writing in this week’s issue of the women’s magazine Closer, Danczuk, who says she has been described as ‘the new Sally
If you’ve glanced at a newspaper in the last few months you’ll have noticed that obesity is public health enemy number one. The Guardian has a special section devoted to it – seriously. Its mantra is: ‘Britain is in the grip of an obesity crisis.’ In 2007 the National Obesity Forum issued a report which predicted that
Patrick O’Flynn has apologised for starting last week’s Ukip wars. I understand that O’Flynn met with Farage in Strasbourg this morning — the first time the pair had sat down since his comments in the Times last week. In a slightly bizarre turn of events, the party has released the following statement from O’Flynn: ‘I
There seems to be a checklist for Labour leadership hopefuls which all of them are very keen to tick off. When launching a campaign, a candidate must say that their party has just suffered a terrible defeat from which a number of profound lessons must be learned. These lessons all seem to be rather similar,
Remember Jolyon Maugham, the QC who had fifteen minutes of fame during the General Election campaign when he ‘advised Labour on its non-dom tax crackdown’? As the Telegraph reported at the time: ‘Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, cited Jolyon Maugham as an independent expert who had backed the policy and had forecast that it would raise
After a couple of months of teasing the rate of inflation fell below zero to -0.1 per cent in the year to April, thanks largely to the falling costs of good and transport, especially air fares (something that’s affected by when Easter falls). It’s the first time that CPI inflation has fallen below zero since