Category: Politics

On the day that Bush presents his last State of the Union address before the election, The Independent today presented a staggering indictment of his presidency to date. They did it in the form of numbers. Just read through it (while it’s still free!).

Well despite a split cabinet, David Blunkett has published his plans for ID cards, which will carry all sorts of biometric data, and will be in place by 2013. It’s interesting to note that the Cabinet still has to agree to cards becoming compulsory as well as Parliament. It seems that they would stop terrorism,…

A report in yesterday’s Sunday Times seems to indicate that Blunkett’s not going to have his way over ID cards. It seems that Jack Straw is particularly against them, as is Gordon Brown. The problems are enormous, and yes, making people pay forty pounds would be seen as a tax. We already have National Insurance…

Although he can be a bit smug, the workaholic Mark Lawson has some interesting things to say about The Terminator being elected into office.

When America is next confused as to why the rest of the world sees them as a total joke, look no further than your new Governor of California. Beyond the pale. Thank God he can’t become president, and to think that this was the country that gave Clinton a hard time!

Alex Cox’s site has now left the BBC, so his first weekly diary on his own site is all about the BBC. He’s absolutely spot on about all the BBC bashers and the general distaste that we should all feel for them with their own collection of views and beliefs. Murdoch, Kaufman, Conrad Black, and…

So David Blunkett spent a lot of this time garnering headlines for his ID scheme. Despite a split in the cabinet over the scheme, he seems keen to press ahead and get ID cards into the Queen’s Speech. The core reason for introducing this big brother regime, is seemingly to keep track of illegal immigrants,…

The Guardian carries a report this morning about the cabinet being split over the introduction of ID Cards. No need to explain again where I stand on the issue. I don’t know quite what to make of all this. Gordon Brown doesn’t want the treasury to pay for it, but the alternative seems to be…

Well it seems that the police have been arresting demonstrators at the ExCel centre which is hosting DSEi – Defence Systems & Equipment International. Strangely the ExCel website doesn’t seem to mention it, but of course, being Europe’s largest exhibition of this nature it does have it’s own site (this should not be mistaken for…

Is this the most blogged article ever? David Aaronovitch has his say on it today.

I hadn’t realised that there’s a new Michael Moore book being published very soon. Dude, Where’s My Country comes out on October 7.

So the government have really been shafted by a couple of people in yesterday’s Hutton Inquiry. I’d link to the relevant Guardian stories, but their site’s down at the moment. Here are the headlines: Iraw’s weapons capacity was not accurately represented in the dossier The 45 minute claim was nebulous. Other claims were over-egged Complaints…

Well it’s come a bit out of the blue, but he’s gone. I think it was fairly well expected that he’d be going some time soon, but while the Hutton Inquiry is still ongoing seems very unusual. Does this take the heat off Geoff Hoon or the rest of the government? These are the questions…