I’ve just invented a new word:
usmanov /’us mÉ™ nÉ’v/ verb to unsuccessfully attempt to stifle undesired content on the Internet by taking legal action against websites where the content appears, with the result that the undesired content becomes more widespread and better known. [named after Alisher Usmanov, a Russian/Uzbek billionaire who did this regarding allegations [...]

Most of the concern about the government’s proposed ID card scheme stems not from the cards themselves, but from the enormous pool of centralized information which would underlie them. Plenty of suspicious minds believe that this is actually the real purpose of the plan.
But if Gordon Brown wants access to a vast system of interlinked [...]

Work Secretary John Hutton promises a crackdown on the long-term unemployed. He says a ‘hardcore’ of benefit claimants are spending years on the dole and should be forced to take opportunities or have their benefits cut.
Whereas in fact we’d be better off just giving them their dole and leaving them alone.

Sandra Bell is a name I keep hearing. She’s seemingly an independent commentator, a security rent-a-quote, who so far this week has been mostly puffing the NuLab line for a prime-time audience. I guess this isn’t exactly news, given she formerly worked for QinetiQ, a company very much part of Blair’s corporate state. A company [...]

One word absolutely not on the lips of political hacks, not even Tory political hacks, is… Abortion. Not this week, not any week. It’s impolite conversation inside the beltway.
But a post here last year (picked apart here) attracted over 250 comments. Just publishing the word is pure Google-juice. Everyone in the real world has an [...]

I was having a drink the other night with an agreeable-enough fellow, let’s call him Henry. All was going well until Henry, like the Guardian reader that he is, felt it necessary to bring up the war in Iraq.

You can define a thing in many ways, especially when it’s an abstract concept (”terrorism”, “democracy”, “British values”…). You can define to persuade, by emphasising features you believe people will find desirable (or, in some cases, undesirable). Alternatively, you can define to exclude, emphasising features some people will find it impossible to sign up to. [...]

The BBC website has a reasonably sensible, if not impartial, article by a sports shooter about guns - specifically, on how they’re fun and basically safe, except for the very rare occasions when evil people get hold of them and go massacring.
Unsurprisingly, the ‘have your say’ comments are full of the usual suspects saying things like “aha, [...]

David Aaronovitch takes the BBC’s John Humphreys to task for asking John Prescott to respond to questions based on internet rumours regarding his sex life. This is objectionable, he argues, because they are unsubstantiated and in any event irrelevant.   
It’s the standard liberal position he takes and the reasoning behind it is one I largely accept. How [...]

The story of the Bermingham Three has finally made it from the business news to the front pages of the papers.  The alleged fraudsters have been fighting extradition for over two years but now that their last appeal has failed, they will be put on a plane for Houston on Thursday and will probably be [...]

On the one hand, we have a government which is going to tell the future generations that all is well. That we have “freedom, fairness, civil responsibilities [and] democracy”. But then notice the clever avoidance of the words rights, and liberties that are normally associated with the word “civil”. Then assess that in comparison with [...]

David Cameron’s speech at the Business in the Community Forum has caused a bit of a stir. The tradecraft seems to be pretty obvious. Vague mutterings about Tesco and inappropriate knickers for girls connects young smoothiechops with the concerns of middle class women in marginal seats. He chats their chat. He gripes their gripe. And [...]

Is there any problem with the way that the ‘foreign prisoners’ issue has been discussed in most of the media in the UK? In my view, emphatically, yes. Is it an appropriate policy response to the accusation of not having competently managed the existing procedures for managing the deportation or release of foreign prisoners for [...]

Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867), Ch.VI - ‘Its Supposed Checks and Balances’:
“When the leading sect… in Parliament is doing what the nation do not like, an instant appeal ought to be registered and Parliament ought to be dissolved. But a zealot of a Premier will not appeal; he will follow his formulae; he will [...]