Chocks away, chaps … !
On this rather important day for the Government, the Labour Party and indeed the nation here’s a link to a withering piece from Defence specialist Patrick Cockburn that appears today on the website of – THE [...]
News
Reaction to Paris
I’m not in the business of discussing the various short and long-term implications of the terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday (13th November) because they’re evolving as new developments in the investigation as to what happened and why occur every day – maybe I should say ‘every few [...]
What you allow is what you get
Right now, thanks to yesterday’s media explosion following the publication of the report by the Independent Commission appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) into systematic doping in the sport of athletics, there is no shortage of data, analysis and expert comment available for the [...]
A little something is troubling me
Through the UK media – and only out of passing interest – I have kept myself broadly across the developing situation this week at the Sharm el-Sheikh resort in Egypt, from which the Russian aeroplane crashed (or now perhaps was blown up) not too long after take-off last weekend with the deaths [...]
Once more unto the breach …
I’ve been trying and failing to decide whether to begin this piece with the theme “You couldn’t make it up …” or, alternatively the truism that some things in life generally (let alone in Britain) are so ridiculous that they’re quite beyond parody. On the back of last night’s House of [...]
And so the world keep turning
In the world of politics, statesmanship and ‘the way things are’ two developments struck me yesterday as highlighting some of the eternal complexities that those operating power, or aspiring to do so, face in the modern world. Firstly, on the final day of its autumn conference, the British [...]
Happy times are here again!
I particularly enjoy the autumn political parties’ conference season because of the opportunity it provides to watch each of them preaching to the converted and supposedly seeking to reach out to the wider British public. Quite how the media still treats the Lib-Dems as a serious political party [...]
A welcome advance
At the Rust we like to give credit where credit is due. For years the website of The Independent has been the poor relation among those of the UK’s broadsheet newspapers, looking far more of back bedroom amateur effort than the product of a major media organ. Today it seems things have [...]
First impressions
Shortly after the BBC’s Daily Politics show’s coverage of the House of Commons’ Prime Minister’s Question Time had finished yesterday I had occasion to ring one of my brothers to discuss a subject of mutual interest. As it happens, at the time he was in the middle of a meeting with my other [...]
Ding Ding – round one!
I consider myself an average sort of guy but in a detached sort of way I’m genuinely excited by Jeremy Corbyn’s assent to the Labour leadership. It’s certainly going to herald a fascinating period of politics in Britain, requiring ‘the Establishment’ – all of it – to ask itself [...]