Category: Current Affairs

Matthew Taylor, former IPPR guru and Downing Street advisor, has left office with a speech criticising the media’s hostile attitude to politicians, and the rush to the extreme that can be seen from the Daily Mail to the Internet.

Is there really such visceral, knee-jerk hatred of politicians around? Well, you could check out Guido Fawkes, whose commenters think that all politicians should be shot. Oh, and of course, a few digs at Taylor’s sex life too.

“Behead those who claim Islam is violent”, anyone?

A post on Fistful of Euros contains this little gem from the Vatican:

“The Holy See has reiterated on many occasions that the right to freedom of expression … is subject to just limits, in particular when the exercise of this right would offend the religious sentiments of believers,” the Vatican said.

If that makes you feel a little worried, you may need to reread this.

Link: Good Riddance.

Did you hear the story about red wine cancelling out the effects of fatty foods? Yes? But did you hear that to get that effect you’d have to drink 750 to 1,500 bottles of wine a day? Thought not.

Philip Cowley writes an excellent rebuttal of Simon Jenkins’s ludicrous hyperbole on Parliament. Why anyone takes Jenkins seriously, I cannot imagine. One of the quintessential sounds of the English morning is a distant Jenkins, barking up the wrong tree.

There is a detailed, and important, and terrifying article on Ars Technica, explaining how easy it is to hack the electronic voting machines increasingly being used in the US. Example (with my emphasis):

In order to use a supervisor card to access the AccuVote, you must first enter a four-digit PIN. In version of the machine that was in use as late as 2003, the exact same supervisor PIN was hard-coded into every single AccuVote TS shipped nationwide. That PIN was 1111. (I am not making this up.) This is still the default PIN for these machines, although the county can change it on a machine-by-machine basis if they have the workers and the time.

Rolling Stone magazine excoriates “the worst Congress ever”.

The BBC reports on a foolish joke by a local councillor, who made some unwise remark about gay marriage. Unfortunately, in the interview, he just makes a bad situation worse:

“”I believe in the law of Moses. I’m not a religious fanatic. As long as they do it behind closed doors, I don’t mind, but now they [homosexuals] control the media, the television. They have much stronger control over this country than they should have”

Oh dear.

One piece of good news in the struggle between terrorism and politics: IRA ‘no longer a terrorist threat’ (Guardian).

The Onion’s piece (Senate Wins Fight To Lower Allowable Amperage Levels On Detainees’ Testicles) is altogether too close to the reality of a world where the Senate has allowed noted humanitarian G. W. Bush to define the term torture, and to suspend habeas corpus for anyone he fancies. (BBC, though I’m paraphrasing a little).

Oh, and one of the members supporting the Bill was Sen. John McCain, one of the main speakers at the Tory party conference this year. And it seemed like such a good idea when they invited him.

Update: Robert Philpot makes a similar point on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site.