Category: Current Affairs

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There was a free vote but Labour MPs mostly backed the status quo – leaving anti-abortion campaigners pinning their hopes on a change of government.

Another day, another set of half-baked policy prescription from one of Gordon’s imports. This time it’s Quentin Davies, former Tory MP, who has produced an idea that will get the backing of peppery ex-colonels up and down the country: a bank holiday to celebrate the Armed Forces.

Personally, I’d quite like to honour the armed forces by having a sensible foreign policy that didn’t say ‘me too’ to every American-led adventure, but I am sure that’s a hopeless dream. Adding a new bank holiday to celebrate the forces seems like the sort of thing the Government would have done after the Indian Mutiny, not in the 21st century. It seems quite American too, as we might expect from this PM.

I don’t want people to hate the military, or to beat up soldiers for wearing their uniforms (something that has a strong whiff of urban legend, to my mind). But I also don’t want a contentious bank holiday full of tabloid masturbation about our grand imperial past and how we bashed the Hun back in the jolly old days. We get that every time we play Germany at football, anyway.

People who believe that all those ‘human rights’ things come from the wicked European Union* could usefully pay attention to what the California Supreme Court have just done.

(* and yes, I know they come from the Council of Europe).

Amazingly, the Sun has published a not-entirely-accurate story about the EU. Report at Strange Maps.

A fascinating article by Tony Judt at the New York Review, entitled What Have We Learned, If Anything?, discusses how despite numerous memorials, the history of the 20th century is being misremembered, if it is remembered at all. Judt’s focus is particularly on the US, and its different experience of 20th century warfare, but it also contains some heartfelt passages arguing against the use of torture in modern warfare. As a statement of why the “War on Terror” is a ludicrous concept, it would be hard to improve upon.

I note from a report in this weekend’s FT that when business travellers booked on domestic flights with BA were rebooking during the Terminal 5 screw-up, 50% of them chose rail as their mode of transport. Which makes me think, first, why weren’t they going by rail in the first place? And second, why aren’t we taxing domestic flights out of existence and freeing up some of those supposedly vital Heathrow landing slots? We could even use the revenue to build a useful national rail link to the airport, like at Schiphol or Paris CDG.

Interesting but not surprising that the BBC Q&A on the rights of those stranded at Heathrow leaves until the third screen any mention of the fact that the rights derive from EU legislation. If it had been straight bananas, it would have been “new EU rules” in the headline.

Gordon Brown has given his first foreign press interview, to Le Monde. It’s here.

New from the Daily Hate: make up a story about how immigrants are all lying thieving bastards. We won’t check the facts, and we’ll pay you one hundred pounds!

(Greenslade)

I don’t always agree with Glenn Greenwald, a political blogger at Salon, but his piece today, on how the supporters of the GWOT are motivated in part by a desire to be seen as soldiers in a great cause, really hits some good points. Bonus credit, too, for referencing the Paranoid Style in American Politics, which describes a lot of Internet debate avant la lettre.