Category: Current Affairs

Prince William graduated from university today (MA in geography, for what it’s worth), and the press hoopla around it reminded me of how cruel fate is to make people Royal.

Not only are the general public (and a fair sprinkling of nutters) constantly speculating about your love life, but it’s a life sentence, whether you like it or not.

I feel deeply sorry for Prince William and Kate Middleton, who appear to be perfectly normal undergrads, if perhaps a shade richer than the average (an article from the Mirror, linked above, described Ms Middleton’s family home as ‘a £500,000 mansion in Berkshire’. I know Berkshire, and £500,000 don’t buy you no mansion).

Perhaps it’s a mark of civilisation that monarchies have stopped oppressing the people and started oppressing themselves. But couldn’t Republic (or at least Amnesty) move away from the bone dry arguments about heads of state, and start a Human Rights case?

Barry Goldwater, arch conservative, speaking in 1964, and quoted on Fierce Planet:

“The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.’”

If you ever doubt that the wingnuts are really nuts, listen to the discussions on the Schiavo autopsy over at Free Republic. (Comments are below the tendentious news story).

Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, it seems, and Michael Schiavo hadn’t physically abused her. Humble pie all round.

More discussion chez Margolis.

Congratulations to prominent Manchester United fan Gus O’Donnell, who has been appointed Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of The Home Civil Service.

The Swiss have voted to join the Schengen border-free zone, meaning that I won’t have to be woken at 2 a.m. to get my passport out when travelling from Brussels to Italy by train. More interestingly, the UK and Ireland are not members, even though the non-EU Norwegians and Icelanders are. Indeed, the UK & Ireland are the only countries in Western Europe not to be Schengen members now.

This may not be quite the right time, but is here the place to start a UK-into-Schengen campaign? I’m sick of having to find my passport every time I want to go to Paris.

A leading Scottish QC has been making sectarian jokes at a Rangers supporters’ dinner. Sectarianism, it’s hard to get your head round.

In the Spectator this week (use bugmenot), Peter Oborne writes:

The Conservative party has won all the great intellectual and political battles of the last quarter-century. It has defined – and continues to define – the public argument over the role of the state, the acceptable level of taxation, the nature of the economy, the power of trade unions, the scope of public services and the limits of the European Union.

That’s something that may have been true up till about 2001. With two stinging election defeats in the bag – and it must be considered a failure not to have hurt Blair more this time around – it’s hard to see how the Tories are still leading the debate on public affairs. After all:

• The Government has backed the Live 8 event, and is focusing its G8 and EU presidencies on Africa and climate change
• Taxes have gone up, but people still voted Labour in large numbers (or Liberal – where even higher taxes were likely)
• The debate on the EU, for all its folly, has moved on a long way from empty seats in Brussels; and
• The role of public services, particularly through SureStart, the New Deal and other initiatives, has changed and become much more personal than under the last lot.

Part of this is just the march of time, but a lot of it is Labour rewriting the DNA of social politics, just as much as the Tories rewrote the DNA of economic politics in 1979-97.

Latvia’s parliament has ratified the European Constitution treaty. And, as the horse gallops over the horizon…

A truly depressing piece on Jim and Kathy Link in the New York Times. Most depressing elements – the rapid relocations (something I can sympathise with, being in the middle of a house move across London), and the constant driving. It’s no wonder the environment is screwed.