Yesterday a row erupted on Twitter between a group of young supporters of the two Milibands over Iran, with David’s supporters talking up the prospects of military action against Iran as Blair did last week, and Ed’s supporters mainly reiterating current US strategy. There’s a couple of problems apparent when Wes Streeting (an Oona King campaign team s […]

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The world has turned upside down, at least that was what we thought. Tony Blair and George Bush were liberal heroes in the Middle East while the left back home were doing their best to excuse Islamic fanaticism as a response to imperialism. More sense was being spoken by Sarkozy on the economy than many of our left-leaning economist MPs. […]

Do we relate more easily to individual people in need than to groups? Jonah Lehrer suggests that we find it much easier to relate to individuals in need than to groups of people because of the 'identifiable victim effect'. He cites the Chilean miners as an example - a group of people who fail to interest most of us as much as a single famine victim […]

This was originally written a year ago on a now disused blog. I'm reposting it here because I enjoyed writing it so much that I wouldn't want it to disappear. read more […]

The work of Anne Elk (Miss), undoubtedly one of the overlooked intellectual giants of our age, serves to remind us of the importance of theories. And indeed, how anyone can hold one … ahem! I cannot gainsay Miss Elk’s evident expertise in the area of paleantology since I know nothing of Brontosauruses. But I was fascinated to hear the ‘T’ word occur […]