Ben Goldacre comprehensively fisks Gillian McKeith… In fact, I don’t care what kind of squabbles McKeith wants to engage in over the technicalities of whether a non-accredited correspondence-course PhD from the US entitles you, by the strictest letter of the law, to call yourself “doctor”: to me, nobody […]

Jack’s arguments on House of Lords reform… Mmm… where to start. Tell you what, lets get religion out of the way first and look at what Jack’s putting forward as arguments in favour of religious representation in the second chamber. 6.22 It is important that faith communities are […]

No work today, due to the bad weather, so I need something to occupy my time… and that something will be Jack Straw’s White Paper on reform of the House of Lords. I’m not intending to rake over the mechanics of the reforms, rather I’ve been looking through […]

Just got usual weekly missive from the Groan’s ‘backbencher’ and its looks like the ‘crits’ for Fox News Lite aren’t going to be good ones… What is it that makes 18 Doughty Street ( http://www.18doughtystreet.com/ )’s new attack ads so different – so appalling? You might have thought […]

Apropos of my comments about ‘Brave Sir Iain’ and Colin Challen, it seems that ‘Chippen’s’ a tad nonplussed by the reaction of Danial Finkelstein over at the newly redesigned Times website – which I have to say looks the absolute dog’s bollocks and now stands out as by […]

Justin McKeating, standing in for Martin Bright at the New Statesman blog… He’s [Tim Ireland] certainly far less nihilistic than Guido with his self-confessed urge to ‘slash and burn’ the political establishment. Tim’s driven, yes, tenacious also, but a stalker, an obsessive and a bully? Well, these words […]

A few hardy souls who’ve braved the blogosphere’s equivalent of the Grimpen Mire will have noted that Iain Dale has rapidly backed off from his ‘experiment’ in open user feedback and switch comment moderation back on, on the back of some rather dubious claims of visitations by ‘New […]

And this week’s contender for dumb ass idea of the year is… Plan to list paedophile web names Sex offenders could be forced to register their e-mail addresses and chatroom names, the government says. Home Secretary John Reid said he may make paedophiles put online identity details on […]

It can’t have escaped everyone’s notice that Tim Ireland, Garry Smith (aka Curious Hamster) and myself have spent a fair amount of time, of late, digging into the many connection between the supposedly ‘independent’ charitable think-tank, Policy Exchange, and the Conservative Party and, latterly, connections between 18 Doughty […]