I’ve just been reading through Clare Perry’s ‘Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection‘ which, of course, recommends the introduction of opt-in porn filters on internet connections in the UK, and its fair to say that I’ve spotted one or two problems with the report that need to […]

The starting point for much of what I write here at the Ministry tends to be the kind of stuff that bugs me because, when I think about it in detail, it doesn’t quite make sense. Take, for example, the very recent rape conviction of a Sheffield United […]

If you’ve ever read Richard Dawkins’ book ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ or seen his Channel 4 series ‘The Genius of Darwin’ then you may readily recall the rather surreal interview that Dawkins conducted with an American creationist named Wendy Wright. If you’ve not seen the series or […]

I have nothing but admiration for the good folks at Full Fact and the time and effort they put into monitoring the accuracy of factual claims as they appear in the media, but even they sometimes miss a trick or two and their analysis of the media coverage […]

I’ll hold back on making a detailed commentary on the latest development in the Tory Party’s ongoing war an abortion rights, but I cannot let this empty-headed comment from Andrew Lansley pass without comment. “The rules in the Abortion Act are there for a reason – to ensure […]

As regular visitors to the Ministry will know, I written a couple of posts on the thorny subject of rape statistics in the last 18 months, one looking primarily at prevalence and under-reporting, the other at data relating to the overall performance of the criminal justice system, which […]

The Telegraph’s sting operation on a small number of abortion clinics has, of course, provoked the usual frenzy of overblown commentary from Nadine Dorries and her anti-abortion buddies, including an article at ConHome by the Delusional Member for Mid-Narnia which nicely illustrates the rather casual nature of her […]

Over at the Richard Dawkins Foundation, the great man himself has posted a fascinating and, to say the least, illuminating account of a telephone conversation with a reporter from the Telegraph which speaks volumes for the rather desperate state into which the newspaper has fallen in recent times. […]

It not that often that I come across an article in the Guardian that leave me grinding my teeth in sheer frustration, save for those rare occasions on which the newspaper has given Nadine Dorries an undeserved platform. However, this truly dreadful piece of naked churnalism by the […]

I think its time for Andrew Brown to move on from The Guardian to a publisher like Elsevier where his regular opinion column can be given a more appropriate title. Something along the lines of ‘The Journal of Not Even Wrong’ would do very nicely, if only because […]