Ministry of Truth

{via spiritof76} A little story I was told in class today. One of my classmates apparently had a phone call last night from a relative of hers. Oh good, we have the classic set up for an urban myth straight away – a classmate apparently had a phone […]

Lords defeat for anti-terror plan The Terror Bill was put together after the July bombings Controversial plans for new anti-terrorism laws have suffered a defeat in the House of Lords. Peers voted by 270 to 144 to ditch plans in the Terrorism Bill for a new offence of […]

ACTION: Introduce a ‘community call for action’ In the police reform White Paper, Building Communities, Beating Crime, we committed to introducing a power that will give local communities a formal way to request and ensure that action is taken by the police, local authorities and others in response […]

I got up this morning in what was, for me, a remarkably good mood. Why? I couldn’t have told you to begin with. I just had the indefinable sense of anticipation about the day ahead, as if subconsciously I knew there was something about today that was worth […]

What are we to do with the House of Lords? That’s a question that will come up sooner or later as another run at a package of reforms is in preparation at the moment and due to be put to Parliament at some time in the near future. […]

The government tonight suffered a damaging blow in its bid to introduce identity cards, with the Lords voting to force ministers into revealing the complete projected costs of the scheme before it can become law. Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers, backed by at least some Labour ones, inflicted […]

Another day, another assault on the legal system by the Home Office backed up by yet more flummery about ‘putting the rights of the victim first’ – this time its proposals to bypass the courts in many cases of petty offending by having defendents who plead guilty to […]

Plans to dispense with the ‘Wilson Doctrine’, a convention which bans the tapping of MPs phones (and presumably extends to e-mail and other communications) has lead to a predictable furore in both the dead tree press and the blogosphere – posts from Bloggerheads, Blairwatch and Longrider capture the […]

The first part of Richard Dawkins’ polemical documentary on religion, The Root of All Evil?, has certainly sparked plenty of debate and, not unsurprisingly, brought all manner of believers out in force to tell all the good things that there are about religion. I’m going to wait until […]

Chris is right on the money in his observations on Blair’s ‘Respect Agenda’ in noting that: What people in deprived areas are deprived of is not (merely) money; in any historic or global perspective, the average tenant in such areas is amazingly prosperous. Instead, what they lack is […]