There is a lot of money to be made from getting websites visible. Search engine optimisation, I believe it is called. It is a science in itself to get yourself up the top of page 1 of a google search, whether to help a website sell something or attract clicks for an advertising banner. Rumour [...]

Madam Miaow has produced a superb dissection of Ferguson’s lowbrow television tirade, and particularly his absence of research. Ferguson is a man of little learning who wears it heavily. I recently discussed his hateful and lightweight theories on why Muslim societies are in some way inferior. Ferguson is so enamoured of the idea that only [...]

The wave of urgent desire for freedom that has swept the Arab world has its pale reflection in the belated realisation that we have as a nation been complacent in maintaining and indeed supporting hideous dictatorships. Somehow it all became real to the sheepish British public. We had been complicit for years in flying extraordinary [...]

There are many thousands of people imprisoned in Uzbekistan alone who should not be imprisoned and who suffer much worse conditions than even the genuine horrors of Wandsworth being visited on Julian Assange. But the Assange case has implications for ever deteriorating Western freedoms which should not be overlooked. Then there are many war criminals [...]

The problem with the wikileaks method of releasing the documents through mainstream media outlets, is that they are then interpreted for the public by a lazy and incompetent group of “Journalists” whose arses have grown plump on the rewards of retailing spoonfed propaganda. So the mainstream missed the underlying stories and context, simply because they [...]

Africans have yet to see much economic benefit from the policies espoused by the apostles of globalisation. Not exactly many black faces among the delegates either. Scroll through all the Guardian’s pictures here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/jun/09/bilderberg-spain

I am genuinely very sorry for David Laws, but he has done the decent thing and avoided a horrible protracted media exposure. He plainly broke the rules on not paying rent to a partner, and trying to hide behind quibbles on what constitutes a partner would not have helped. Laws has now shown that he [...]

I am among those who has been very impressed by David Laws’ performance in his brief ministerial career. And I have read carefully the Lib Dems blogs – which seem universally to be defending him, like this. http://markreckons.blogspot.com/2010/05/david-laws-should-not-resign.html http://www.libdemvoice.org/david-laws-issues-statement-on-his-expenses-and-sexuality-19728.html The difficulty is that the Commons rules stated quite unequivocally that an MP could not claim [...]

Bruce Anderson is becoming a caricature of the golf club saloon bar bore. After his enthusiastic espousal of torture, he now gives us this piece: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-cameron-could-be-our-de-gaulle-1960885.html Actually I agree Cameron could be our De Gaulle: a posturing, arrogant mountebank with a cult of personality, repressive right wing views and an overweening sense both of his [...]

Before the debate starts, I wish to make one thing crystal clear. The CEO of YouGov PLC, “Stalwart Stephan” Shakespeare (whom I may have earlier called “Sleazy Stephan” by typographical error), is a business associate, close personal friend and former campaign manager of Mr Jeffrey (formerly trading as “Lord”) Archer. Any suggestion that “Stalwart Stephan” [...]

There are few recent protest songs that you would listen to for the sheer musical pleasure of it. But here is one from bluesman Mike Whellans – and that’s the great piper Mike Katz on guitar. For more of both Mikes: http://www.templerecords.co.uk/newwebsite/home.php

I see that “Lord” Alan Sugar, the unpleasant bully of employees, has donated four hundred thousand pounds to the New Labour campaign. All part of why New Labour will never give us a democratic upper chamber. Having promised it three times in their election manifesto and broken the promise every time, i am stunned they [...]

The newspapers today carry the unsurprising news that Blair’s business affairs are routed through a multiplicity of companies operating in tax havens. He is raking in over £5 million per year, aside from his official job of chief Zionist – sorry, I mean Middle East Peace Envoy. But I was more struck by the information [...]

It is amazing just how far you can get with the right family connections plus a slavish devotion to licking the arse of the powers that be. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Patrick Wintour, as talentless a piece of servile scum as ever disgraced the once fine profession of journailsm. Here we have quite [...]

Not only were MPs lining up to sell their parliamentary influence to the highest bidder on the recent Dispatches programme. Geoff Hoon offered to sell to defence companies inside knowledge of future defence trends from his insider position as a member of a NATO advisory committee – and to help US defence companies take over [...]

The jailing of Pat O’Donnell in Ireland for seven months for “obstructing a Garda” seems an appalling attempt to end local environmental opposition to a massive Shell pipeline project. Having seen so much of Shell’s appalling bullying of local communities in the Niger Delta, I did not really expect to see the same behaviour in [...]

A national newspaper has put in a Freedom of Information request to the University of Dundee for the expenses claims of Court members over the last three years – precisely the period I have been Rector. Now why might they want to do that? Personally, I only submitted any calims in the first six months [...]

Rod Liddle. With an acknowledgement to Sunny for all his work, I like Will Straw’s post best for the simple isolation of Liddle’s acknowledged comments on Auschwitz. Just these crass statements alone are enough to put Liddle beyond the pale. http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/01/rod-liddles-anti-semitism-exposed/ Liddle would be at home at the Independent. We get so dazzled by Fisk [...]

With thanks to Old Holborn via Subrosa Blonde. In the past, my anger with DFID has been focused main;y on its channeling through CDC of funds to private companies benefiting senior New Labour hacks. But this news makes me even more angry. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6982999.ece Returning to CDC, I would like to think that the Tories will [...]

I have been foolish sometimes, but I will never, ever write anything as stupid as this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/dec/30/michael-white-politicians-decade-harriet-harman White is of course no ordinary fool, but one of the very nastiest reptiles on the nexus of political power and media control of the people. He is fully complicit in New Labour’s war crimes and assaults on [...]