Am back in Edinburgh and speaking at a Yes Scotland meeting on Friday 24 May at the Columcille Centre, 2 Newbattle Terrace, Edinburgh at 7pm. This is my first entry as a speaker into the referendum campaign, and I am excited – and nervous – about it. I have of course given quite literally hundreds [...]

The linked long term phenomena of falling electoral turnout and a decreasing percentage of those who do vote, voting for the two main parties, leaves politicians in power with the active support of an increasingly small minority of the population. To date this has not seriously impacted on consent – the Majority are apathetic, and [...]

Could you indulge me by helping me with a little experiment? Could you google Adam Werritty, and then list in comments what google gives you on the “People who searched for Adam Werritty also searched for” line.

Now officially Britain’s wealthiest man, Alisher Usmanov has perhaps the world’s most carefully manicured Wikipedia entry. This article looks interesting and worrying. Can anyone do a good translation? Automatic web translators seem to struggle with it even more than usual. Please do not post any automated translations.

Here is Cameron to sing you a song, to cheer us all up.

In 1816, in a “Big Bang” liberalisation, the commercial and financial restrictions on trading with India were removed. This account is from John Capper’s 1853 book, The Three Presidencies of India. I just wondered if it reminded you of anything? The impetus which the Indian trade received on the opening of the ports of the [...]

I am furious to learn that Israeli settlers resident illegally in the occupied territories are allowed visa free entry to the UK, whereas Palestinians living legally in those territories require a visa (and won’t usually get one). From Hansard Asked by Lord Warner To ask Her Majesty’s Government why Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories [...]

I can claim to have had a small hand in instigating the legal complaint to the International Criminal Court by the Comoros Islands against the murders by Israeli troops on the Mavi Marmara. The Washington Post writes: In a filing, lawyers from the Istanbul-based law firm Elmadag argued that the events that took place on [...]

Ray McGovern always advises me not to accentuate the negatives in becoming a whistleblower. I always talk of the inevitable unemployment – no employer, not even those you might think of as moral, will ever employ a whistleblower as the quality an employer values in an employee above all others is loyalty to their employer. [...]

It must be a fundamental human right not to have to pay James Purnell. The obnoxious Blair clone is on £420,000 a year at the BBC. I found this article absolutely horrifying; the BBC has appointed as director of news and current affairs James Harding, a man who wrote a defence of the 2008/9 massacre [...]

Back home today from a very life-affirming Uzbek opposition meeting in Istanbul. Blogging resumes tomorrow. Today is Cameron’s birthday and Jamie’s birthday was on Friday Emily’s birthday is three weeks away. I really have an enormous amount for which to be grateful. I should recall than more often.

A computer virus is sending out emails from me – don’t open if you get one. I am puzzled how this happened, as I have not received or opened any suspicious emails today or visited any dubious websites. I have Norton on fully and it automatically both updated and scanned last night. As soon as [...]

The Guardian today published a photo of a bit of derelict yard where kids had been playing, as evidence that because of cuts the local council – Blackburn – could not afford a proper playground. The reason Blackburn council cannot afford a proper playground is nothing to do with cuts. It is because. like most [...]

Alex Ferguson is fit to be mentioned in the same sentence as Jock Stein. That is most of what needs to be said on his retirement. Except to remind that fool Abramovic that Ferguson won nothing for his first four seasons at Old Trafford. I recall in 1990, at the end of Ferguson’s third season [...]

It is the bankers who pay the rat Lawson who want London as an offshore money-laundering centre outside the EU. This is what Lawson said about the EU today: “Economic disadvantages are much greater than the advantages. In particular – it is not the only thing, but in particular – the attempt to overregulate and [...]

In the same week that the Obama administration decided there would be no prosecutions of Bush acolytes for torture and extraordinary rendition, they also agreed to go ahead with a move to increase the jail sentence of civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart. In July 2010 they succeeded in getting her sentence increased from 28 months [...]

Israel’s massive air strikes against Syria are, beyond argument, illegal. There is no provision in international law that enables you to bomb another country because that country is in internal chaos. Yet the reporting on the BBC, and indeed throughout the mainstream media, makes no mention of their illegality, and makes no mention of the [...]

Nigel Evans is fully entitled to the presumption of innocence; and the media seem more inclined to give it to him than they did to Malcolm Blackman, linked to Anonymous. In this particularly disgusting piece of journalism by Paul Cheston of the Evening Standard, the vicious liar who brought false accusations against Blackman is referred [...]

The British Embassy in Bahrain is promoting the appalling attack on human rights in that country – on the official British government website. The views expressed can be reasonably described as fascist: So-called human rights organisations, which unfortunately are largely administered by ex-ideologists and even terrorists, today propagate their own version of the word ‘freedom’, [...]

It is tempting to treat the jailing of fake bomb detector salesman James McCormick as comedy, so risible were his completely bogus detectors. Indeed, one day I have no doubt we shall be seeing a television film treating him as a lovable rogue; the con-man figure is the staple of many movie plots. He will [...]