Everyone’s favourite mad-cap Mayor (of the people who read this blog) Christian Estrosi has made a final coup against freedom and democracy: he has banned the recording of council meetings, after censoring street performers it was the next logical step to censor his councillors. The Mayor of Nice decided without warning that the recordings would [...]
Bulgaria has begun parliamentary proceedings for staging a referendum on whether public broadcaster Bulgarian National Television (BNT) should continue a special daily news bulletin in Turkish. In a move which resembles the recent ban on Minarets in Switzerland, the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Boiko Borissov, and his ruling party GERB have publicly endorsed the campaign launched [...]
I have been working for our French colleagues in the Parti Socialiste for 6 months now, and though I don’t know what a Jedward is, I have been able to experience ‘continental democracy’. The debate about electoral reform in Britain has always been “PR or not to PR”, with the third way of AV or [...]
The episode of Question Time which featured the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, has just aired. Once again, Twitter came into full force. According to @tweetminster there were up to 53.5K tweets with 12.49 tweets per second at close of #bbcqt. Analysis of the debate will no doubt dominate the headlines and the blogosphere tomorrow [...]
Bloggers launch the “Coalition Against No Platform“ Today I am pleased to publish a new page, the Coalition Against No Platform, a directory of bloggers and articles from all political parties. We believe that the No Platform policy, where speakers refuse to participate in debates at which the BNP or other undesirables are present is foolish [...]
Yesterday concluded a massive public consultation across the whole of France. The French were asking themselves about the privatisation of the postal service, La Poste. When I say “asking themselves” I mean it literally; the whole project was a mock referendum. The mock referendum was designed to show support for a real referendum, which is [...]
Recently I wrote a piece denouncing the Labour Party’s No Platform Policy and its attitude towards the BNP. (Link to that) Shortly afterwards, fellow Labour Colleagues came forward with their own pieces agreeing with me, including Bryony King, Adam Connell, James Alexander and Olly Deed. (Each name links to each post) Even on the Right, [...]
The rise of the BNP is an issue that strikes a strange nerve in the Labour movement, one that triggers a huge sense of panic and hysteria. It is time to confront this phobia so we can confront the problem head on. Our first act must be to renounce the No Platform Policy. Those in [...]
Panic-stricken MPs at the epicentre of the Expenses Scandal put out a range of “constitutional reforms” that would be able to fix parliament despite not having anything to do with the problem. Fixed Term Parliaments have been shelved for a long time now; it was Labour Policy in 1992, but since they didn’t win nothing [...]
The three most controversial things in life are politics, religion and football. Fortunately, I don’t give a damn about football. Rather than getting shot from both sides, I’m able to avoid tribal warfare in that respect. When it comes to religion, I’m an Existentialist (Or rather Absurdist, if you want to get into it), which [...]
