Conference, Today, Europe celebrates the 10th Annual European Day of Languages, a European Union initiative to appreciate linguistic diversity in Europe and promote language learning. You might think it a bit of an anorak subject, and perhaps it is, but as a trainee interpreter of French and Spanish, it’s my anorak subject. Britain cannot afford [...]
At the start of the hung parliament, our instincts told us that the coalition would be unstable and probably break down within a year or two. Be it out of No Confidence from parliament or confidence that the Tories could win a majority alone, as Harold Wilson did in 1964. On the contrary, everything we [...]
John Prescott made an extremely appropriate, intelligent and articulate comment recently. Whether he knew it or not.* John Hutton, a former Labour minister who has been appointed as “chair of a new public sector pension commission” joining Labour MP Frank Field’s appointment as a “Povery Tzar”. Prescott called them both “Collaborators.” A piece on LabourList [...]
The General Election is the 6th of May. I should be out and about in Bath and North East Somerset campaigning like (I hope) my friends are. Instead, I’m in Spain. I keep reminding people, to their surprise, that I study languages, not politics. Amazingly, students of politics are the least politically engaged people I [...]
The Prime Minister called the election today, and no doubt the entire every politically engaged person was running around and jumping up and down. I was stuck on BBC News until about 1130 before having to catch a flight. I couldn’t help notice one little thing though, a press release from my favourite right-wing pinata, [...]
A bit of a Christmas Cracker now, from our very own living bad joke. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory PPC for North-East Somerset, really is the comedy Tory gift who keeps on giving. (Giving tax benefits to the super-rich that is, ho ho!) His latest gaffe, since November, sees him once again faking he truth. Private [...]
Between longer and more abstract blog posts, this evening I decided to conduct a little experiment. I decided to look at the Political Views of the people I went to High School with. My secondary school was independent. It was hardly Eton, but it still qualifies as private. My method was to go through my [...]
Three months after David Cameron held a public meeting in Bath, Nick Clegg, better known as leader of the Shadow Conservative Party, has managed to find time in his busy, busy, schedule to do likewise. When Cameron came to visit, the Lib Dems criticised the Tories over the amount of information participants were asked to [...]
I said the Internets would be ablaze with analysis and accusations over Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. It didn’t take Nostradamus to know that prediction would come true. Hopefully this post will be the last I need to say on the matter, as I’ll just add this little contribution to the debate: A while [...]
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 [...]
