Politics

Getting my head around Jewish identity

August 29, 2010

I’ve been trying to clarify some ideas for a sabbatical proposal in my own head. I’m all too aware that what I’m proposing deals with some controversial areas, and that by concentrating on one particular perspective I run the risk of being accused of bias. A sabbatical, however, is relatively short, and I think it [...]

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Strange Scriptures: Israel, Palestine and a genocidal God

June 3, 2010

I don’t really know what I want to say in this post. But this week it has been extremely uncomfortable watching and listening to the news of Israel’s raid on the Gaza would-be blockade-busting convoy, while at the same time reading through some of the bloodier passages in the book of Joshua, retailing the Israelite [...]

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David Laws and the Telegraph: why now?

May 29, 2010

Because I mentioned David Laws in one of the posts I made during the election – in which it transpired that I was wrong – I have been getting a number of visits from people following searches about him. In the last three weeks in particular I have noticed a number of searches for some [...]

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Gay rights, consumer choice and individual conscience: has Liberty lost the plot?

May 15, 2010

The story of the B & B owners who turned a gay couple away doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. First it popped up in a brief media flurry during the election campaign when the now disappeared Shadow Home Secretary said he thought people who ran B & Bs in their own homes [...]

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Really – a coalition of losers?

May 10, 2010

I’m decidedly unimpressed with the idea that Gordon will go so that the LibDems and Labour can form a coalition government. Really, of the main parties the two parties that gained fewer votes will gang up on the one with the most, and the one with the least votes and MPs will actually get to [...]

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Fair votes or disproportional power to the party?

May 8, 2010

I’m pulling a bit of discussion out of the comments on this post. A commenter said: More than 64% voters voted against the tories and with mixed member proportional representation voters’ wishes would be more properly respected. A couple of us have already picked up on that particular way of phrasing it, which Steph has [...]

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A Liberal-Tory deal may not be a bad thing

May 7, 2010

I may be in a fairly small minority here, but I don’t think a LibDem – Conservative deal would necessarily be the bad thing a lot of Twitterers seem to be thinking. They have some shared opposition to a Big Brother State which needs rolling back. The Conservatives have a fairly hard-headed approach to the [...]

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Random Post-Election Ruminations

May 7, 2010

The BBC exit poll is looking remarkably good with most results in – far better than it looked at the start of the night, when even the BBC’s own pundits were all questioning it as each early result came in. The odd thing is that this random sampling worked overall, despite the fact that result [...]

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The BIg Society – but whose?

May 5, 2010

One of the things I like about the Conservative party’s rhetoric is the renewed emphasis that politicians can’t do everything or fix every problem. I’m not fully persuaded either that they entirely believe it, or that they mean all the same things by it which I would mean. I’ve long thought, however, that one of [...]

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Poll says I’m a secret LibDem drinker

April 27, 2010

Internet votes never turn out the way I expect. I followed a link to this one from Steve Tilley’s blog. The questions weren’t necessarily the ones I’d have asked, or the only ones I think matter, and from what I know of the parties’ various policies, I’d have said I answered slightly more questions in [...]

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