You sport a huge beard and a towel on your head and in the name of Allah you try to bring down the computer infrastructure on which the world depends. You are, in contemporary argot, a ‘cyber-terrorist’. You wear a button-down shirt and chinos, and in the name of turning a profit you deliberately set
Matt Yglesias writes: For such a nice country, Italy’s politics seem weirdly screwed up. There’s the famous instability of the governments, of course. And then there’s the fact that their main right-of-center party is led by the legendarily corrupt Silvio Berlusconi. And then there’s the fact that despite the broadly discreditable nature of Berlusconi, the
From James Joyner: News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch says that NATO is in a “crisis of confidence” because Western Europe is “losing its faith in the values and institutions that have kept us free.” He calls for a radical redefinition of the Alliance in order to save it, including extending membership to Australia, Japan, and
After Armstrong, Benaud, Constantine, Dexter, Edrich, Fry and Gower it is clearly time for Len Hutton’s lads to take the field. This, I submit, is a pretty strong ‘H’ XI. It would have been posted three days ago had I not been paralysed by indecision brought on by the difficulty of selecting the man to
In honour of the nicest day of the year so far: I wander’d lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. This afternoon, at home. Though since we’re at the foot
I must admit to mixed feelings at the news that Number Ten will fly the flag of St George tomorrow. On the one hand, it’ll be an impressive sight and compared to the dog’s dinner of devolution is hardly likely to tear at the constitutional fabric. On the other, Downing Street is the home of
Even spell-checker’s rebelling against Gordon Brown. On the Labour website earlier: “excellance for all”. It’s been fixed now, but not before some quick-thinking types captured screen grabs.
How should Brown deal with the 10p tax band issue? That’s the question that was put to Politics Home’s group of 100 political insiders today. In answer – some 62 percent of repondents believe he should help low income earners by raising the threshhold at which people start paying tax. By contrast, only 10 per cent thought the 10p tax band should be
Team Brown’s clearly spooked by the 10p tax rebellion (and so it should be – as Jackie Ashley pointed out yesterday, the repercussions could be massive). The evidence? Well, the Prime Minister called Angela Smith all the way from America, to prevent her from resigning; he struck an unusually conciliatory tone in last night’s Parliamentary Labour Party
With polls in Pennsylvania having opened – and with everyone expecting a Clinton victory – do check out Americano’s guide to how to interpret her winning margin.
This morning, The Sun offers an enthusiastic endorsement of Boris Johnson proclaiming that he ‘has the energy and the imagination to give this great city what it needs.’ Meanwhile, in an interview with The Times Brian Paddick is scathing about Ken Livingstone declaring “I just don’t trust Ken Livingstone”. Paddick goes onto say, “The thought
There’s a certain amount of Blair nostalgia in the Labour party at the moment as Gordon Brown struggles at Number Ten. That feeling is only going to be heightened by Rachel Sylvester’s column in the Telegraph this morning which contains this great bit of reporting: “When [Blair] heard his anointed successor announcing with a dramatic
Now this is an odd one. In spite of the 10p tax row – and the very public dissent by some Labour figures – the latest Guardian / ICM poll sees the Tory lead cut significantly. Cameron & Co. score 39 percent (down 3 on last month); Labour are on 34 percent (up 5); and
I see that heaps of folks are having fun with this sign, recently displayed at a pro-Tibet rally in San Francisco: It is possible of course, that our friend here doesn’t know that the 1936 Olympics were held in Berlin*. But isn’t it also possible that our friendly demonstrator is actually asking an excellent question:
Filmmaker Andrew Filippone Jr imagines a pseudo-Beckettian edition of The Charlie Rose Show:
Why are all these Labour MPs worried about the 10p tax? It is the least of the ways in which this Labour government has hurt the poor over its years in government. Let me count the ways – well, half a dozen anyway: 1) Sink schools. By granting LEAs monopoly control over education provision, bureaucrats
The latest Evening Standard / YouGov poll is in, and it records another encouraging lead for Boris. The results in full – Boris is on 44 percent (down 1 from last week); Livingstone’s on 33 percent (down 2); and Paddick’s on 12 percent (up 2). When second preferences are allocated, Boris snares 53 percent to Ken’s 47
After hearing Tony Blair’s first confession, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor is on a roll. He landed Blair for a speech on religion at Westminster Cathedral earlier this month, and now he’s lined up William Hague for another talk. The shadow foreign secretary’s lecture on Thursday, entitled “Practical politics, principled faith”, has now sold out. Is our Wilberforce
Rosa Prince, who is owning this whole (non) endorsement story, has spoken to Kate Hoey about what happened and it seems she genuinely is sick. But the rest of Hoey’s explanation is hard to credit: “Boris told me last week he was visiting the ballet school – it’s a great project so I said I
Labour are going through a wobble at the moment—which might turn into a collapse on May 1st—and the leadership desperately needs the party to close ranks and MPs to stop making critical statements, on or off record, that fan the flames of the whole government in meltdown story. But here’s the rub: having spent ten