Politics

George Monbiot is undergoing an astounding and very public transformation. Last week he overcame the habit of a lifetime and fully endorsed nuclear power as a safe energy source. He went further this week, attacking the anti-nuclear movement for perpetuating lies and ignoring the consensus around scientific facts. He levels special criticism at the allegedly lax scholarship of Dr Helen Caldicott, a decorated primate of the anti-nuclear communion.  He also debunks the myths surrounding the disaster at Chernobyl and laments that campaigners have abused that tragedy by exaggerating its consequences. Monbiot’s tone is neither arch nor righteous. Rather, he’s disappointed and the piece has a dignified poignancy. He concludes:     

Apparently the black writer of good natured doggerel, Benjamin Zephaniah, was airbrushed out of leaflets distributed by the pro-AV lobby and Baldrick  photo-shopped in, instead. This was for leaflets which were distributed outside London; the ones in London showed Zephaniah alongside a bunch of similarly minded pseudo slebs. The implication is that people outside London would have taken one look at Zephaniah and decided to vote for first past the post. I can’t work out if this because of the inherent racism of the metro faux leftie tossers of the AV campaign, or the inherent racism of people living outside London. Even more puzzling is the notion that anyone would

Sometimes, one does really wonder about the British judiciary. Its decision to issue injunctions which bar people from talking to their MPs about an issue, as revealed in The Times this morning, displays a shocking contempt for parliament. It suggests that the court have learned little from the Trafigura case. The justification for these so-called ‘hyper injunctions’ is that if someone tells an MP about a case, it can then be raised in parliament and what the MP said reported under parliamentary privilege. But parliamentary privilege exists for a reason: MPs must be able to raise any issue they want in parliament. For judges to try and limit it goes against

Nick Clegg is campaigning in Leicester today, ahead of the local election. The Labour party has just confirmed that Sir Peter Soulsby has stood down as MP for Leicester South today to seek election as the town’s Mayor. A happy coincidence? Probably not. Labour are already running a coherent campaign in Leicester. Michael Crick points out that the by-election will fall on 5 May, together with the local council elections, the Mayoral election and the referendum on the alternative vote.  A party spokesman has opened new parliamentary candidate Jonathan Ashworth’s (who used to work for Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband) campaign by saying: ‘Both Peter and Jon will offer the

Robert Peston called it: the Irish banks are mired. The latest round of stress tests has been conducted and the headline figure is that the Irish banks face a shortfall of 24 billion euros. A major recapitalisation will follow and it’s likely that more institutions will be taken under state control. Ireland is also likely to ask for more cash from the EU. These tests were based on conservative criteria, where the Irish economy contracted by 1.6 percent this year, unemployment peaked at 15.8 percent and there was a cumulative collapse in property prices of 62 percent. It’s grim in Ireland, but not that grim: most forecasters are predicting GNP