World

The usually estimable David Maddox has a very strange post up at the Scotsman’s politics blog complaining that Alex Salmond wants to exploit the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn. Apparently: While Bannockburn is a battle which Scots should take historic pride in, seeing off an invading English army which had numerical superiority, it nevertheless is symbolic of anti-English feeling which are rife with the SNP and nationalist movement as a whole. So much for the “positive nationalism” which Mr Salmond claims to espouse. It is difficult to escape the feeling that this will be a year long “hate the English” festival in the run-up to a double election in 2015. This

Going out on a limb here, I’m guessing that Rand Paul’s admission that he would have opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act is not going to help him become the next Republican Senator representing the great state of  Kentucky. Of course he’s walking back from his comments now but going from “I wouldn’t have voted for it” to “Of course I would have voted for it” is flippier than your usual flip-flop. Paul, like his father Ron, is no white supremacist and his opposition to federal encroachment is principled and reasonably consistent. The Civil Rights Act was indeed a terrible infringement upon States’ Rights. But the problem with the Paulite

Beautiful muslim women. Verily. According to the increasingly-ridiculous Daniel Pipes, Rima Fakih’s triumph in this year’s Miss USA beauty pageant is yet another dismal example of affirmative action. This is what that “affirmative action” looks like: Terrible, you’ll agree. Not that Pipes is alone in complaining about this. Someone called Debbie Schlussel says “Hizbollah is laughing at us” and puts Donald Trump  – the absurdity whose organisation runs the contest – on the ever-lengthening list of “Dhimmi” fools aiding and abetting the destruction of the United States and the western world. For reals. As for Pipes and his claim that muslim women are all the rage in beauty contests, well

Well, 26 minutes in to the BBC broadcast and, unsurprisingly, no-one has learnt anything useful. I don’t believe this exit poll that would, apparently, leave the Lib Dems with fewer seats is at all accurate. In fact I’d say it is bonkers. The fact that the broadcasters won’t give us percentages is itself absurd and I also suspect they’re applying a meaningless uniform swing to it too. So, worse than bonkers it’s also probably useless. I’m not going to live-blog the whole shenanigans but I shall be tweeting and you can find my feed here. That said, there’ll be some posts popping up here from time to time. As time

A swan won’t take your eye out, says Rod Liddle. So why the health and safety paranoia? Never mind hung parliaments and the ending of the two-party dominance of British politics (a notion I seem to remember being mooted in about 1982) — here’s the important question of the week: was the BBC right to provoke that swan? It’s a story you may have missed while worrying yourself stupid over who to vote for, or the fact that the Greeks are skint again, or Icelandic ash sending planes spiralling to earth like sycamore keys in an autumn gale. On a programme called The One Show, which neither you nor I

International readers  – and Britishers without televisions – can watch the third and final Prime Ministerial Debate here:

On Sunday, on the Politics Show Vince Cable said that David Laws had been wrong to say on Newsnight that the health and international developments budgets were ringfenced. But the Lib Dem manifesto says the Libs Dems will, ‘Increase the UK’s aid budget to reach the UN target of 0.7 percent of GNI by 2013.’ This seemed contradictory to me so I called the Lib Dem press office who told me that you can ‘not ringfence a Budget but still increase it’ which left me even more confused about what the Lib Dem position on the DFID budget actually is: will it go up or down? 

I have no doubt that history will vindicate Gita Sahgal in her decision to challenge Amnesty International over its relationship with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg and his organisation Cage Prisoners.  She has now left her job, as The Times reports today. This will be a great loss to Amnesty, which has lost a deeply respected figure in international human rights, especially in the field of women’s rights and the threat of authoritarian Islam.  I can’t really better Oliver Kamm’s analysis of how damaging this is for Amnesty: “Its critics charge that it has diluted its defence of universal human rights by allying with a group that rejects that principle.

Little blogging here for the next couple of days as I flee this soggy island for an even soggier one. Am weekending in Dublin and Sligo commencing with this evening’s Heineken Cup quarter-final between Leinster and Clermont Auvergne which could be a mighty tear-up, not least since, in my view, they’re the two best teams in europe. Poor Ireland; the years of fat were accompanied by no end of vulgarity but they were better than these lean and bleak times. The problem with a populist uprising in Hibernia, this time, is this: how do you muster populism when the party that needs to be pitchforked – Fianna Fail – is

Everyone agrees that public spending is going to be squeezed and journalists want to hear the pols say what items they would cut. Politicians, understandably, are reluctant to give clear answers to these questions. Hence our poor old friend Mr Efficiency Saving is wheeled into service once more and Mr Government Waste gets it in the neck but that’s about it (though there’s the occasional nod to big ticket items such as replacing Trident. But since £25bn for Trident can be spread over 30 years it’s not obvious that this sort of “saving” makes a big difference either.) All this irritates people. The public professes to love plain-speaking and straight-talking