Shami chakrabarti

Does anybody else remember life in Britain before the year 2000?  Despite the distressing increase in the number of walking, talking human beings one meets who were born since the millennium, there must be some other people who remember those times.  Yet what a picture of that era is now being painted. Take the incredibly glitzy and celeb-driven campaign currently running thanks to the campaign group ‘Liberty’.  No less a site than The Spectator has run the ads. And understandably so. For they are not only well-funded but feature the icons of our time.  Each video consists of a star like Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon Callow or Vanessa Redgrave reading out

It lies rigged and fully masted in the harbour, the Ship of Fools, and soon it will be crewed by some of our favourite smarties. Is that Shami Chakrabarti charging down the gangway? It surely is. Those sharp elbows can be identified at a hundred paces. And is she being followed by Hanif Kureishi and Jeanette Winterson, eyes bulging like bulldog’s whatsits? Yes, they’re on parade too. Oh look, they’ve brought a chaplain, the Rev Giles Fraser. All shipshape and Bristol-fashion. Now they can cast off. If a person may be judged by the quality of his enemies then Michael Gove currently rests only slightly lower than the angels. As

Can someone please explain to me why the BBC newsreaders were not wearing black armbands last weekend when reporting the tragic story of Sally Morgan being given the boot from Ofsted? In all other manners the coverage was adequately respectful and the reporters, rightly, allowed their anguish to bleed through the fraying bandage of impartiality. Not enough, mind – I could have done with some real weeping and tearing at the hair: how could this brilliant and exciting woman be so traduced? The Tories are trying to take over everything! You’d have thought they’d won an election, or something. How dare they. I wonder which public institution will be the

Two U-turns in 12 hours — even for this government that’s some going. Following George Osborne’s watering down of his VAT changes, Ken Clarke has rowed back some of his ‘secret justice’ proposals. Specifically, the Justice and Security Bill — published today — does not extend closed hearings to inquests, as previously planned. It will still allow Closed Material Procedures to be used in civil cases, but only on ‘national security’ grounds rather than ‘public interest’ ones, and only when a judge — not just a minister — decides that it is necessary. These concessions are being touted as Lib Dem victories, after Nick Clegg and his party vigorously opposed