It is now an archive for my newspaper and magazine pieces. My blog can now be read at: www.spectator.co.uk/stephenpollard
Politics, economics and culture from the master. Unmissable.
Melanie Phillips home page
Melanie Phillips' peerless blog. Read, and learn.
Daniel Finkelstein's Times Comment Central
A daily must-read.
Tim Worstall
Lots of interesting nibbles - and a ruthless swatter of economic gibberish.
Harry's Place
Must-read left of centre blog from writers who understand the threat to the West.
Clive Davis
Always interesting selection of culture and politics, from an Anglo-American bent.
Samizdata
Libertarian blog, packed every day.
Norm's blog
The thoroughly sensible thoughts of renowned left-wing academic Norman Geras, Professor of Government at Manchester. And cricket, too.
Public Interest
Peter Briffa's inimitable take on The Yazzmonster and other assorted demons.
Reform
The public sector reform group; their website is an invaluable source of data and ideas.
Centre for the New Europe
The leading European public policy think tank.
Developed by:
| July | 24 |
| 2006 |
Further to my Times piece below, a BBC News staffer emailed me with this (I have deleted certain things to make sure anonymity is protected):
Stephen, you do well to pinpoint your frustration in today's Times on just one programme. As a Jew (aargh) and a (whisper it) Zionist, I'm torn asunder by the way the BBC has done this. (And remember they've spent months addressing the accusations of bias, trying to get us all to do an online course which claims to be impartial but merely tries to impart the BBC's take on Israel's history.)Note how Sky does much of its work from Haifa and the BBC does it all from Beirut. Note how every piece done by the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, questions whether or not Israel has carried out war crimes. The correspondents in Israel itself haven't done a bad job. Matthew Price and James Reynolds have acquitted themselves pretty well. But they've sent out Fergal Keane and Jeremy Bowen whose clear agenda is to expose the human tragedy in Lebanon and tell us Israel is a bastard state.
There is no intelligence here, no in-depth questioning of why this conflict has erupted. No discussion of Syria, Iran and Middle East geopolitics. It's a hammer with which to whack Israel.
MessageSpace
An example of Price and Reynolds:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3886297.stm
Off topic for the piece, but check out this bit of brilliance from your home office.
Despair as forced marriages stay legal
Apparently, out of fears that a proposed new law would further 'stigmatize the Muslim British community', the home office has decided to do nothing, thus allowing the status quo of forced marriages to continue.
When Baroness Scotland, the Home Office Minister, announced the Government’s reversal, she said that most of those consulted “felt that the disadvantages of creating new legislation would outweigh the advantagesâ€.
When are you Brits going to throw off these shackles, and decide that not every national decision you make has to pass the litmus test: that it can only be legislated if extremist British Muslims do not believe it will stigmatize them.
This was also precisely the point that Mary Anne Sieghart, (that Stephen quoted below), used to argue that, on the current hostilities between Israel and Hizbollah, British foreign policy should be dictated by the fact that young Brritish Muslims might be radicalized by any policy that "stigmatizes them." And that the rest of Britain might have to pay a price for it.
alcibiades
Good points, but we'd have avoided all this in the first place if the United States hadn't allowed in a bunch of Gramscian sociologists in the first place.
Cheers.
"but we'd have avoided all this in the first place if the United States hadn't allowed in a bunch of Gramscian sociologists in the first place."
The default position of the Brit (intellectuals and great unwashed): when in schtuck blame the Americans or the Jews - both if at all possible.
It's called humour, Joshua. You wouldn't understand.