... alas, too much work. But not enough work is worse. This is, while not totally surprising, still food for thought : The CIA is now running its own agent networks on an unprecedented scale in the British Pakistani community. A British security source told me that somewhere between 40 and 60 per ce...

So HBOS was in the doo-doo. It was "too big to fail". So it would have to be nationalised like Northern Rock. But wait ! There was a better answer. Why not steer it into the arms of a bigger, financially sound bank - like Lloyds. OK, that would create a "much too big to fail" bank and breach all kin...

'Anti-racist' Lib Dem councillor blots her copybook. Her 'coconut' jibe is doubly offensive - to the (Asian) Conservative councillor at whom it was directed, and in its implication that white = bad. She's accusing Ms Jethra of being a traitor to her skin colour - an accusation that levelled by a whi...

When I heard Mandelson accusing John Humphrys (audio, BBC player) - of all people - of stoking 'xenophobia', my first thought was 'he's running out of debating options - he's desperate'. You expect an accusation of racism to be the first response of, say, a Liberal blogger who's losing an argument -...

At the moment our leaders are terribly worried that political parties may gain votes by appealing to the worst instincts in voters - those of hatred for some "other", usually of a different ethnic group. Sadly, these fears aren't completely groundless. There was also a by election in Redbridge yeste...

When whoever-it-is says "To give up plastic" I presume she's talking about surgery. Have they no sense of shame - or at least of irony ? But these people apparently take themselves seriously. I hope they don't expect us to ... (I don't see much 'cult-like service' here, though. I see a lot of posers...

I was hoping to ignore the Prince Harry brouhaha, but as it was the main story on BBC news yesterday, occupied most of John Pienaar's 2 hr R5 'politics' programme and was the phone-in topic on R5 this morning ... a few points : a) this was another Murdoch press-sourced story. The Dirty Digger, now a...

Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, talking to today's BBC 'Sunday' programme on why the MCB won't be asking Hamas to recognise the right to exist of the state of Israel : "you see, it is they who have been dispossessed, I've not been dispossessed, it's the Palestinians who have been...

A happy, secure and prosperous New Year to you, although my head tells me it's more likely to be an 'interesting' one. Just a few stories that caught the eye but no time to blog thereon : The policy of fighting 'child poverty' by throwing extra benefits at low-income 'families' is certainly having a...

... with Chick Yog. I'd thought the Tories had selling off the family silver down to a fine art, but they're just amateurs compared to this lot ... (btw, there's a small Cultural Studies paper waiting to be written on names - how the Amalgamated Union of Wire-Drawers, Fettlers and Allied Trades turn...