I rather like the suggestion from the Home Secretary that people who are caught carrying knives should be taken to hospitals’ A&E departments, to see the families of stabbing victims and to prisons to meet people who have been convicted of these crimes to see the effects of stabbing. Unfortunately, it’s been met with less [...]

Do you remember, a little while ago, that the Hackney Gazette and its owner, Archant, caused some unfortunate publicity for themselves when they agreed to run an ad from the BNP in the run-up to the Mayoral election? No?
LabourHome: Archant takes BNP cash
Liberal Conspiracy: It didn’t bother Sunny
Hackney Councillor Luke Akehurst: shock and concern
Guardian: Publisher [...]

Nadine Dorries MP (Conservative, Mid Beds) complains about the ‘deluge of liberalising amendments’ proposed by various MPs.
Unfortunately, Ms Dorries is continuing in her wilful ignorance of, er, reality.
Let’s clear up a minor point. Dorries says
against the backdrop of statistics which show that we now have children aborting
That is a misleading sentence. The key word is [...]

If I were able to vote in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, I would vote for Shan Oakes, the Green Party candidate and I encourage anyone who lives in the constituency to vote for Shan. Her blog is here; her party website is here; her Facebook is here; and her Wikipedia entry is here.
Mr Davis [...]

Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East and Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office, has released a code of conduct for blogging civil servants. It reads:
1. Be credible
Be accurate, fair, thorough and transparent.
2. Be consistent
Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times.
3. Be responsive
When you gain insight, share it [...]

It is very rare for a politician to volunteer for an election. The risk calculus is pretty simple; even if the chances of you losing are minimal, the consequences for you are (at best) unemployment and the consequences for your party can be even worse.
So what to make of David Davis’ decision to resign his [...]

I’m in the process of registering with the ICO so I can use a computerised system with people’s details for work. The idea of data protection is a good one as it assumes privacy is desired unless there is a specific indication to the contrary. It is perfectly legal to share people’s data if they [...]

Like many young people, Mehdi Kazemi came from Iran to study English in London in 2005. While here, he discovered that his boyfriend, back in Iran, had been charged with sodomy and hanged. He applied for asylum but was refused, although the Home Secretary agreed to review his case. He has now been granted asylum [...]

Despite the efforts of Nadine Dorries and some other MPs, the results of this evening’s votes in the Commons are positive. There has been no restriction on abortion rights and the discrimination against same-sex couples implicit in insisting on ‘the need for a father’ has been removed.
I think that Dawn Primarolo has won some friends [...]

Sunny Hundal asks a couple of interesting questions over at Pickled Politics; should a no-platform policy with regards to the BNP be continued and should that it be extended to groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir?
By way of a background, I understand a no-platform policy (in the instance of the BNP) to mean that no-one from an [...]