17 November 2011 12:00 AM
The thing is, 100,000 signatures isn't what it was. It is currently the "magic threshold" used for government e-petitions: cross it and your idea is given a parliamentary debate. But as Labour MP Natascha Engels explained yesterday, online campaigns can now marshal this number of signatures "in a week".
26 March 2009 12:00 AM
Was that a smirk in the newscaster's voice as he announced that Fred Goodwin's home had been vandalised? A "he-had-it-coming" curl of the lip? Perhaps not (headline readers are admirably po-faced) but certainly, the public response to the news that Sir Fred's windows had been smashed had an unmistakable undercurrent of jubilance. Which gives me the shivers.
28 February 2009 12:00 AM
14 January 2009 12:00 AM
How much longer can "Thought for the Day" continue on Radio 4's Today programme? That little slot of sanctimony before the 8am news bulletin – only two minutes and 45 second in duration but always seeming so very much longer – is again being targeted by secularists, who politely suggest it should either widen its remit to include non-religious contributors, or shut up shop altogether.
14 August 2008 12:00 AM
Let's be clear: the Policy Exchange's suggestion that certain northern cities are not worth regenerating is pure, steaming nonsense. Government funding should be used to correct the gravitational pull of money and commerce to the south, not to reinforce it. But however ill-judged that particular report may be, and however much bad publicity it has caused for David Cameron (closely allied with the Policy Exchange, he was a guest speaker there in July) it is a sign of something good: the Tories are thinking.
04 August 2008 12:00 AM
Compelling as it is to discuss David Miliband's little finger (isn't the way he waves his hands about just so Blair?), there are other issues that the party political personality contest should not completely obscure. Yesterday we learnt what Alan Johnson would rather we didn't know: that government policy on healthcare access for failed asylum-seekers is worryingly out of step with medical opinion. The more you look at the scheme, the more you think it is out of step with common sense as well.
16 May 2008 12:00 AM
The Government has pledged to build three million extra homes by 2020, but how can this be done without concreting over the countryside? This question has been worrying me, as it must worry anyone who likes grass, and thinks some of it should still be visible in the South-east. So I went along to a lecture on this topic at the Royal Geographical Society this week, where the message was sent out loud and clear: Worry not. We can do it.
24 April 2008 12:00 AM
A giant pole was raised outside Parliament on Tuesday. Sadly, it wasn't a maypole. It was a pole of the type that women gyrate around, semi-clothed, for money, and it was an angry stunt by women's campaign group Object ("challenging Sex Object Culture") to raise awareness of the fact that we now have twice as many of these poles in this country as we did three years ago. Yes, lap-dancing clubs have doubled since the Licensing Law 2003 came into effect in 2005, and Britain is a grubbier and less safe place for it. Meanwhile the BBC isn't helping stem the filth, either.
06 April 2008 12:00 AM
Builders working on Wimpey construction sites across Bristol were banned last week from wolf-whistling. Was this a spoilsport piece of petty bureaucracy, or a fillip for women's rights?
16 February 2008 12:00 AM
09 February 2008 12:00 AM
02 February 2008 12:00 AM
19 January 2008 12:00 AM
The shifty downward gaze, the darting thumb – it was unmistakable. The man was composing a text message. The problem was that we were in the theatre. On stage, Leontes was ranting and roaring; in the front row of the audience, Mr Busy Thumbs was scrolling through predictive. He didn't even try to hide it really. He just seemed to have put the sound down on the performers, to have flipped the channel on them, while he compulsively, absently busied himself with something else for a minute or two. Concentration is a dying art.
12 January 2008 12:00 AM
05 January 2008 12:00 AM
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