Tag Archives: james kirkup

Stephen Tall

Your essential Easter weekend reader — my personal pick of the week’s must-reads

By Stephen Tall | Sun 31st March 2013 - 7:00 pm

Papers - Some rights reserved by NS MewsflashIt’s Sunday afternoon, so here are a baker’s dozen of thought-provoking articles to stimulate your thinking juices, culled from all those I’ve linked to this past fortnight. You can follow me on Delicious here.

Even Britain has now abandoned austerity – Anatole Kaletsky highlights the abandonment of Plan A: “While Osborne repeated his mantra that “you can’t cure a crisis caused by debt with more debt,” he will now do exactly this by creating a British equivalent of government-guaranteed Fannie Mae mortgages to …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Huhne / Pryce: this is a human drama, not a political story

By Stephen Tall | Thu 7th March 2013 - 8:33 pm

huhne quitsIt was the number of voicemail messages on my mobile (having been holed up in meetings for my non-political day-job) that alerted me a story had broken this afternoon. A clutch of requests from news stations eager to know what the political fall-out for the Lib Dems would be from Vicky Pryce being found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

My short answer? I just can’t see it. Vicky Pryce is the ex-wife of an ex-MP. Yes, it’s a compelling human drama, a modern morality tale of how …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 22 Comments
Stephen Tall

The PM and the EU: Cameron’s zen art of compromise maintenance

By Stephen Tall | Sat 9th February 2013 - 10:25 am

David Cameron - Some rights reserved by The Prime Minister's OfficeCredit where it’s due. If David Cameron had returned to Britain empty-handed or walked out of the EU budget talks in a fit of pique he’d have been pilloried. Plenty of his opponents were hoping he’d do just that.

As it is, he’s able to boast (not without justification) that he’s successfully negotiated a 3% real-terms cut in the EU budget — to a cumulative €960bn (2014-20) — and protected the British rebate. Nick Clegg, who’s been a particular critic of …

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Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged , , , , and | 13 Comments
Stephen Tall

David Cameron’s ‘a little and often’ leadership doesn’t suit him and isn’t Prime Ministerial

By Stephen Tall | Wed 24th October 2012 - 12:25 pm

The Telegraph’s James Kirkup, one of that paper’s few fair-minded political commentators, has written a thought-provoking article, A devil’s advocate defence of David Cameron and No 10. His case for the defence is first, that we (public, media) shouldn’t assume the role of Prime Minister has always to follow the command/control style of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair:

Implicit – and sometimes explicit – in the various critiques of the Cameron style and No 10 outfit is the idea that a Prime

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

More election fraud claims – and the TV show which set up a fake polling station

By Mark Pack | Fri 11th May 2012 - 8:25 am

In the London Borough of Camden, Hat Trick productions ran into hot water after setting up a spoof but official looking polling station immediately outside a real polling station, encouraging members of the public into coming to vote before revealing to them that the polling station was part of a prank for a political satire show.

Hat Trick also sent someone out door knocking, claiming to be a Liberal Democrat activist but really setting people up for more spoofs, to be caught on a hidden camera.

One Liberal Democrat supporter was called on at home by the fake Liberal Democrat activist, who …

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Posted in Election law, Local government and News | Also tagged , , , , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV readers say: BBC not justified in banning Carol Thatcher

By Stephen Tall | Wed 11th February 2009 - 3:30 pm

Last week, in the wake of the whipped-up hysteria surrounding Carol Thatcher being banned by the BBC from The One Show for using the term ‘golliwog’, LDV asked our readers if you thought the corporation was justified in its actions.

Here’s how you voted:

Yes, the BBC was justified – 44% (116 votes)
No, the BBC wasn’t justified – 52% (139)
Don’t know – 4% (11)
Total Votes: 266. Poll ran: 5th-10th February 2009

So, a bare majority of you think the BBC over-reacted to Carol Thatcher’s use of racially-loaded language.

The poll was picked-up by the Telegraph’s James Kirkup, who used it …

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Posted in Voice polls | Also tagged and | 7 Comments
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