Tag: “Nick Clegg”

Papers wise I have only seen The Guardian and the Financial Times today and my eye was particularly drawn to three photos. One of Nick Clegg (FT). One of Julian Assange (Guardian). One of Barack Obama (FT). And they made me think of conventional wisdom. I can find none of the pictures online so you [...]

The Tories (ie the government) will be feeling pleased enough with the spin operation surrounding the cuts to local authorities. The media were buying enough ‘power to the people’ (sic) to dilute the real impact of yesterday’s announcement, namely a savaging of services which local authorities provide and on which many people depend. But just [...]

If I have mastered the technology correctly (said the nervous non cyberwarrior) then if you click on here you will see my debut in political art. Art and I never got on at school, possibly because we had an art-teacher who had a temper that was even worse than mine. But when I was asked [...]

So … Prince Charles and Camilla will be rueing going to the theatre in black tie, with the car all lit up. Their security advisors will be going over how it happened and, as ever when it comes to the policing of protests, the police will be damned if they do and damned if they [...]

I used to skimread Hansard every day when I was a journalist, and felt better informed as a result. As Tory MP Bill Cash once said, if you want to keep something a secret these days, stand up and say it in the House of Commons. Not quite true of course, but quite witty, and [...]

When was the last time you saw David Cameron, George Osborne, Michael Gove or David Willetts being put under real pressure to make the case for the trebling of tuition fees? I ask because it is their policy every bit as much as it is that of the Lib Dems in the coalition. Indeed, more [...]

At Glasgow airport yesterday, I got chatting to a woman working in one of the bookshops who wondered how I thought the proximity of the Royal Wedding so close to elections would play out. Not entirely sure is the answer. It is certainly not usual for such a high profile Royal event to take place [...]

Take a look at Nick Clegg’s face and hands in the picture in this Guardian report of how the Lib Dems planned to abandon the tuition fees pledge before the last election. The report makes pretty clear that even as the party was hoovering up student votes, the man making contingency plans for coalition discussions [...]

Throughout the last election campaign, the Tories said till they were even bluer in the face than usual that they would protect the NHS from any looming cuts, and that within the public services more generally they would protect the ‘frontline.’ Where this frontline was drawn was never terribly clear, but the general impression given [...]

The best bits of Private Eye often come from the spoof press reports, which mock both the people they are about, and often the media and the manner of its reporting. There is one such funny piece this week under the headline ‘Woolas fury at re-run in Oldham.’ The story, from ‘Rotters’ agency, goes as follows: [...]