cunningtitle

On Saturday, the comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” in Washington D.C. At the end of the day, Jon Stewart made a short ten minute speech about why he wanted to hold the rally – arguing that there was a spirit of cooperation in America where not [...]

In an interview with Mark Kermode last year, Alastair Campbell argued strongly against Kermode’s suggestion that politics is “venal and crass”: Politics has delivered most of the great things in the world and its history In fairness, I should probably start by saying that I’ve always been a great fan of Mark Kermode’s film reviews. [...]

I’ve just watched an interview on Newsnight that can only be described as bizarre. Jeremy Paxman interviewed Russell Brand, who decided to discuss the nature of fame and celebrity (seemingly regardless of Paxman’s initial aims for the interview). Brand’s answers and commentary on “the cult of celebrity” seemed to consist of intelligence spoken so quickly [...]

It’s no longer about Coulson. Chris Bryant on Sky News described the ongoing saga about Andy Coulson’s role in Downing St and his alleged part in any “phone hacking”* as a “sideshow”. Instead, the story is now all newspapers and whether they’ve been involved in similar conduct. Guido Fawkes has got stuck-in in customary fashion [...]

I’ve finally listened to the Any Questions debate from Friday (which much like more regular blogging, ended-up slightly lower down on my to-do list than expected). One of the more interesting moments was Ed Miliband’s mention of a loss of faith in politics as a consequence of the expenses scandal. This seems to be the [...]

Rarely is the question asked, “is our children learning?” –George W. Bush, 2000 Last week on The Big Picture*, Simon produced a special report on the state of the education system. The panel all seemed to agree that there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the current state system, going as far as to argue that [...]

The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election clearly showed the potential for the political use of the internet in campaigning. Our own general election here in the U.K. is likely to be no different, particularly with blogs such as Iain Dale’s Diary and LabourList already featuring prominently in discussions in the mainstream media. Yet when there was [...]