As a society, we are so used to the idea that freedom of speech is a fundamental right that we tend to forget that it is also fundamental to a well-run society that some jobs are reserved to people who voluntarily surrender their right to speak on specific topics. Well-known examples include judges, civil servants and, er, BBC football presenters. As a result, the UK’s news agenda was recently dominated by a contest in which both sides turned in a poor performance.
Tag: Politics
The political question
They say you get the politicians you deserve. But that adage originates with Thomas Jefferson who was unaware of the modern-day television interview. Increasingly, political interviewers ask questions in a form designed to put the interviewee in an embarrassing position, rather than to elicit information that might help the audience. Take this example put to Rishi Sunak …
Can there ever be a National Health Solution?
We have been here before. In 1997, the Blair government took over an NHS widely seen as being in a mess. Their decision to involve the private sector through Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) and independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) was far from a success. The contracts were, with hindsight, often over-priced, feeding the notion that private healthcare is only ever a rip-off. But state control of hospitals isn’t working either.
A right royal time of transition
At the end of a seventy-year reign, few people have anything but praise for the late Queen. It wasn’t always so. But now is not the time to remember the occasional lapses in concentration that brought criticism. Overall, she played a blinder.
Some would say the accession of the new King has gone without a hitch. But has it?
It’s that man again – both of them
Pannick in Downing Street as Boris faces contempt charge
Blow me down with a feather. Boris Johnson and Lord Pannick QC have teamed up in a way, and at a time, that I didn’t see coming. Perhaps no one did! It would be more than I could bear not to weigh in on the subject of this unexpected coupling. I don’t think you should blame me for doing so. I hope that some of you might even welcome it.
No way to choose a Prime Minister
An important decision is being made in a very ham-fisted way. It doesn’t have to be like this. Frankly, it shouldn’t be like this.
Eurovision sends a lesson to tennis
Compare the Eurovision audience’s delight at the banning of Russia with the behaviour of the two tennis bodies, ATP (men) and WTA (women). Both organisations currently adorn their websites with ribbons in the colours of Ukraine, but they have chosen to take action against Wimbledon for excluding Russian and Belarusian players from this year’s tournament.
Mrs Rishi
Pretty much everyone seems to think the Chancellor’s wife got it wrong. But why?
When companies generate income around the world but are found to pay little tax in the UK, there is frequently an outcry that tax should be paid in the countries where the profits are generated, not the country where the company has its home. But when an individual does the same thing – the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Akshata Murty, for example, taking advantage of the so-called “non-domicile” status – there is an outcry for the opposite to happen.
Is this what we want from the police?
Reading reports from the BBC, Sky News or the Guardian, one could be forgiven for thinking that the judges had ruled that the police should have allowed the vigil for Sarah Everard to go ahead. They did not.
The judges decided only that, in arriving at their decision, assorted officers at varying levels of seniority messed up in different ways over several days. The court very deliberately stopped short of saying whether a correct analysis would have resulted in a different decision. That would, I think, have required the court to hear expert evidence from doctors, epidemiologists and mathematical modellers before applying its own jurisprudential expertise.
Far better, the court decided, that such matters be left to Scotland Yard on a Thursday afternoon before the Saturday evening vigil.
Totally out of proportion
My Twitter feed contains way too many comments about proportional representation (PR). It’s my fault. I follow the wrong people. But a few weeks ago, I received a Christmas card from a treasured friend with a PR message in it. That was too much. (You know who you are. This post is for you. Everyone else can read on or skip past, just as they wish.)