Tag: Politics

Trump was a riot – and I mean that literally

Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is underway. His lawyers argue that, when he told supporters to “fight like hell”, he was only speaking figuratively. His lawyers are wrong.

Predicting the past: Can Trump win again?

[I wrote this piece on Election Day 2020, before the vote-counting started. Less than 24 hours later, it was looking like not a single one of my insights would be borne out by events.]

Is this the way to maintain public faith in the lockdown?

Yesterday, the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps led the daily Downing Street press conference with news of new transport infrastructure to help us in the current crisis and beyond. But the mainstream media used up all of their questions to ask about the decision by the Prime Minister’s adviser, Dominic Cummings, to isolate himself and his family in Durham, rather than in London, when his wife fell ill with Covid-19.

I’m partial to a bit of Beeb

On a day when I am learning it may be OK to eat red meat after all, I’m also having to re-think my attitude to the BBC.

Preventing social media harm – an idea

There are widespread calls to regulate social media. Hardly a day goes by without some new outrage which eclipses what we have seen already. One of the great problems for anyone wishing to put a stop to the abuse is that social media users can easily make themselves anonymous. If they are ejected from a platform, they can re-enrol under a new identity. All it takes to open an account on a platform is an email address. And all it takes to get an email address is … absolutely nothing at all.

We disagree … so you must be lying?

From working as an independent expert witness, I know only too well that it is not unusual to find one’s client acting as though nothing the opposing party says can ever be believed. As a mediator, I have seen this attitude taken by both sides simultaneously. Sometimes in a dispute, both sides are inveterate liars. But quite often I would see two parties who were both incapable of seeing that their opponent’s point of view was not built (entirely) on falsehood. It seems that is where we are now with Brexit.

Lawyers for Alternative Facts?

It seems that, when it comes to Brexit, we can’t trust anyone to get their facts right. Not even lawyers. At least, not Lawyers for a People’s Vote (LfaPV).

A Few Good Men – but this one?

Brett Kavanaugh, the current presidential nominee for the US Supreme Court, faces a series of allegations of sexual misconduct dating back to his youth. He denies them all. He denies them emphatically. But he denies them in a manner which raises questions about his suitability for senior judicial office, let alone the highest judicial office in the land.

Chaos – what did you expect Brexit to look like?

It is common parlance these days to describe the UK Government’s Brexit negotiations as chaotic. And that is certainly how they appear. But how would they look if they were going swimmingly?

Hard Brexit is dead. Long live … hard Brexit

I keep hearing that last Friday’s agreement between the UK and the EU 27 means that a hard Brexit is off the table. Well, I’m looking at the table and I can still a hard Brexit resting atop it.