Blair hating update

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Thursday, 1 July 2010 at 10:48 am Bouyed by the success of its green-ink supplement last week, the Daily Mail has gone one further and printed an entire edition thus today (although it shows up in black and white in scans, right). I refer the honourable reader to the reply I gave some moments …

Peter Goldsmith was right

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Thursday, 1 July 2010 at 12:54 pm The Independent, the Guardian and the Daily Mail still* disagree with the Iraq war. This is, apparently, news. The documents published by the Iraq Inquiry yesterday are, indeed, new. Their content – the fact that Peter Goldsmith, the Attorney General, was briefly of the …

The environmentally friendly Daily Mail

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Thursday, 1 July 2010 at 9:39 pm Further to my post this morning about the Daily Mail’s contemptible use of a conspiracy theory as a front-page news story, a correspondent draws my attention to another story in a rival publication, namely the Mail on Sunday, two years ago (right). It was entitled “David …

Is the net closing in on Tony Blair?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Friday, 2 July 2010 at 7:44 am He does read my blog after all! Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, is doing it just because he knows how much innocent pleasure it gives me. Not only a column by Tom Utley (right) that pretends that the Mail knows what satire is. Not only a gossip column …

Will Cameron support electoral reform?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Friday, 2 July 2010 at 11:32 am   Time to remind you what the voting reform referendum might look like (click here for a pdf), according to the advertising agencies The Independent on Sunday commissioned last month. Now the question is: what positions do David Cameron and the Conservative Party take …

The Coalition’s shiny new foreign policy

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Friday, 2 July 2010 at 1:44 pm William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, made a speech yesterday. It got all the public-relations hoopla push that the government machine can manage. It’s on the front page of the Foreign Office website. There were news reports and commentators’ comments and a whole item on Newsnight last night. …

Daily Mail corrects inaccuracy

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Friday, 2 July 2010 at 4:27 pm Following my post yesterday about Blair-hating propaganda in the Tory press, The Guardian* has published a correction this morning: Reporting the award to Tony Blair of a $100,000 US prize called the Liberty medal, we mentioned the recipient’s other income – but omitted to make clear …

Gerrymandering and other distractions

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Saturday, 3 July 2010 at 11:50 am Nicholas Watt has what he rightly calls an “intriguing detail” on the voting reform Bill to be announced next week: Tory MPs have been told by Downing Street that even if the referendum is passed, the next general election will not be held under AV …

Secret pleasures

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Saturday, 3 July 2010 at 4:29 pm Quotation of the day from Howard Jacobson, whose column in Saturday’s Independent is one of the joys of contemporary journalism, on the subject of “holiday reading”: The dichotomy between great works of literature and the books we “secretly” enjoy is a false one. Trashy novels are less …

Peerless entertainment

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Saturday, 3 July 2010 at 4:55 pm Talking of good things in today’s Independent, Andy McSmith’s “Village People” column has quickly established itself as worth looking out for. Today, he has two gems. One is the story of Peter Walker, the Conservative cabinet minister who died last week, told entirely in words beginning with …