Gall’s Law

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Wednesday, 1 June 2011 at 1:45 pm A letter to The Independent today: There is an informal rule in internet comments that any comparison with Hitler and the Nazis immediately closes the discussion and causes the person who made the reference to lose the debate. Perhaps we could have a similar rule to be invoked when …

Diluting the Blairite Revolution

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Wednesday, 1 June 2011 at 9:19 pm A well-informed reader writes with a useful corrective comment on my recent blog and article about the academies revolution: You make a big implicit assumption, which is that the findings of the encouraging Machin and Vernoit research (pdf) into the previous Government’s academies (which were schools that had previously been …

Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court judges?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Friday, 3 June 2011 at 1:45 pm James Grant in this month’s Prospect has raised the issue again of the composition of the Supreme Court (which has a new chamber), what we know of the judges’ ideological leanings, and whether we should have American-style confirmation hearings on their appointment. Alexander Horne, in his paper …

Were the Smurfs Nazis?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Saturday, 4 June 2011 at 10:16 am Number 616 in my series of Questions to Which the Answer is Nois asked by Tim Karan at Newser. The Smurfs were socialists and “the embodiment of a totalitarian utopia, steeped in Stalinism and Nazism,” says Antoine Buéno, a French sociologist, in a new book, Le Petit …

Is this a secret space station on Mars?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Sunday, 5 June 2011 at 3:35 pm The Daily Mail storybot generated this automatic headline on the website’s front page, but put a straight headline on the story itself. Still, a worthy number 617 for my series of Questions to Which the Answer is No. Thanks to Paul McConville. And here is number 618, asked by Andrew …

I admit I was wrong

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Sunday, 5 June 2011 at 5:29 pm If there is one group of internet commenters that rivals the Blair-haters for vituperation and dogmatism, it is the cannabis-legalisers. My article in The Independent on Sunday today, in which I argue (against the Cardoso Commission, right) that drugs that are illegal should stay illegal, has provoked …

Is David Cameron the most Europhile prime minister since Edward Heath?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Sunday, 5 June 2011 at 9:34 pm Peter Oborne. Number 619. Douglas Carswell rephrases the question here: The most Euro integrationist government since Ted Heath’s? The fruitcake count is high. All those Europhobe Tories who described Tony Blair as the most dangerous man in Britain because he wanted the euro to succeed, and …

Will your mobile turn you into a hunchback?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Monday, 6 June 2011 at 10:20 am Fast. Thick. Number 620 in the inexhaustible series of Questions to Which the Answer is No is asked by a newspaper autoqtwtain-generation machine. Thanks to Louise Phillips. Number 621 comes from the same source: Has equality destroyed your sex life? Thanks to Sam. And, just to prove that …

Cameron aide’s key role at bank that oversaw sale of troubled Southern Cross empire

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Tuesday, 7 June 2011 at 2:12 pm Even by Daily Mail standards, today’s front page is low. Jeremy Heywood was principal private secretary to Tony Blair, left to work for Morgan Stanley, and is now back in Downing Street as No 10 permanent secretary at the centre of David Cameron’s coalition government. So …

What Michael Gove and Theresa May argued about

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Tuesday, 7 June 2011 at 7:30 pm A puzzling story in the Mail on Sunday was headlined, “Theresa May and Michael Gove at war over crackdown on home-grown terror”. Puzzling because Brendan Carlin’s byline was on it, and he is a proper journalist, yet the story did not say directly what it was …