Michael Howard vs Alastair Campbell

Via Chicken Yoghurt:

Prescient

The following passage is from the introduction of the Rapstone Chronicles by John Mortimer:

The discovery that has struck the Titmuss philosopy and left it badly holed is that caring for the environment is quite inconsistent with the free-market economy. Green and true-blue are colours that don't, unfortunately, mix. Preserving the countryside, protecting the woodlands, concern for the ozone layer, all demand levels of government intervention unthinkable in the heady days of victory over the miners and the Falklands War. The high spring of laissez-faire economics is over, the bloom is gone and, such is the nature of politics, with the bloom goes Titmuss.

Who will take his place? It seems likely that Conservatism in the Titmuss mould is now out of style, and his successors may be those prepared to revert to the old consensus days of Butler and Harold Wilson. But what of the left? If free-market Toryism has taken a beating it's as nothing to what recent events in Europe have done to the dreams of the Reverend Simcox. The Labour Party seems to have achieved its huge rise in the opinion polls by freeing itself from what are seen as the tentacles of a Socialist octupus. So what is the new, up-and-coming Labour M.P. going to be like? No doubt he will have extinguished the dear old Trades Union dinosaur. Unquestionably he will be outspoken, quick-witted, with a talent for P.R. and a complete freedom from class distinctions. He will, of course, be wearing a blue suit with a discreet tie, own a car phone and a word processor and believe in free enterprise in a mixed economy. Is the stage set, after the next election, for the emergence of the first Labour Titmuss? Whatever happens, of one thing there is no doubt, British politics will remain a fertile ground for comedy.

John Mortimer 1991

Goodbye Magna Carta article in the Times about the ridiculous anti protest legislation brought in by this government. I was rather ashamed to read the following:

Twenty miles from London, along the Thames, you will find a field opposite an island in the river. The field contains a monument erected by the American Bar Association. In the field next to it there is a memorial garden to John F Kennedy commemorating his role in the civil rights movement. Why on earth, you may imagine, are there American monuments in fields by the Thames? There are no other monuments. There is nothing to commemorate anything British.

Perhaps an important figure in American history was born there? Nope. The site is far more important to the American people than that. On that unmarked island in 1215 something was written down that more than 500 years later became the fifth amendment of the American Bill of Rights. “No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned . . . or in any other way destroyed . . . except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice.”

Contrast this with the way we seem to have taken it for granted and allowed our freedoms to be eroded. At least the guys mentioned in the article are doing something about it.