Aaronovitched!

Aaronovitched:
1. To be ruthlessly exposed as a sham or intellectually incoherent in a column by David Aaronovitch
2. To read a column by David Aaronovitch and be incredibly cheesed off that you agree with every word and didn’t write the damn column yourself, even though you were planning to next week
Both apply to my experience of reading [...]

By Amol Rajan | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 16 September 2010 at 12:02 pm

“Roughly 15″ protest against peace-loving democrat

I know I overuse the word priceless. But this is priceless. Word for word, from The Harvard Crimson, the oldest college newspaper in America:
A crowd of roughly fifteen locals gathered to protest the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s appearance last night at Harvard Square’s First Parish Cambridge Church, a scene that a passerby said [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 16 September 2010 at 11:10 am

The world’s economic centre of gravity

One of the more irritating truisms of Tony Blair’s A Journey, and his standard globalisation speech, is that the centre of economic gravity is moving from west to east. But so it is, and here is the graphic:

It is produced by Danny Quah, professor in economics at the LSE, in the second issue of LSE [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 10:35 pm

But we already have a Liberal Party!

Responses to my column in Monday’s paper – in which I argue that The Liberal Democrats should be renamed The Liberals – include what may be a campaign to remind/inform me that we already have a Liberal Party.
I know!
They have a website.  I don’t feel familiar enough with their policies to declare an opinion on [...]

By Amol Rajan | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 3:34 pm

A Journey: Review of Reviews

Now that I have read A Journey thoroughly, I am reading some of the reviews. Someone with a sense of humour at The Sunday Times had the idea of asking Robert Harris to write one (pay wall). He managed to hold back from mentioning the “disastrous Iraq war” until the eighth paragraph.
If you want a [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 3:14 pm

The meaning of O’Donnell

I get the impression that Christine O’Donnell’s victory in Delaware may be remembered as the moment the GOP realised they were in trouble.

By Amol Rajan | Eagle Eye, The Foreign Desk | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 2:59 pm

Blair gets even tougher on crime

Does anyone have an idea which countries Blair admires for their tough and effective law and order policies?

By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 2:41 pm

The stupidity of Newt Gingrich (Part 2)

I’ve tried to resist. It’s been tough, perilous, ache-causing stuff.  But I felt it had to be done.
Since first blogging about the stupidity of Newt Gingrich – here – I’ve read about the hypocrisies and ideologically motivated accusations thrown around by Mr 1994 and avoided revisiting them on Eagle Eye.
But it’s just impossible to read Maureen [...]

By Amol Rajan | Eagle Eye, The Foreign Desk | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 1:21 pm

Christopher Hitchens on A Journey

Thus to the other brother. Christopher Hitchens has written a review of Tony Blair’s memoir for The Atlantic, which I came to via Neil D at Harry’s Place.

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 12:59 pm

Mail writer bravely defies the party line

Peter Hitchens (right) is a lovely chap, but he really ought to try harder to write stuff that breaks out of the box of conventional wisdom. He started well in his Mail on Sunday column a couple of weeks ago, contradicting its editorial line by asserting that David Kelly committed suicide. But then spoilt the [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 12:18 pm