Eagle Eye
The stupidity of Newt Gingrich
It took a high class second leader in The Times this morning to remind me of Newt Gingrich’s stupidity.
The former House Speaker and ignoramus, a man who pretends to eschew ideology while in fact being slave to it, has said “there should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there [...]
By Amol Rajan | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 2:21 pm
Clubs punctured by debt
If ordinary football fans could see that high leverage was not a safe financing structure for a football club, why couldn’t the banks, which financed these precarious deals ?
By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 1:47 pm
Debate with the Restart the War Coalition
Thanks to Michael Ezra at Harry’s Place for writing up my encounter with Chris Nineham (right) on Radio 2 yesterday.
Chris Nineham is from the Stop the War Coalition and a former leading activist within the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party. John Rentoul, Tony Blair’s biographer, had the misfortune of having to debate with Nineham on BBC Radio 2. (The [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 9:49 am
“Unreliable, lazy and disloyal”
Good summary of the state of undeclared war in the Conservative Party between David Cameron and Boris Johnson by Rachel Sylvester in The Times today (pay wall). The key paragraphs:
The Cameroons fear that Mr Johnson is unreliable, lazy and disloyal. “Boris is Boris” is the official line from Tory HQ, an echo of Mr Blair’s [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 17 August 2010 at 9:24 pm
The Phoney War
I’ve written for The Independent today on John Prescott’s foolish charge of “collaborator” thrown at Frank Field, John Hutton and Alan Milburn.
Conor Ryan had already made the main point on his excellent blog, namely that Labour can help to persuade independent-minded voters by lending its best minds to the Government in pursuit of laudable aims.
Field [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 17 August 2010 at 7:33 pm
BBC leads Blair hate fest
I wondered how the Daily Mail would manage to report Tony Blair’s donation of the £4m advance for his book, A Journey, to the British Legion in a way that sought to diminish him. As usual, I under-estimated the sheer ingenuity, professionalism and malice brought to the challenge.
Getting the word “guilty” onto the front page [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 17 August 2010 at 6:03 pm
The Government has decided to alienate an entire generation
Thursday’s A-level results day will see the usual headlines about results going up, photos of students jumping for joy and opinion pieces on how the exams must be getting easier. However, this year has a more sinister twist. At a time when jobs are thin on the ground, more school leavers are looking to University: [...]
By David Lammy | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 17 August 2010 at 1:54 pm
On sloppy moral analysis and the Blair donation
We had an argument in morning conference this morning about the morality of Tony Blair’s donation to charity.
I think those who find Blair’s donation unpalatable are failing to make a distinction essential to clarity in moral thinking.
Put very basically, moral actions can be analysed by the motivations that inspire (that is, pre-date) them, or by [...]
By Amol Rajan | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 17 August 2010 at 11:35 am
Clegg coy on the coalition cuts
Is Clegg hinting that the massive fiscal consolidation projected by Osborne is unlikely to materialise? Or is he out of date? As I’ve noted before here, the Tories said they’d eliminate the bulk of the structural deficit in opposition. What they’ve actually committed to in office goes further.
Britain’s arranged marriage on the rocks
Being born and brought up a Muslim means that I have had the opportunity to see arranged marriages from close quarters. A friend who had an arranged marriage once told me that the difference with a “love marriage”, as the alternative tends to be known, is that all the getting to know each other, falling [...]
By Dr Russell Razzaque | Eagle Eye | Monday, 16 August 2010 at 1:17 pm
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