A recent BBC World Service poll says that four in five people in the world view internet access as a “fundamental” right, with countries like Finland and Estonia having accorded it the status of a human right. Perhaps it is because they can afford to. The construction of a statistic is never an easy task. The [...]
Features
Interview experience: Lord Waheed Alli
Talk of pragmatic change and an end to homophobic discrimination Lord Waheed Alli is not your average peer. He was raised as an Indo-Carribean Muslim, left school at 16, is just 45 and is the only openly gay member of the House of Lords. Despite his outsider credentials, he has been labeled a crony and was [...]
Qaddafi on the world stage
Last week, Ali Aujali, the Libyan ambassador to Washington, clarified remarks made by leader Muammar Qaddafi, who apparently called for an armed holy war against Switzerland in yet another high-profile invective. Aujali told press last week that Qaddafi was, in fact, bidding for an economic boycott when he invoked jihad against the Alpine nation [...]
Cheney versus Palin
The lowdown on the recent elections in the Lone Star State “And he sticks by his guns – and you know how I feel about guns,” wrote Sarah Palin in her letter endorsing Texas Governor Rick Perry for re-election in early 2009. Liberal Texans groaned at the thought of their most despised national politician [...]
Running up to the general elections
Mazida Khatun LSESU Politics Society Vice-Chair With the SU elections a not-so-distant memory, we have upon us yet another week of campaigning for your votes. This time you will not be begged or harassed for them, but we will be asking you to make sure that you are registered to vote. If, like me, this is the [...]
Personality Politics
The projection of the personal image in politics today In the last few weeks, it has been difficult to open a paper without coming across fresh claims about the commonality of intimidating, threatening and bullying behaviour within the walls of 10 Downing Street. Many of them target Gordon Brown directly; one of the most recent [...]
A burdened conscience
December marked the 20th anniversary of the end of Ceausescu’s regime in Romania, a communist dictatorship which had lasted nearly 25 years. Yet despite the collapse of communism in Romania and Eastern Europe, a huge legacy was left – that of over 300,000 orphans. Romania’s orphan problem was one of the largest and most publicized [...]
Separately and supremely yours
Lord Phillips, the newly appointed President of the Supreme Court, has several times pronounced the changes likely to ensue as a result of the courts opening to be ones of “form rather than substance.” Is this correct? If so, would it justify the £77 million spent to create the new court, which opened for business [...]
What if… the Gunpowder plot had suceeded?
The destruction of the Houses of Parliament by the Catholic conspirators led by Robert Catesby would have resulted in far more deaths than that of King James, Queen Anne, Prince Henry and the MPs and peers unlucky enough to have been caught in the blast. The attempt by the plotters to capture the infant sons [...]
Bi-partisan politics at the gallows
Bi-partisan politics is a key feature of what is known among political scientists as the ‘Westminster model’. The ‘first past the post’ electoral system for parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom is, in short, responsible for this particular political dynamic. The way in which votes are counted up ensures that only two parties will earn [...]
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