Reporting News and opinions
There is an old British political habit which deserves rather more scrutiny than it usually receives: when governments want the public to accept an uncomfortable policy, they wrap it in the Union Jack and call it national security.
Somewhere in a glass-and-steel conference centre in Geneva, a distinguished panel is convening to discuss Africa's poverty crisis. The room costs £18,000 a day to hire. The keynote speaker flew business class from Washington. The catered lunch is exceptional. The conference proceedings will produce, in due course, a forty-seven page report recommending as the 1994 report did, as the 2003 report did, as the 2011 report did, more aid. Africa, meanwhile, remains poor.
Rudy Giuliani has once again emerged from whatever landscaping parking lot or podcast dungeon he currently frequents to deliver a sermon on moral purity. In a television rant that felt like an archaeological dig through early-2000s cable news grievances, the former mayor declared that New York City’s mayor should skip the official September 11 memorial ceremonies. The mayor’s disqualifying offense? He happens to be Muslim.
When a political movement cannot quite explain where Britain should go, it apparently finds comfort in explaining where Britain used to be.
It has no postcode. It does not appear on Google Maps. There are no street signs pointing towards it. Yet, whenever one of its inhabitants is caught saying something outrageous or doing something politically or legally questionable, suddenly we are told that the offending words or conduct belonged there.
