Richard's Kingdom

Over the last two parliaments the British state has grown ever more authoritarian. Personal liberty has been sacrificed on the altar of public opinion for political ends. The false dichotomy of privacy versus security has been used repeatedly to justify robbing us of the former while failing to deliver the latter. Billions of pounds have [...]

The Digital Economy Act 2010 is now law. Last week thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, watched the tragedy unfold on Twitter and via the live stream from Parliament (starts at 20:51:25). Many of those people were seeing the internal mechanisms of the British political system for the first time. Their reaction was almost universally one [...]

There is an issue about which I care passionately. It doesn’t matter what it is (though if you read the rest of this blog you might be able to guess). In the last six months I have written to retiring MP Richard Caborn half a dozen times urging him to act. I have called his [...]

Legal firm Carter-Ruck has lost a secret battle to keep from public scrutiny the actions of its client the multi-national oil traders Trafigura. In a masterful display of political and media manoeuvring the Guardian led a charge of the blog-brigade against an injunction preventing the newspaper from reporting Parliamentary proceedings relating to the case. In [...]

Jacquie Smith is to step down as Secretary of State for the Home Department in the cabinet reshuffle that Gordon Brown is planning to make after the European elections on Thursday. While the door to the Home Secretary’s office has revolved ever more rapidly since 2001 the authoritarian brief of its occupants has hardly wavered. [...]