I had to write this blogpost three times (five if you count the paper versions I did on the tube). This isn’t because I changed my mind but because a speech by Diane Abbott succeeded in making me so angry that I had difficulty containing myself.

So I shall leave aside, for the moment, the disappointment I felt when I realised that Abbott would offer me no relief...

Read more: Riled by the dearth of ideas in the Labour leadership contest

The Coalition Government is entirely right to do away with the Default Retirement Age.

I’d hazard a guess that most of us have either tutted at the disrespectful ‘youf’ of today, or been on the receiving end of such approbation. ‘No one respects the wisdom of their elders’ wail the chest-beaters.

But it isn’t just the youf, the Government’s been at it too. Grandparents have been disregarded...

Read more: Why should the youth of today respect their elders if the state does not?

During the election campaign, it transpired that Nick Clegg's hero was Samuel Beckett. I have to say that at that particular piece of information, he rose in my estimation. The events of the last couple of days, however, imply that he has spent more time reading Waiting for Godot than, say, Endgame (still less Happy Days).

 

From this, my thoughts move to matters literary, and as so often it seems...

Read more: Waiting for Cleggo, or, Electoral Semantics

Listening to all the agitation over what form the next government should take, it is impossible not to be struck by the political sophistry and some of the more outrageous claims being employed by many representatives of the smaller political parties.

To hear all the talk about the eminently misnomered 'Progressive Majority', set to emerge from some equally misleadingly named 'rainbow' coalition of Labour, Lib-Dems, Plaid, SNP, SDLP and Caroline Lucas,...

Read more: A plague on the house of the 'Progressive Majority'

It is fair to say that the Conservative Party (and here I mean the backbenchers and the rank and file members) have been less thanenthusiastic about the prospects of introducing some sort of voting reform. Wouldn't voting reform just lead to a perpetual Labour majority or at the very least a so-called ‘progressive coalition'? And wouldn't a reform of the electoral system effectively block any prospects of radical reform, such as the ones that were...

Read more: PR and Conservatives: Lessons from abroad