Thus it ever was, you may say. According to a poll, conducted in the wake of this Duck Island Parliament, half of our representatives are thought by half of the people to be corrupt. It must come as a partial relief that 47 per cent thought ‘a few’ were corrupt, which is, of course, true. It is a minority, a small number, who have abused the parliamentary expenses system in a fashion w...

Half way through his coffee as he enters the briefing room, the Minister for Schools tells me he is a "cup half full, not half empty" kind of guy. Here to announce the 2008 Sats results after the marking fiasco of recent months, can Jim Knight convince journalists the situation was indeed half full and not half empty? "It's just like being in an exam", he remarks as 20 silent reporters lift u...

Half way through his coffee as he enters the briefing room, the Minister for Schools tells me he is a "cup half full, not half empty" kind of guy. Here to announce the 2008 Sats results after the marking fiasco of recent months, can Jim Knight convince journalists the situation was indeed half full and not half empty? "It's just like being in an exam", he remarks as 20 silent reporters lift u...

Sorry to have to say this but it seems that about half the UK public are morons. The Gordon Brown “bounce” is strikingly confirmed today as a poll for The Times shows him comfortably beating David Cameron as the leader seen as best able to handle the recession. More than half the public thinks that Mr Brown is the right leader to deal with the economy in recession, against a third for ...

Former trade minister Lord Jones brought fresh embarrassment on the government today when he claimed that half the civil service should be sacked. Jones told MPs that Whitehall could be run with "half as many" civil servants and that he had been amazed during his time in government by how many staff "deserved the sack". The ex-Confederation of British Industry chief also described being a junior m...

THE scale of public scepticism over Kenny MacAskill's plans to slash the prison population has been disclosed in a new survey that shows nearly half the public believe com

The liberal Democrats suffer a fresh blow today with a new opinion poll showing the party is likely to lose nearly half its support at the next general election.

“In this way rose feudal socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history” - K.

Yesterday the Chairman of the BBC Trust and the Director General came to the Commons to talk about their service. I went along to ask them why BBC political journalism confines itself to the agenda of the spin doctors, and to repeating the half truths and misleading comments encapsulated in the soundbites.

Ready to serve Yesterday we were treated to an endless stream of self-styled "public service" broadcasters telling us why we should pay for even more of them. Is the BBC anywhere near enough? Is it credible that the BBC's mere hundreds of TV and radio channels can really satisfy the public's boundless need for public service broadcasts? Wouldn't the public be even better served if t...