In today's Guardian, George Monbiot takes up the case of former diplomat Craig Murray, who is facing the threat of a libel action by private military contractor Tim Spicer. Monbiot argues that Spicer's lawyers are threatening an injunction "against a book they haven't read and that won't be published until September," although Murray himself suggests elsewhere that they may have been tipped off by the Foreign Office.  Read the rest of this post...

Beth Forrester (Unlock Democracy): “Smart, successful, single young woman seeks intelligent, attractive and culturally relevant website to combine her interests in fashion, music, celebrity and most of all politics and current affairs. “ In the UK this has been a familiar plea for far too long. While our counterparts in the USA have long been actively reading, browsing and debating on Women on the Web, female focused British portals have remained rare. This is not to dispute their quality or popularity, with The F-Word, Feminist Fightback and Female First all very popular but relatively narrow in appeal.  Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I went to the launch of Iain Dale's new mag Total Politics at the top of the Milbank tower. The best encounter went to Nick Herbert. He was approached by an attractive young woman in a red frock. When she learnt he was a Conservative MP she asked if he was “A nice Tory or a nasty one”.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The role of the BBC and other public service broadcasters in promoting national identity has been much discussed in recent weeks, with reports on the issue coming from the BBC Trust and the IPPR. In a keynote speech to the Broadcasting Britishness? conference in Oxford on Tuesday, distinguished historian Linda Colley suggested that this emphasis on the media may be letting politicians off the hook: "Whatever role you determine the national broadcast media can and should play in fostering national and social cohesion, I suspect that at base these are political issues that require political solutions," she argued. It's very easy for the Government to lead culture bodies which require Government funding. It's very much harder for a British government to take its own inititiatives to devise say a new written constitution that might give people in these islands a much stronger sense of common citizenship, or to legislate say a common curriculum in British history and citizenship in all four parts of the UK. Arguably such expedients are necessary, but it is only the politicians who are going to be able to do this. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The BBC Trust has today published an impartiality report on the corporation's coverage of the component nations of the UK. It includes an interesting study by Cardiff University, whose conclusions largely chime with those of IPPR North's recent report on the post-devolution media. When Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland did make the news, coverage was more likely to involve topics such as sport and crime, rather than those policy areas that are now devolved responsibilities. So, for example, of the 161 news items about health and education in our general sample, no fewer than 160 were about England. On BBC outlets, all 136 stories about health and education were about England. It is not simply that more stories were told about England, but storytelling often assumed an English perspective, or else an assumption that England can safely stand in for Britain or the UK.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): A new report by IPPR North asks whether the media is creating cultural distance between England and Scotland. Author Douglas Fraser, the Scottish political editor of The Herald, answers with an emphatic yes, documenting how the London press has ignored even those Scottish stories, like the Calman Commission's review of Scottish finance, which have major implications for England. Broadcasting may yet prove central to the developing relationship between England and Scotland, Fraser believes. The debate here is symbolised by the question of the 'Scottish Six, long proposed as an alternative to the main BBC News programme from London. Fraser is suspicious of the Scottish Government's calls for more broadcasting powers, suggesting that they could lead to increased political interference. At the same time, he acknowledges that John Birt's alliance with Tony Blair to block the Scottish Six was itself a highly political episode. Read the rest of this post...

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Could the election of Boris Johnson (a man most famous for appearing on HIGNFY) provide the cue for other TV personalities and celebs to enter into politics? The reason I ask is that I have just watched a ten minute interview with Alan Sugar on BBC News 24. It featured under the headline "Sir Alan's Broken Britain". There seemed very little point to the interview other than the fact Sugar - "off the telly" - has recently aired his views on the issues of violent crime and feral youth. So, what is the problem according to Sugar's analysis? "Human rights legislation", which comes from Europe and "places like that". And what is to be done? "Billions more" on the police, he said. Why these pronouncements were thought worthy of serious news coverage I do not know. It was perhaps too much to have expected the BBC interviewers to ask Sugar precisely which "European" human rights law he thinks explains recent stabbings and gun crime (they were happy enough doing the PR for BBC series "The Apprentice"). I remember feeling slightly smug when Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected Governor of California since I foolishly imagined the same thing could not happen here. Not any more.

Jon Bright (London, OK): If you're watching the news as obsessively as I am today, you might have noticed two interesting media subplots developing, as we wait for the mayoral race to declare a winner. The first is bookmaker Paddy Power's decision to pay out on a Boris win, to the tune of roughly £100,000. They have clearly gambled that the payoff in terms of positive publicity is more than the risk of that money being lost by a surprise Ken resurgence. I first noticed them in Political Betting, and have since watched their name trickle into the Evening Standard and the Telegraph. I'm sure it will percolate through elsewhere soon. Read the rest of this post...

Vron Ware (London, author): On the Monday following the end of BBC2's White season it was announced that Rupert Murdoch's new printing plant in Hertfordshire was to be opened with great ceremony. Much was made of the fact that it was now the biggest newspaper production site in the world, and it was only mentioned as a footnote that it made Wapping redundant, cutting the workforce from 600 to 200. The real news was that the print media was still alive and well. Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Recently I made a joke about a boring headline on Tom Nairn's speech on how globalisation now favours countries like Scotland. This time, the killingly dull headline was at the top of the page, in London's Evening Standard. Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): This time she was only acting but she plays the role of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the Foreign Office legal adviser who resigned because the invasion of Iraq was not legal. It is in the first, I thought brilliant and clarifying, of eight Newsnight short films 10 Days to War. You can see it here. The discussion that followed was rubbish with Paxman at his disinterested worst. But you can't have everything and the films will last. Read the rest of this post...

CoSERG (Cornwall): In January a CoSERG member was approached by a television company making a programme for ITV on the change to unitary local government in Cornwall. The programme researcher explained that the programme would be about the costs of the transition; was it costing more than the County Council had predicted, as forecast by the opponents of unitary local government? A fair question; but we asked whether they also intended to include the issues of the loss of democratic accountability, devolution to Cornwall or local community empowerment. They weren't - these issues had "already been covered." Moreover, it became clear that our TV person had not even heard of the soon to be unlamented South West Regional Assembly. Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Successful government depends on direction more than policies. Policies only make sense to voters as part of a larger direction for the country and its citizens in the wider world. The Brown government has got its direction horribly wrong. Its defensive, centralising, ID approach to Britishness for a start and, well, I could go on and doubtless will. Just as big a problem is the opposition. That too is for other posts. This one is about why, when the government does act in a positive democratic way it still gets a bad press. Ed Balls is committed to keeping young people in education until they are at least 18, providing a framework for good education and ensuring as many of them as possible have qualifications that are respected. Finally! To achieve this he proposes a diploma that includes vocational aspects without dropping essential English language, maths and IT basics. A genuine qualification that breaks from a two-tier educational system that inscribes fatalism on those educated by the state. This ambition, it seems to me, is radical and serious in the best sense. But all the Minister could get from John Humphries on the Today program this morning was scorn that he couldn't describe what he was introducing in 30 seconds. Read the rest of this post...

David Hayes (London, openDemocracy):  I sent this letter to the Spectator on 16 February concerning a review it published of Tony Parson's book, My Favourite Wife. It was not published. The "Chinese proverb" canard has since been repeated elsewhere, without correction; eg in the Independent, 27 February. Read the rest of this post...

Jane Powell (London, Director CALM): In the midst of the extraordinary spectacle of 17 young suicides - mainly male - in Bridgend, there's a report out showing that the suicide rate in young men in England and Wales is at all time low. Can both be true? The analysis published in the British Medical Journal of the decline in the suicide rate is an important detailed study. The fact that the rate has been declining isn't new, but the details within the study are. The headline though - that the rate suicide in young men is at an all time low - seems the only angle journalists have taken any note of. Their message, that all is fine: there was a problem once, now it is disappearing, nothing to worry about any more. Read the rest of this post...

Jon Bright (London, OK): Mark Bell of CentreForum has an interesting piece in CiF today asking the above question. I had a rather ingrained resistance to the idea, but he might have turned me round. The case against, which he deconstructs, runs as follows: Read the rest of this post...

Yes! Well done Shane Best British film Winner: This is England [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0jkv2bRFgQ]

Jon Bright (London, OK): You might remember one of Tony Blair's final speeches was a critique of the current state of the UK media, and the problems it causes in public life. He compared it (us) to a "feral beast", intent on consuming everything in its path. Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): On Monday, James Macintyre and Andrew Grice in the Indie had a strong story on how the Prime Minister refuses to reveal his contacts with Murdoch. They note Gordon Brown has announced a good policy on Freedom of Information which Maurice Frankel posted about in OK. It seems he also released details of Blair's contacts with Murdoch only days after becoming Prime Minister last June. "But he is remaining coy about his own discussions with him". Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In a swift meditation on the Microsoft bid for Yahoo, oD's Editor-in-Chief Tony Curzon Price concludes that we can now foresee the future of web search: "Corporate, branded, consolidated, oligopolistic, fraudulent, and gradually emptied of meaning." Read the rest of this post...