Martin Rowson on Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms

Health chiefs issue stark warning over damaging effect of restructure




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No need to ring alarm bells

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The Tea Party: a creedal passion past its prime | Michael Weiss

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American political history is characterised by cyclical convulsions. We've just seen another, but it's a passing phase At its worst, the American Tea Party is a helter-skelter of conservative populism, a movement broadly united by small-government principles but more animated by a hatred of the current president. It lacks a coherent vision and prefers paranoid sloganeering and anti-establishment platitudes to a viable platform. At its most benign, the Tea Party represents what the late historian Samuel Huntington , in an insight more valuable than his more famous one about a "clash of civilizations," once termed a "creedal-passion period" of American politics. That is to say, a cyclical phenomenon that occurs every few generations in Anglo-Saxon cultures and has its roots in the Protestant Great Awakening of the 1740s . Creedal passion periods, in other words, are manifestations of American Puritanism, that fatal shore upon which idealistic expectations inv...
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It's not just John Bercow charm is disappearing from public life. About time too | Tanya Gold

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Whether in the courtly language of Westminster or the honeyed words of Cameron, it conceals a fundamental dishonesty There was a fight in the Palace of Westminster this week. It was a small fight, and nothing to ruffle the International League Table of Legislator Physical Violence, where first place is still held by Taiwan, because the opposition and ruling party frequently beat each other and sometimes throw food . Still, this fight was non-violent, instructive and very British. Mark Pritchard , a Tory MP described "as mild mannered" in the way that serial killers are usually described as mild-mannered until the lampshades made of skin are found in the basement, apparently impeded the movement of Speaker Bercow, who was progressing through the palace like a small medieval king mounted on a skateboard. "The courtesy of the house is that honourable members should stand aside when the Speaker passes by," said Bercow , whose rudeness to his former Tory colleagues is m...
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