The execution today  by the People’s Republic of China of a man with apparently obvious mental illness for drug trafficking should be met by the UK with a diplomatic response.  Summoning the Chinese ambassador  to the Foreign and Commonwealth office is not enough, and in my view we should mark this human-rights outrage with the [...]

Now with an added commitment to stop UK aid to China.  Don’t ask.

While I’m still huffing about the Olympics being in China in the first place, I guess I have to admit it’s going very well, perhaps most spectacularly for Team GB. As a shareholder in the British and Irish teams (having played the lottery in the UK and paid tax in Ireland) I have to say [...]

Overheard in a chatroom (uttered by an American, obviously enough) last night: “People in London, they protest all the god-damned time.  Every time something happens they hate, they go protest about it.  We’re just not like that here” The Olympic Flame débacle threatens to create a black-hole of deliberate ignorance around the issue of China’s [...]

I get no prizes for the frankly awful title of the blog post, but, as eny fule kno, the Olympic Games is not doing the trick of opening up China and setting the nation free from its history of dreadful human rights abuses. China responded to the challenge of openness by launching yet another offensive [...]