Politics and Human Rights.

On the 13th March 2026, Peter Brian ('Pete') Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, as we must call him now, asserted that 'no quarter would be given' against Iran in the US-Israeli war against that country (see: here ; Guardian, 14th March ; Axios, 15th March ). This constitutes a war crime under Article 8(2)(b)(xii) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and any member of the US armed forces who complied with it would be guilty of this war crime. Of course, the United States does not accept, and is not a party to, the Rome Statute. It is , however, a party to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. President Truman signed them on 12th August 1949, and the US Senate ratified them on 2nd August 1955. Under the terms of Article 8(2)(a) of the Rome Statute, war crimes are defined as 'Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949', and lists a series of acts against persons and property protected under the relevant Geneva Convention. Articl...

According to the US Treasury, the annual budget deficit of the United States federal government in 2025 was $1.78 trillion . The Pentagon budget for 2025 was $849.8 billion , but now President Donald Trump is proposing to increase that to roughly $1 trillion in fiscal year (FY) 2026. Again, according to the US Treasury , China and the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) owned a combined total of $938.6 billion in US Treasury securities in late 2025. Mainland China held $682.6 billion, and the Hong Kong SAR $256 billion. The amount held in US Government bonds in Russia in 2025, in contrast, amounted in value to a paltry $31 million .  This leads us to two observations: the first is, that it is hardly a wise course for the Trump Administration to pursue a foreign policy based on nineteenth-century Palmerstonian ' gunboat diplomacy ', of the kind recently displayed in Venezuela , on the basis of money largely borrowed from one of the USA's principal adversaries, an...

This is an email I've received from the Labour MP for Wellingborough and Rushden, Gen Kitchen, my constituency MP, about the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, now going before Parliament. "Dear constituent, Thank you for contacting me. I am a strong believer that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill strikes the correct balance in securing wins for nature and for the projects we need built.  I will be directly working on the passage of this bill through committee and report stage, and look forward to further correspondence with you on this matter. I love walking through the British countryside and our natural environment with my two dogs That is why I believe the current legislation needs to be changed. You are right to point our that the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world and surely that is a sign that we must reform the current system. The Government consulted with the environment sector to work out a new way to protect nature and deliver the project...

Every single hour of every single day, every country on this planet - some, it is true, much more than others, but all to a degree - continue to pour carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, with a reckless insouciance bordering on insanity. The result is that CO2 has reached 426.91 ppm as of June 2024, whereas methane (CH4) had reached 1,930.75 ppb (parts per billion) by March 2024. For comparison, the yearly mean CO2 in 1959 was 315.98 ppm, whereas the mean annual atmospheric level of CH4 in 1984 was 1,644.85 ppb. Nitrous oxide (N2O), the third major greenhouse gas, reached 337.66 ppb in March 2024, compared to the annual mean atmospheric level of 316.36 ppb in 2001 . The International Maritime Organisation's 2020 regulation ( IMO2020 ) reducing sulphur emissions from shipping  (by reducing the sulphur content of their fuel) has had an inadvertent effect on the climate, because these emissions are cooling aerosols, and have a global cooling eff...

The General Election that took place in the United Kingdom on Thursday, 4th July 2024 led to the most disproportional result in British political history. The Labour Party, as expected, won it - but their success was more due to the voters' disgust with the Conservative Party after fourteen years of Tory Government than anything positive they had to offer. Labour won 411 seats in the House of Commons (63.23%), on the basis of  9,708,716 votes (33.7%). The turnout was 59.9% - down 7.4% on the previous General Election in 2019 (turnout 67.3%). This explains the fact that the Labour Party in 2019 - led by the supposedly 'extremist' and 'looney leftie' Jeremy Corbyn, demonised and vilified in the media, and deemed unelectable, won  10,269,051 votes that year (32.1% of the vote), but only 202 seats in the Commons (31.08%). The 'moderate' Keir Starmer thus ends up as Prime Minister, with a landslide majority, on the basis of  560,335 fewer votes than the 'extr...

The Labour Party tells us that it will increase social spending on schools and hospitals, if elected to government, but - at the same time - reduce public sector borrowing and do this without increasing income tax, national insurance, VAT or corporation tax. Nor will it introduce a wealth tax. It has made ambiguous noises about capital gains tax (CGT). A Party committed to redistribution of income and wealth from the rich to the poor, and reducing economic inequality, could not countenance increasing indirect taxes, which are regressive, and hurt the poor more than the rich. However, nor could it continue with the two-child child benefit cap, as it plans to do. The only way that Labour's fiscal arithmetic makes any sense is on the basis of extremely optimistic assumptions about economic growth, well above current projections, and indeed the long-term trend growth-rate of 2% p.a. Rachel Reeves' boast that she will, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, achieve the "fastest rate ...