The Press Complaints Commission makes the following announcement regarding a child who is not Britain’s youngest-ever father: The Press Complaints Commission has announced an inquiry into alleged payments by The Sun and the People to the parents of Alfie Patten.

Editors, reporters and even cartoonists are in the grip of religious McCarthyism. Freedom of Speech lies bleeding in the gutter, near its dead friend, Rationalism. Superstition struts its stuff. Religion won’t kill you, but it knows someone who might just beat you till your brains come out of your ears. We are afraid to even…

An Iraqi journalist friend told me again today a story he has told me several times before. It features, so he says, in an upcoming movie, so I don’t think I’m breaking any confidences sharing it. It was April 2003. Saddam’s statue had fallen in Firdos Square and my friend was hanging around the Méridien…

Back in November 2008, I was at the Summit on the Global Agenda, an ambitious attempt by the World Economic Forum to bring academics, policymakers and business people together to discuss some of the more interesting challenges facing all of us. And also to see if we could make any proposals that might address some…