The 9th of October is, as any self-respecting Beatles fan will probably tell you, the day John Lennon was born. Had he survived Mark Chapman’s bullets – and another 30 years of rock star fame and turbulence (not to mention ordinary...

I’ve got to admit I was never a fan of Norman Wisdom, pratfalls and mugging not being my thing. But then again … there was something interesting about his whole screen persona and his amazing success. Was he a trailblazer for freedom...

For weeks there have been stories of hundreds of thousands of poor people being forcibly evicted to make way for the Commonwealth Games in India, and now comes a report that thousands of poor women and girls in India are being enticed...

I was blowing off steam the other day on Twitter about how I disliked the Channel Four trail for the recent More4 Miliband of Brothers drama. Actually I just didn’t like how they’d used Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, a soapy...

To me it’s an unexpected twist. The Iranian establishment has launched an apparently calculated counter-attack over the Ashtiani stoning case. First Iranian MPs and official Iranian news agencies have issued seemingly coordinated...

“Ethical” foreign policy. Putting human rights “at the heart of” our foreign policy. Successive foreign secretaries have promoted – or end up being associating with – foreign policies with particular labels. Judging by early reaction...

A Briton going on a “mission” to get a relative “out of a foreign jail” is one of those media staples that you see every now and again. These stories can be a little queasy – there’s often a whiff of chauvinism in the standard...

The release from prison of prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng is a tiny drop in an ocean of repression in China. But a drop is better than nothing at all. Chen is relatively well-known as the blind, self-taught...

The latest news on Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani , the woman at risk of stoning in Iran, is far from reassuring. It's being claimed that she’s been lashed – 99 times – because a photograph of her without a chador covering has been...

As I said during the general election campaign (remember that?!), none of the parties were really talking about human rights then. And the same is basically true in the Labour leadership contest now. Yesterday’s one-and-half-hour...

Is prejudice against Gypsies the last vestige of "acceptable" racism in Britain? Seems to me that it is. Lately I’ve heard acquaintances of mine (including Facebook friends I can’t exactly vouch for) railing against “thieving Gypos”...

Loose lips sink ships went the old WW2 adage, and Vladimir Putin’s remarks that protestors in Russia who don’t have official permission can expect to be hit over the head can pretty obviously lead if not to sunk ships, then certainly...

Sometimes it takes a twist to make something appealing, and one heavyweight TV programme that still sticks in my mind is the Will Self-fronted investigation into Britain’s arms industry from 2002. Though I’m no fan of his novels (his...

In the past it’s been the gouging out of an eye or the extraction of a tooth. Now it’s the severing of spinal column. The Saudi justice system’s willingness to countenance extreme and cruel punishments is once again in the news after a...

Yesterday’s Association of Chief Police Officers report into so-called “off-street' prostitution threw up a new – and already much-discussed – figure of 2,600 women and girls trafficked into forced prostitution in England and Wales...

If the Taliban were a product PR companies would be studying their tactics. Because they’ve certainly got massive “brand awareness”. Aside from al-Qaida (and maybe not even them), they’re surely the most talked about armed group in the...

Over the years I’ve watched some very bad television. Haven’t we all? And it’s become a commonplace to denounce “reality TV” as the worst (“nothing very real about most of it”, say the critics) and well, some of this now-dominant TV...

If you wanted to bring US justice into disrepute here’s an idea. Why not revisit the whole shabby business of “enemy combatants”? Go back to Guantánamo. Get the youngest inmate held there and put him on trial before a widely...

One thing David Cameron and me have in common - probably the only thing - is that this week we’ve both been in Italy. OK, he’s been there to discuss the global economy, trade, and Afghanistan with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi...

Like quite a few people, I suspect, I found the 14-page onslaught of the Guardian’s Wikileaks coverage yesterday almost too much (how was I ever going to get through it all …?) Today they’ve calmed right down and only given it a front...