SOLOMON HUGHES asks whether Labour ‘engaging with decision-makers’ with scandalous records of fleecing the public is really in our interests

ATTEMPTING to neutralise dissidents by accusing them of serious crimes is a trick governments never get tired of.
Older readers will remember (though they may wonder if they dreamed such a bizarre episode) the time that Peter Hain was tried at the Old Bailey for robbing a bank. Now a respectable Labour peer, but then a radical Young Liberal and leading anti-apartheid campaigner, Hain was framed in 1976 by agents working for the South African government with the approval of the British secret police. He was only acquitted on a majority verdict. Even during a period of strange political trials, that one was sufficiently farcical to stand out.
At least the crime Hain was falsely accused of actually occurred. Unlike The Pop-Gun Plot...

MAT COWARD presents a peculiar cabbage that will only do its bodybuilding once the summer dies down

A heatwave, a crimewave, and weird bollocks in Aberdeen, Indiana horror, and the end of the American Dream

A corrupted chemist, a Hampstead homosexual and finely observed class-conflict at The Bohemia

Beet likes warmth, who doesn’t, so attention to detail is required if you’re to succeed, writes MAT COWARD