Allan Hogarth

Orwell was right. Big Brother is watching you. Every word you type online and every site you visit is being observed, and currently your only way to put a stop to that is to log off. In June the US whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed...

Earlier this week I found myself emailing all Peers to urge them to vote for a pause of Part 2 Lobbying Bill, which was being debated in the Lords on 5 November. A couple things struck me as I did this. Firstly, I’m usually reluctant...

The past week has seen a flurry of attention on what is being referred to as the ‘Lobbying Bill’. Media reports and a lively Commons debate have highlighted the concerns that charities and NGOs have with this legislation. The...

Immigration is once more high on the political agenda as the Home Office seek to ‘get tough’ with ‘illegal immigrants’. Vans urging illegal immigrants to “go home or face arrest” and spot checks at railway stations across the country...

I’ve recently become addicted to ‘The Americans’, a TV series set during the Cold War period in the 1980s. It follows the adventures of Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two Russian KGB officers posing as an American married couple, their...

A heavily worked phrase used by the tourist industry is to describe a particular destination as a “country of contrast”. Sri Lanka is surely such a country - at one level a popular tourist destination, which according to the...

My eight year old son recently asked me “what’s an artisan baker?” (we were in Dulwich!) and I explained that an artisan is a skilled physical worker - that artisan bakers’ bread will be made by hand and baked in the shop, whereas the...

Of William Shakespeare, it is often said that his works are as relevant today as when he originally penned them. I suspect this will be the same for the legendary punk poet John Cooper Clarke , the Bard of Salford, after all some of...

Over the years I’ve become all too familiar with the issue of violence against women and girls, both at the global and domestic level. This week at Amnesty we’ve called on the UK Government to do more to support women in Afghanistan...