Laura Lambert

2011 was a challenging year for the British Olympic Association (BOA) and its Chairman Lord Moynihan. A widely publicised debate regarding the operating surplus from the Olympics and Paralympics in 2012 left Colin and his Chief Executive excluded from London 2012 board meetings from March until May.

More recently, debates between the BOA and the World Anti-Doping Agency (regarding the BOA by-law imposing lifetime bans on athletes who have intentionally used performance-enhancing drugs) have led to Colin once again making headlines. He launched a stinging attack on the Anti-Doping Agency saying that ‘the sanctions against the hard-line cheats have never been so weak since the end of the Cold War.’

 Why are you so passionate about fighting for the BOA by-law to stand (imposing lifetime bans on athletes who use performance enhancing drugs)?

First and foremost because the athletes want us to run a Selection Policy that ensures that the Games deliver competition between the world’s greatest clean athletes and not between chemists’ laboratories…

Full interview here.

Andrew Peck

Rick Santorum – Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum is to 2012 what Mike Huckabee was to 2008. A social conservative with incredibly extreme stances on abortion, gay marriage, homosexuality in general and evolution in schools…

Ron Paul – Paul has maintained support throughout this campaign despite being shunned by the mainstream media, especially Fox News, who go out of their way to avoid mentioning him…

Mitt Romney – Possibly the sanest of the line-up Willard Mitt Romney occupies the middle ground of the party, having corporate interests to ensure that he satisfies the fiscal conservatives in his party while maintaining acceptable stances on abortion, gun control, torture in Guantanamo Bay and gay marriage…

Newt Gingrich – Newt Gingrich is still in the race despite his campaign having completely imploded once already, when his campaign staff abandoned him after he took a luxury cruise of the Eastern Mediterranean to ‘see the European Debt Crisis first hand’…

Rick Perry – Made himself popular as governor of Texas in early 2011 by flirting with the possibility of secession from the United States, Rick Perry has now decided to try to lead the “upper 49” if he can’t secede from them...

Sydney Saubestre

On 16th January the Students’ Union received an official complaint from two students at the LSE that the LSE Students’ Union Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society (ASH Society) posted cartoons, depicting the Prophet Muhammad “having a pint,” on their society’s Facebook page.  The Students’ Union has since received “over 40 separate official complaints from the student body.” Several students within the LSE community have publicly and privately denounced the perceived proliferation of Islamophobic sentiments on campus.

Full story here.

Anna Notman

Whoever said that politicians were out of touch with reality? Education minister, Michael Gove, thinks he knows what the British public need to lift their spirits in these harsh economic times – a yacht. Not just any yacht, though. A Royal yacht. This would be a floating palace for the Queen and her family, somewhere for them to relax. All that waving is awfully tiring.

Gove estimates the cost of such a useful investment at around £60m, a suggestion that has not gone down well amidst the current cuts. Gove’s own department announced the country’s worst education cuts since the 1950s in October, with spending falling by around 13%, or £300m, over the next few years.

Of course, Gove denies having ever suggested this would be funded by public money. Private donors will be sought to finance the building of a boat and hopefully, he suggests, provide every schoolchild in the country with a momentum of the jubilee. Forget the textbooks and teachers, this is what every schoolchild needs.

Full article here.

The paid position will mainly involve helping expand the business and economy sections of newstatesman.com.

You should have an economics degree – and a postgraduate qualification in journalism is desired. The successful candidate will have an interest in business and finance, knowledge of online publishing tools and software, be able to use social media and be able to use data to tell stories.

To apply, send a CV and covering letter to alice.gribbin@newstatesman.co.uk, by January 27.

More details here.

James Dolton

The FA’s policy on tackling is not too heavy-handed – James Dolton

It is crucial to note that while this argument has reared its ugly head once again due to a number of notable recent occurrences on the pitch… Managers urge two paradoxical demands of “consistency” and “common sense”, a ridiculous and unfair coupling. Either every two footed off-the-feet challenge is a sending off and the former is fulfilled, or each incident is evaluated based on the referee’s limited view of the situation and opinion of whether the challenge was best summated by the adjective “careless”, “reckless” or “excessive”, a horrendously subjective choice.

The FA’s policy on tackling is too heavy handed – Felix Keith

A point that Kompany raised after his appeal was turned down speaks volumes for me. Didn’t the Premier League use to pride itself as the best league in the world because of its quality in skill, fairness and ultimately hardness? I wonder what Razor Ruddock thinks of all this.

Full article here.

Colm Currie

My younger brother asked me recently if I’m “on Twitter and Facebook?” When I told him that I am, he was surprised, wondering why anyone would make such a mad life choice. I explained to him that there are useful aspects to using both websites, as they do different things. For instance, Twitter is more like a blog than a social network, and I far prefer its format to that of Facebook…

The repetitive mundanity of most people’s Facebook statuses and comments often puts me off posting, and this isn’t helped by how long these posts can sometimes be. Unlike Facebook, Twitter has a 140-character limit per Tweet. While it’s possible to convey a longer message across three or four Tweets, or provide a link to other websites such as TwitLonger.com, I like the character limit. It brings a certain art to writing a good Tweet, and I can’t describe to you the satisfaction I get from successfully redrafting a Tweet that once contained 171 characters. I don’t enjoy scrolling down my Facebook news feed to find paragraph-long complaints about somebody’s lunch. It may be stretching it somewhat to compare the skill of Tweeting to writing a Haiku, but there is something to be said for the succinctness of a good Tweet.

Full article here.

Loughlin Sweeney

With economic forecasters warning that the UK may already have slipped back into recession, politicians have been calling for more scrutiny surrounding the massive earnings of those at the top of the private sector.

In a statement issued last week, the University and College Union (UCU) demanded that university vice-chancellors be subject to the same kind of scrutiny.

“Anything less,” commented UCU general secretary Sally Hunt “brings our sector into disrepute.” According to figures from Times Higher Education and the Higher Education Statistics Agency, average pay and benefits packages for vice-chancellors dropped 1.21% to £208,593 between 2009 and 2010.

Full article here.

Laurence Pope

Some readers may well be familiar with the acronyms SOPA and PIPA, both of which have been bounded about in the news over the last few months or so. They stand for the Stop Online Piracy Act and the closely related Protect IP (Intellectual Property) Act. Both are bills that are currently being considered, respectively, by the US House of Representatives and the Senate. As their names suggest, they are aimed at combating online piracy. The issues surrounding these proposed laws are both numerous and complicated in nature, as are the arguments wielded by its supporters and critics; if you’re spurned into action by this piece then there’s a wealth of information that can be found in the very medium the bills will impact – namely, the internet.

Full article here.

Ross Highfield

In the aftermath of Luis Suarez’s eight-match suspension for using racist language, the general consensus was that Liverpool had conducted themselves poorly throughout.

Before even arriving in the UK, Suarez was a man with a tarnished reputation. His most famous moment came in a World Cup quarter-final when he handled the ball on the goal-line in the final minute to prevent Uruguay from being eliminated. Then, a few months before his Liverpool move, he bit an opponent whilst playing for Ajax. In many ways, Suarez was a condemned man.

There are, of course, numerous reasons to defend him. He was convicted of using racist language, not simply of being a racist; Patrice Evra, alongside many black Liverpool and Uruguay team-mates, have stated their belief that he is not racist.

Full article here.