On 21^st November what is now known as the Identity and Passport  Service launched a 12 week consultation on the secondary legislation required to introduce identity cards. The Identity Cards Act 2006 needs to be supported by regulations before it can be brought into force.  Until now only sections establishing criminal offences and concerning forged passports or driving licences have been in use.  Now foreigners married to UK citizens or in civil partnerships  will need to apply for ID cards to extend their legal stay in the UK, as will foreigners working here or foreign students.  Despite vociferous opposition and the threat of legal action from the British Airlines Pilots Association, many workers at airports will also need them. Pilots are threatening a strike.

Yussef al-Qaradawi is stirring things up again.

When last heard from, the Egyptian-born TV-preacher with a massive Al-Jazeera viewing audience was at the center of a maelstrom touched off by former London mayor Ken Livingstone's invitation to visit the British capital. People from across the political spectrum protested the reception accorded the homophobic, anti-semitic Muslim Brotherhood imam whose approval of suicide operations against Israeli civilians and Infidel troops in Muslim lands should have earned him treatment as a security threat rather than a VIP.

These days Qaradawi is waging a campaign in the Arabic media against his fellow Muslims - specifically the Shia minority whom extremist Sunnis like himself see as heretics. He told the London-based pan-Arab daily, Asharq al-Awsat, that thanks to Iran's orchestrated efforts to undermine the Sunnis, "countries that were purely Sunni are becoming Shia."

Of all the oxymorons currently doing the rounds, ‘liberal conservatism’ is one of the slipperiest. It is this phrase which forms the crux of the Conservative party’s approach to international affairs but about which we have had little in the way of concrete definition. It slips off the tongue but leaves us little the wiser as to the criteria by which a future Conservative government might intervene on the international stage.

David Cameron first launched the phrase in his speech on foreign policy and national security in the annual JP Morgan lecture at the British American Project on 11 September 2006. ‘I am a liberal conservative, rather than a neo-conservative’, he said. Liberal ‘because I support the aim of spreading freedom and democracy, and support humanitarian intervention’. Conservative ‘because I recognise the complexities of human nature, and am sceptical of grand schemes to remake the world’.

Dr John Bew is currently writing From Enlightenment to Tyranny: The Rise and Fall of Lord Castlereagh, to be delivered to Quercus in 2010. He is the author of The Glory of Being Britons: Civic Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Belfast (Dublin, 2008) and the co-author of Talking to Terrorists: Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country (London and New York, forthcoming).

On 28  July the Ministry of Justice published its consultation paper "Murder, manslaughter and infanticide: proposals for the reform of the law".   All responses have to be received by 20 October.  Lawyers are busy people, and much of the consultation period has fallen in school holidays when, like everyone else, they have family commitments.  Could it be that the Ministry would prefer there to be few considered responses? 

When John McCain invited Sarah Palin to join his cause, he blindsided the press. But a campaign for her to be called to serve her country had been building its case for months.

The McCain camp was surely aware of Task Force Palin, the motley alliance of blogs and websites who spotted Palin's potential and then devoted themselves to spreading the word. I certainly was: I joined the "Draft Sarah Palin" Facebook group weeks ago. If the political press didn't notice, that may be because they no longer talk to anyone but themselves. An early complaint against Palin, a candidate they had refused to take seriously despite her acknowledged place on the Republican shortlist, was that she had never appeared on Meet the Press. Where else should they get their information from?

When Nicolas Sarkozy was campaigning for president last year, he promised "action, change, rupture". Whatever one thought of "Sarko", there was little question that he meant what he said. After 12 years of vacillating waffle from Jacques Chirac, French voters were reassured by such directness and duly elected him over the gaffe-prone Socialist Ségolène Royal.

For better or for worse, President Sarkozy has clearly begun to deliver on his promise to shake up the economy with pro-business reforms. He has raised the retirement age for public sector workers, facing down a nationwide transport strike last autumn. And just before the summer recess, he passed a law which effectively scraps the 35-hour working week.

But in foreign policy, Sarkozy's record has been one of cynicism and incompetence. His embrace of the world's worst dictators makes the usually thug-tolerant Jacques Chirac look like a man of principle.

  ‘Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared,' declared the Reverend Charles Colton almost two centuries ago, ‘for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.'  Today's GCSE and A level candidates would do well to bear the clergyman's bon mot in mind as they receive their results.  For contrary to the impression sometimes given in the annual dumbing-down debate, the central reality of modern British education is not the intellectual inadequacy of candidates, for which no credible evidence has been produced, but the often mind-numbing stupidity of the educational establishment, for which the evidence is clear and overwhelming. 

JM Shaw is the author of The Illumination of Merton Browne

US and Iraq negotiators are now very near an agreement for a projected or "aspirational" date to withdraw US combat forces.

Iraq is asserting its sovereignty, President Bush has adopted a new flexible stance, and both Obama and McCain should find something to claim as confirming of their positions. Conceivably, even John ("I'm not a NEO-Con") Bolton might see something to like--such a shrunken and dispersed  force configuration would offer a smaller target for Iranian retaliation should the US or Israel feel the need to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, which the hawkish former ambassador to the UN sees as inevitable.

James Linville blogs for Standpoint at www.standpointmag.co.uk/james-linville-blog

From 4th August magistrates throughout England and Wales will be obliged when sentencing to follow a rule book produced by the Sentencing Guidelines Council. Many years of judicial discretion and common law precedents are to be jettisoned in favour of a handbook produced behind closed doors. Its offensively condescending style is likely to annoy experienced magistrates who know what sentence will be acceptable to the public in a particular town or district.

Some of the guidelines are surprising. Possession of a bladed article is lumped together with possession of an offensive weapon, although in law the offensive weapon is clearly a more serious offence. Fewer burglars will go to prison. Only criminal damage to a value of over £5000 attracts a custodial sentence and people who steal their neighbours' cars can now expect only a Mickey Mouse fine.