Mark Steel on the surreal horror of appointing a man who helped destroy a large chunk of the Middle East to the position of “Middle East peace envoy”.

Mark Steele on the warm official welcome given Saudi King Abdullah on his arrival in Britain, and what it tells us about the value the British government places on human rights.

The Conservatives, like George Bush, can praise and cheer the Burmese opposition, but it’s the free market profiteering they idolise that glues the barbarity into place, writes Mark Steel.

Mark Steel dissects Gordon Brown’s speech to party conference.

What are we doing banning a touring team from Gaza because it is ‘too poor’, asks Mark Steel?

Mark Steel takes the media to task for seemingly being determined to turn the Madeleine McCann tragedy into a branch of showbusiness.

How, asks Mark Steel, does anyone get to see the world from the point of view of the Pentagon? Who would look around a world in which 5,000 children a day die for lack of clean water and decide that the Saudi royal family need $13 billion in military aid?

Maybe this really is a new period of government with no PR spin, because no one concerned with their image would announce building 20,000 houses on flood plains in the middle of the country’s worst-ever floods, writes Mark Steel.

George Galloway has been suspended from the Commons following an investigation into funding for the Mariam Appeal. No need to ask what treatment the murderers and robbers in the House get.

While Druids don’t normally bother anyone, writes Mark Steel, if Stonehenge was bombed on the Summer Solstice, and teepees set ablaze with an excuse that they were threatening us with fertility symbols of mass destruction, you’d soon see the odd one behaving strangely outside a nightclub or airport.

Postal workers must accept that in a modern free market they can no longer expect privileges such as pensions, writes Mark Steel.

Every time someone repeats how there’s no point in referring to antiquated tribal notions of class, they should be forced to visit the Whitgift private school in Croydon…

It’s part of our complex history that we’re surrounded by beauty that was funded by atrocity.

Even the election for deputy leader of the Labour party is pointless, writes Mark Steel, as all the candidates agree about everything.

Tottenham will be the subject of a bidding war between Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong-Il…

Blair’s support for Bush was a result of his adoration for the wealthy and powerful.

The richer the clients, the more likely they’ll be rude, hurling food about and dropping trousers..

Ten years of Labour rule, and we’re kinder to the super-rich than Bush’s America

Even if the boats were on the Iraqi side of the line, the only reason it’s ‘ours’ is that we’ve occupied the place.

In Edinburgh the car park at the hospital is more expensive than the one at the airport.