An Amnesty report out today draws attention to the fate of 30,000 ethnic Georgians, still displaced from South Ossetia a year after the conflict with Russia. The hard truth is they're simply not at the top of Britain's priority list.

By Alex Stevenson

London has been playing a finely finessed game in the last year. It's been a turbulent time, largely one of patching up relations with Moscow after its unilateral military action into Georgia. But there's been another motive for the Foreign Office too.

Britain backs Georgia's eventual entry into Nato. Its creeping eastward expansion since the collapse of the Soviet Union - now stretching to Afghanistan - provides a direct challenge to Russia. With British relations with Russia the much bigger factor in the equation - the two countries' business links make cooperation an imperative rather than an option - being pushy with Moscow can only be taken so far.

It suits Britain, therefore, to adopt a balanced approach. That is especially

New Speaker John Bercow spent £20,000 on redecorating his new grace-and-favour residence. Bargain.

By Liz Stephens

It's not the amount that John Bercow spent that amazes me.

I spent £3,000 doing up my flat, including installing a new bathroom. That's not including my labour costs for the time spent - which would add at least 5p to the total at my current rate. I also own the smallest flat in the world and I don't have children. I would imagine that a flat which has two studies probably needs more than three cans of paint to redecorate.

It's not even the fact that he pledged in his election campaign that he would forgo the second homes allowance. This expenditure, we are assured, was a 'one-off'.

It's the fact that his predecessor spent over £700,000 refurbishing the same flat this decade and it still needed £20,000 work - just how bad was the taste of the previous Speaker?

Anyone who has ever bought a flat, particularly one that needed 'some work', will confirm the frisson of delight

Brown employed his full range of evasive tactics before the liaison committee today, while MPs and journalists struggled to stay awake.

By Ian Dunt

It's sometimes useful to view the world through child's eyes. I'm not suggesting you begin watching Blue Peter and eating those slices of ham with a teddy bear's face on them. Rather, it can be constructive to cast aside the layers of culture and expectation you've acquired and view a situation without any assumptions about how the world works. It's a sort of snack-sized version of John Rawl's 'veil of ignorance'.

Attending Gordon Brown's bi-annual appearance in front of the liaison committee - which collects together the chairperson of each Commons select committee - one will naturally assume certain things about the nature of politics, and the habit of humans to behave in a manner which is entirely contradictory to the words they emit from their mouths. Instead, one could ask oneself: How much truth am I getting?

That's what a child

You had to feel for this pair. For once, the Commons wasn't in the mood for party politics.

By Alex Stevenson

This is the effect death has on politicians. The spate of recent fatalities among British soldiers serving in Afghanistan and the moving scenes of public mourning in Wiltshire's Wootton Bassett village has sent the nation into agonies of uncertainty.

Arguing about equipment for armed forces, while topical, is not the stuff of rollicking back-and-forth stuff.

So there was not much humour in this week's PMQs as a result. Instead the main issue was about how to extract maximum political leverage from the fraught atmosphere of uncertain bipartisanship.

David Cameron, who by nature as leader of the opposition is obliged to go on the offensive, started off rather tentatively. But he was soon pushing for admissions about failures to win over the British public.

"I think we will take people with us in the future if we admit what we got wrong in the past," he pressed. Labour

In the bitterly practical world of state-sanctioned interrogation techniques thing are never quite so black and white.

By Alex Stevenson

Politics, and politicians, like things to be simpler. That's why we're told the British government doesn't do torture. It does condone other practices, however. And yesterday saw the start of an attempt to find out quite how much it does allow.

The Baha Mousa inquiry, investigating how a 26-year-old hotel receptionist from Basra died two days after being arrested by British soldiers in Iraq, will spend the next year grappling with these unfortunate truths.

This long process began with counsel for the inquiry Gerard Elias outlining the main issues faced as the detainees' claims of abuse are assessed.

His justification was strong enough: "To be seen to be dealing with such allegations on a comprehensive and fair way may not of itself heal the wounds, but perhaps it does go some way to provide reassurance, both to those who may have been wronged and to

The Met refuse to investigate, but others have taken on the task. What happens now, and where will the scandal leave the British media?

By Ian Dunt

What's the story?

In January 2007, Andy Coulson, then editor of the News of the World, resigned from his position after it transpired that a journalist working for him had used a private investigator to hack into the phone messages of aides to the royal family. The paper's royal editor, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, both went to prison. Coulson later became David Cameron's director of communications, which caused a minor stir, but nothing substantial. And that was the end of that.

Then late on Wednesday evening, the Guardian newspaper blew everything wide open. Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, had sued the News of the World for intercepting messages on his mobile. They settled but with the condition that he sign a gagging clause forbidding discussion of the case, the

A stronger, more assertive Russia is generally viewed with horror by European diplomats. They need not be so aghast.

By Alex Stevenson

The fear of a resurgent Russia is at the forefront of the Commons' defence committee's report on London's relations with Moscow today. 'Russia: A New Confrontation?' is set against the context of "some commentators" suggesting "there is a risk of a new cold war emerging as a result of Russia's increasingly assertive foreign policy".

Those pundits have a point or two. Just look at the last year, which shows Moscow's enthusiastic embracing of both actions and words as foreign policy tools. Earlier this year saw brinkmanship from Moscow over its energy policy, as it cut supplies across much of Europe because of a dispute with Ukraine. And last August witnessed the outrageous military intervention into South Ossetia.

Georgia acted recklessly, it is accepted. But Russia's actions showed the limits of its respect to state sovereignty - and its preparedness to

The media is failing the British public as badly as parliament. As a recent movie put it: Who Watches The Watchmen?

By Ian Dunt

We all know there's something deeply wrong with Britain today. A sense of dissatisfaction and dull resignation haunts the country. For months now we've savaged politicians. That problem is still very, very far away from being fixed. But it's unfortunate we've isolated our anger in one area.

Today's Guardian allegations about an apparent culture of law breaking and privacy invasion at the News of the World could give us the opportunity to look closely at the British media, and ask ourselves how it is failing us. We'll be lucky. The trouble with scrutinising the media is that it's the media who have to do the scrutinising. And people tend to not to defecate in their own backyard.

As the recent movie posters for the Watchmen blockbuster put it: Who Watches the Watchmen? An unwritten and unmentioned rule exists in Fleet Street, and has done ever since journalists