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Friday 9 May 2008

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Cameron gets ready for No. 10 — and Boris must wait his turn

Fraser Nelson

7th May, 2008

David Cameron talks to Fraser Nelson about his local election triumphs, admits that he is not going to ‘agree on everything’ with the new Mayor of London, and says Boris should join the queue to become PM after him

Cameron gets ready for No. 10 — and Boris must wait his turn

Obama failed this week as well as Clinton

James Forsyth

7th May, 2008

James Forsyth says that Hillary’s disappointment in Tuesday’s primaries is matched by the decline in Obama’s image, as the sheen of the wunderkind fades and doubts multiply

The hard choices that face the Father of the Mayor

Stanley Johnson

7th May, 2008

Stanley Johnson is adjusting to his new constitutional position in the life of London: not least deciding which clubs to avoid at lunchtime in order to dodge Boris’s journalist foes

Our transport system is not even ‘Third World’

Andrew Neil

7th May, 2008

Andrew Neil offers a despairing snapshot of cancelled trains, ludicrously expensive rail tickets, hell at Terminal 5, non-existent customer service. Does anyone want to fix this?

‘It’s harder for straights to feel Christian charity than gays’

Theo Hobson

7th May, 2008

Theo Hobson meets Gene Robinson, the only openly gay Anglican bishop, who says that homosexuals are more open to the Christian ‘message of radical change’

Don’t expect the cyclone in Burma to have benign political side-effects

Rod Liddle

7th May, 2008

Rod Liddle says that there is a natural hope that the interventions of the UN and charities in the disaster-stricken country will open it up. But history does not support such optimism

London Notebook

Barry Humphries

7th May, 2008

Barry Humphries on life in the capital

Happy 60th birthday, Israel: well done for surviving

Melanie Phillips

30th April, 2008

Melanie Phillips says that the prosperity and growing cultural confidence of Israel is a fitting riposte to the Western intelligentsia, American meddling and the daily propaganda assault that ignores the Islamisation of the Palestinians

Balls wants a 100 per cent tax on inherited brains

Irwin Stelzer

30th April, 2008

Irwin Stelzer admires the Schools Secretary, and so regrets that his admissions policy prevents schools from taking account of a pupil’s prospects of success. Bad news all round

Sorry, but family history really is bunk

Leo McKinstry

30th April, 2008

Leo McKinstry says the current craze for genealogy reflects an unhealthy combination of snobbery and inverse snobbery, and is a poor replacement for national history

Not even science fiction foresaw the end of fathers

John Patten

30th April, 2008

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill seeks to end the child’s right to a father figure, writes John Patten, ignoring all sound research in its obsession with ‘discrimination’

Strip clubs are a City girl’s sanctuary

Venetia Thompson

30th April, 2008

Venetia Thompson, until recently a broker, says that the feminist Fawcett Society should not campaign to outlaw City outings to strip joints: they are harmless after-hour crèches

This Austrian horror gnaws at our fears about how we treat our own children

Rod Liddle

30th April, 2008

Josef Fritzl’s unspeakable crimes against his daughter not only sicken us, says Rod Liddle. They sharpen our confusion about day-to-day parenting in the modern world

Joking apart: why Boris is the man for the job

23rd April, 2008

Boris Johnson has confounded his critics, says Matthew d’Ancona. The contest will go to the wire, but our man has proved himself to be both shrewd enough and serious enough to take charge

My dream for Turkey, by Boris’s great-grandfather

Norman Stone

23rd April, 2008

Norman Stone on the dramatic life and death of Ali Kemal, one-time interior minister of Turkey and our mayoral candidate’s forebear

The Beeb behaved like a Da Vinci Code villain

Jack Valero

23rd April, 2008

Jack Valero, a director of Opus Dei, says that even Dan Brown would be hard-pushed to invent the strange and circuitous business of complaining to the BBC

Why I’m standing to be a local councillor

Kelvin MacKenzie

23rd April, 2008

Kelvin MacKenzie says that his fury over an extortionate hike in parking prices drove him to stand for election to Elmbridge Borough Council

The truth is that the house price crash is, overall, good news

Rod Liddle

23rd April, 2008

Rod Liddle says that our pursuit of property as investment has been the most repulsive and soul-destroying aspect of contemporary British culture

Obama needs to knock Hillary out — and quick

James Forsyth

23rd April, 2008

Hillary Clinton’s big win in the Pennsylvania primary has drawn attention to four main weaknesses in Barack Obama’s appeal, says James Forsyth

Here in Transylvania, it feels okay to be proudly English

Rod Liddle

16th April, 2008

As nationalities proliferate, the English want their turn, says Rod Liddle — who considers himself British first. St George’s Day and ‘Englishness’ have been partially decontaminated, but we are no closer to a definition of what ‘England’ is — and quite right too

Hands off Jerusalem, my family heirloom

George Bridges

16th April, 2008

George Bridges on the part played by his great-grandfather, Robert Bridges, in the composition of Parry’s music to Blake’s lyric: too precious, he says, to be hijacked by separatists