Finally: Number 10 admits that far from ‘dealing with debt’, the government is seeing it rise. This morning the Prime Minister’s spokesman was grilled on the party political broadcast that horrified Fraser last night in which the Prime Minister said ‘we are making progress. We’re paying down Britain’s debts.’ Fraser has explained the reality –
Amid much Twitter self-congratulation, the New Statesman has declared this ‘Orwell week‘. Oddly, however, it has yet to mention some of the most notable aspects of its relationship with the great man. In his long, long introductory piece Philip Maughan allows that Orwell went through a certain amount of ‘disagreement’ with the magazine’s editor, Kingsley
Aaron Ellis makes a good point: the comparison between Mali and Afghanistan is flawed. But I disagree with him as to why. Afghanistan was a failed state long before al-Qaeda settled there (as a last resort). The pattern is slightly different in Mali: Islamists have further destabilised an already weak country in a strategically sensitive
Since revealing that the Shard’s ‘loos with a view’ give punters more than they bargained for, I’ve been inundated with even saucier tales emanating from western Europe’s tallest building. I hear that a new exclusive club has been formed at the top of the 1,016ft glass spire: the almost mile high club. Staff became aware that the
Why should we worry if jihadists control a poor, landlocked country thousands of miles away? As the French push on with the ‘reconquest’ of Mali, there’s a feeling here that Britain must play its part in preventing a terrorist safe haven on Europe’s southern border. Some compare the situation to pre-9/11 Afghanistan. Back in May,
Steerpike is back in this week’s magazine. As ever, here is your preview: ‘While losses mount at the Guardian, the editor, Alan Rusbridger, has fallen in love. He keeps ordering the sub-editors to find space for articles about his new Fazioli piano. Cheeky responses have appeared on the website. ‘We always wondered how you filled
It did not, in the end, take very much to outfox Ed Miliband. You wonder what he had been expecting the Prime Minister to say about a referendum on withdrawing, or otherwise, from the EU. As it was, Ed floundered, and felt obliged to say that Labour would not be promising a referendum – that
How broken is the British criminal justice system? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson and Rory Geoghegan, research fellow at Policy Exchange, explain the rehabilitation game and the cover up masterminded by our political class to hide the truth about how we dole out justice. Why is the government so keen on using electronic tagging?
The frustrating thing about tagging, or electronic monitoring (EM) is that it could so easily be effective — if only we did it properly. As a former police officer, I can vouch that Theodore Dalrymple is right when he says that it’s a relatively small number of prolific offenders who commit the majority of recorded crime.
‘They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work,’ said the Soviet worker in the good old days; the British criminal could nowadays say with equal reason, ‘They pretend to punish us and we pretend to reform.’ Recent statistics show that two thirds of young criminals ordered to wear electronic tags break their court
At the next election, all parties will agree that Britain is in a mess. They will disagree about is who is to blame. Both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats will say that Labour left behind an even bigger set of problems than people realise; their government has started to fix things, they’ll argue, but
The football writers laid on a tribute do for Steven Gerrard the other night, not as you might suppose at Nando’s — but at the Savoy and very jolly it was too. As someone said, it’s about the only honour he’s likely to get now, what with playing just for Liverpool and England and all
A few years ago, I answered an advertisement on a flat-sharing website and ended up living with a fledgling pop star — I’ll call him Sam. He was not long out of adolescence, and was gnawed at by his need for recognition. For years, he and his bandmates had been plastering the internet with tracks, hoping
In Competition No. 2781 you were invited to devise a riposte to a nauseating Christmas round-robin letter that would deter the author from ever sending another. My favourite of Lynne Truss’s half-dozen responses to persistent round-robiners, broadcast on Radio 4, was take six: ‘I’ve decided, finally, to try a more direct approach. Here it comes.
Friday night in Jaffa, and it’s a party. Jaffa, to the south of Tel Aviv, is where the cool kids hang, apparently — think Dalston or the meatpacking district, and add radical chic. An Israeli-Russian dude in big ironic spectacles tells me that, not far from here, they filmed scenes for the second season of
Kenya: The Prime Minister has committed Britain to a struggle against the ‘existential threat’ of terrorism in Africa that he says will take ‘years, even decades’ of patience, intelligence and toughness. Well, there’s some truth in what he says, but not in the implication that this is a new threat to Africa — nor that
More turmoil at No. 10, I hear. ‘Cameron’s power network is disintegrating,’ gloated an insider as news broke that two aides close to the cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, are to leave. The pair worked together at the highest level. Paul Kirby (head of policy) would devise new administrative schemes and Kris Murrin (head of implementation)
Republicans turn pale with horror at the idea that Hillary Clinton might be the next president. She is the screeching harridan of their nightmares, made worse by her penchant for centre-left social policies. But they had better face up to the fact that no woman has ever been better placed to take the top job.
Rift Valley ‘I’ve got a brilliant idea,’ said Jools on the phone, his voice characteristically rising like a commentator on the Grand National as Red Rum comes in for the finish. ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘We buy land in Kenya — and then sell it.’ ‘Genius,’ I said. Exclaimed Jools, ‘I know! And I’ll give
Sajid Javid seems the very model of a rising young Tory: student politics, then investment banking, then a junior Treasury minister in his first parliament; well-cut suit trousers, crisp white shirt, pastel-blue tie. But what sets him apart, and so excites some of his colleagues, is his background. His father arrived in Britain from a
