A man was arrested on Monday of this week after stabbing a man on a passenger train at Forest Hill station in London. Reports of the incident say that the knife-wielding assailant had shouted ‘Death to Muslims’ and ‘Go back to Syria’ among other things. Some reports suggest that he may have been looking for a
Whose fault is the bloodshed in Aleppo? Yesterday the House of Commons discussed this at some length in an emergency debate on the onslaught by Syrian and Russian planes on the city. One of the most powerful speeches came from George Osborne who spoke about the impact that the 2013 Commons vote had on Syria
More than 1,000 UK bank branches have closed over the past two years, according to Which?. And HSBC has disclosed that it is shutting more than four branches a week, The Guardian reports. The bank says that a minimum of 57 more will be shut down in January. Of all the high street banks, HSBC
Southern’s strike continues for a second day today – spelling more misery for commuters. And the Sun knows who is to blame for the disruption: the ‘hard-left’ who are willing to ‘inflict misery on the public for political ends with impunity’. The Sun says that it’s time for a crackdown on strikes. It says the
In the old days, Tom Watson used to attend Jeremy Corbyn’s Christmas drinks for hacks — and even offer a speech of his own. However, in a sign that relations between the Labour leader and his deputy may not be so tickety-boo, the pair held separate bashes this year. As Watson thanked hacks for their
For the past few weeks, British newspapers have been informing their readers about two contrasting battles in the killing grounds of the Middle East. One is Mosul, in northern Iraq, where western reporters are accompanying an army of liberation as it frees a joyful population from terrorist control. The other concerns Aleppo, just a few
It’s been ‘one hell of a year’ started Tom Parker Bowles in his opening address at this year’s Snow Queen Cigar Smoker of the Year Awards Dinner. The glitterati were out in full force as Americans and Brits came together to pay tribute to the best cigar smokers of 2016, as Kelsey Grammer was crowned
One thing I won’t miss about No. 11 Downing Street are the Christmas cards: 2,056 Christmas cards to be exact. That was the number I had to sign every year. The recipients included 87 FTSE chief executives, 209 foreign dignitaries, six EU commissioners and one shadow chancellor. They all added up, and it involved several days
SpeccieLeaks presents: Transcript of private meeting between President Trump and President Putin, 14 February 2017, Andreyevsky Hall, Grand Kremlin Palace PUTIN: So how are you liking Russia? TRUMP: Fabulous. Amazing. And this room — incredible. You have beautiful taste, my friend. Beautiful. PUTIN: You like gold? TRUMP: Very much. We used a tremendous amount of
My novel of the year was What Belongs to You (Picador, £12.99), Garth Greenwell’s slender, poised, clear-eyed and devastating account of the depths to which unrequited sexual obsession can lead you, particularly if you become entangled with a rent-boy in Sofia. I also enjoyed and admired Aravind Adiga’s funny and touching Selection Day (Picador, £16.99), in which cricketing prodigies
The choosing of Exxon mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as America’s next Secretary of State – which is expected to be confirmed today — seems a typical Donald Trump move: crass, profoundly annoying to the president-elect’s enemies, yet at the same time perhaps very clever. The political class is, naturally, aghast: a corporate titan in charge of
One is growing at 2.9 percent, the other at 2.1 percent. In one retail sales are growing at 1 percent, in the other at 7.5 percent. In one wages are growing by 2.4 percent a year, in the other by 2.3 percent. In one, the establishment is coming to terms with a populist revolt against the
So, the Remoaners have at last got a piece of economic news they can try to crow about – the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose last month from 0.9 per cent to 1.2 per cent, sparking a round of ‘I told you so’s’ on Twitter – one even describes it as a ‘cost of living
America may need to ‘vote again,’ says former CIA operative Robert Baer – preferably in a plebiscite not orchestrated by Vladimir Putin. The spy-turned-author spoke to CNN on Saturday about the latest reports of Kremlin skulduggery to elect Donald Trump. While there is no evidence that hackers fiddled with electronic voting systems or ballot-counting machines, the CIA
If conspiracy theorists turned their attention to the economy rather than, I don’t know, aliens or Hillary Clinton, surely it would not take long for them to notice the peculiar rise in the tax take from VAT. VAT sounds innocuous enough, perhaps because no one really knows why it is there or what ‘Value Added’
Trying to write the first draft of history on the EU referendum and the leadership mess that followed had both its dramatic and its comic elements. My phone never stopped ringing with Eurosceptics keen to tell me why their contribution to a meeting that had previously escaped my notice was the decisive factor in securing
Basic bank accounts – products designed for those who are ineligible for standard accounts – may levy higher fees than necessary, according to the BBC. Government figures suggest that millions of people could be paying over the odds for accounts meant to help them. Despite the introduction of fee-free basic accounts at the beginning of
Britain was once a nation of shopkeepers. But one wonders for how much longer. As if the combination of Amazon, councils’ parking charges and above-inflation business rate rises wasn’t bad enough, we now have a petition. Of course, we do. The petitions wants all large shops to be shut on Boxing Day, as they are on Christmas Day. It argues that
Social care was notable by its absence from the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. But the care system is now firmly back on the agenda following reports yesterday that Theresa May was set to allow councils to raise bills to plug the social care funding gap. The Daily Mail agrees that this is an issue that needs
Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the party has struggled when it comes to forging a positive relationship with the MSM (mainstream media). Right wing press aside, Corbyn has taken issue with coverage from the BBC, New Statesman, The Guardian, the Mirror and Channel Four. However, are times a-changin’? Last night journalists were welcomed into the