World

Just before the hacking scandal broke, the Sun sent a young and by all accounts decent reporter to meet a woman who said she had a story — a ‘walk-in’ as we call them in the trade. The walk-in produced a phone and said the Sun would want to take a look. One picture on it showed the face of a much-loved TV presenter. The rest of the celeb’s body was more lustful than lovable, however, as he was exposing his member in triumphant fashion. Accompanying the picture was a lot of explicit sex talk. The phone looked as if it belonged to the star’s mistress, and the very famous

For months, the Unite trade union has been calling the bluff of Grangemouth’s management. Ineos has said the plant is losing £10 million a month and it has offered to invest £300 million upgrading it – but they wanted workforce reforms, including a two-year pay freeze and the end of final-salary pension schemes (ie, pretty much what the rest of us have been used to for years). The unions refused, and wanted the cash anyway. The owners said no: shareholders were already losing money and could not afford to lose more. Calum MacLean, chairman of Ineos Grangemouth, was fairly stark in his assessment: ‘People need to realise that as a site,

Among the more bizarre parts of Natalie Rowe’s Chief Whip, of which Mr S wrote earlier, is her alleged encounter with Marvin Gaye. The scribbling dominatrix even claims that she sang a duet with the deceased singer while they were on their way to buy cocaine at six in the morning: ‘As we walked an idea hit me. “Marvin?” “Yeah.” “Could we sing a duet?” “Sure. What do you want to sing?” “You Are Everything.” I cleared my throat and started to sing and he sang back. It had been a long night and our throats weren’t at their freshest but, as he held my hand as we sang in

This morning, I was honoured to attend the official opening service and ceremony of the Kings Priory School in Tynemouth. As I’m sure regular Coffee House readers are aware, I’ve followed the creation of this academy in my home region with much interest. Despite Labour’s initial plans to sabotage the merger of the private King’s School and the state Priory Primary School, the new institution finally opened its door six week ago. It’s a fantastic addition to one of the country’s poorest boroughs. Who better to open this school than Andrew Adonis, the man responsible for rejuvenating Kenneth Baker’s academies policy? At the ceremony today, Adonis explained to pupils how

Trade missions are almost comically pointless nowadays, as George Osborne’s visit demonstrated this week in Beijing. He is right that there are serious problems in our trade relations with China — an emerging economic superpower that buys more from Switzerland than it does from Britain. In fact, we export depressingly little to any major emerging market. It’s a matter of real concern — but flying off to China won’t fix it. There’s no evidence that trade missions make a blind bit of difference. When Richard Nixon made his historic visit to China in 1972, it did represent an economic breakthrough. It was far harder, back then, for companies to break

Phew! America has stopped banging its head against the debt ceiling. For now. The world’s pre-eminent power can carry on ruining itself for a while longer — until the next boring-but-incredibly-important fiscal crisis hits. (The dreaded sequester is next up, oh joy). There’ll be plenty more soul-searching essays about the eclipse of American power. But it’s the poor Republicans who face a more urgent existential crisis. Their party’s strategy for handling the issue has been confused and inept.  At every turn, the Democrats have managed (somehow) to present themselves as reasonable, while the Republicans have seemed at best cynical and divided, at worst leaderless and delusional. They have emerged from the

Theresa May’s police reform agenda will take a big step forward tomorrow with the announcement that Police and Crime Commissioners will be able to appoint overseas officers as chief constables. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, this’ll mean that successful foreign police chiefs, such as Bill Bratton the former head of the New York and Los Angeles Police Departments, can come to Britain. If Police and Crime Commissioners take advantage of this change, the world’s most innovative police chiefs will put their skills to work in this country. This will drive up standards by bringing in the best practices from around the world. This is part of package

Here is the revised Royal Charter on press regulation agreed by the three parties. It replaces the draft published in March this year. It begins: NOW KNOW YE that We by Our Prerogative Royal and of Our especial grace It seems that Parliament would bring down 300 years of free expression using a principle that parliamentarians like Pym, Hampden, Haselrige, Holles, Strode and the rest fought a civil war to eradicate. And in case you didn’t know: they won that war. Thank Heavens we English like irony! One can only hope that Her Majesty refuses to sign this document.

Aficionados of corruption will find much to admire in this story from Azerbaijan. Nobody expected the country’s Presidential election to be free and fair.  An increased majority for the incumbent is the usual arrangement in such circumstances, heading to 100% approval and sometimes a little over. But the Azerbaijan authorities have managed something even more ineptly crooked.  They appear to have released the election results a day before voting had even started.

If you asked most people about the BBC, few people would describe it as a hotbed of scepticism about global warming. But the coverage that the BBC gives to those who have doubts about the orthodoxy on the subject is too much for Barker. He, as the Press Association reports, told the Science and Technology Committee, ‘In the case of the BBC they have a very clear statutory responsibility. It’s in the original charter to inform. I think we need the BBC to look very hard, particularly at whether or not they are getting the balance right. I don’t think they are.’ Barker did say, ‘I’m not trying to ban

Mr Steerpike was sitting in the auditorium at New Broadcasting House, waiting for Tony Hall to unveil his plans for the BBC. Lord Hall was expected to announce further cuts to the corporation’s vast bureaucracy, as part of an efficiency drive necessitated by the decision to freeze the licence fee until 2017. Mr S was, therefore, amused to overhear the following conversation between two BBC employees as they took their seats: ‘Hello Rodney.’ ‘Hello Charles.’ ‘Haven’t seen you for twenty years!’ ‘No. What have you been up to?’ Mr S wondered how many other members of the corporation were taking part in this version of Friends Reunited.

The London School of Economics (LSE) has been in the news recently thanks to a certain ex-lecturer who was a Marxist. But while Marxism retains some grip at faculty level in the LSE, it is — like many other universities — another variety of extremism that increasingly dictates events at student level. At last week’s LSE Freshers’ Fair — as Student Rights document here — the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society were threatened with physical removal after being discovered to have t-shirts deemed to be — wait for it — ‘offensive’. Told to cover themselves up or face removal, the atheists were informed that their t-shirts might even be considered ‘harassment’.

Israel’s Prime Minister revealed a crucial truth about the foreign policy of the United Kingdom and our allies in his speech to the United Nations, the gravity of which is difficult to overstate.  His speech affirmed once more that when it comes to Iran, we and all our allies are negotiating under the cover of Israel’s credibility alone. Mr Netanyahu rightly dispensed with diplomatic charades to speak explicitly about Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.  If you believe President Rouhani’s lies from the same podium that there isn’t one, no Western or Arab government agrees with you.  This is not Iraq or even Syria.  As it happens, these country names evoke something rather

   Amman — Beirut — Istanbul I recently bumped into a senior officer with the rebel Free Syrian Army who was waiting in the passport queue at the Turkish border. I didn’t recognise him at first, out of uniform and without his entourage, and I told him so. He was following the example of the 7th-century Second Caliph, Omar bin al Khattab, he replied. The caliph was so humble he took turns with his servant riding a horse to Jerusalem to receive the city’s surrender. There was no imagery from Islamic history when I first met the officer a year ago. He was one of those ‘rebels’ western officials have