World

Being a top-class troll takes time and effort. Not everyone has the patience to do it, far less derive quite so much pleasure from infuriating other people. Not for any great principle either but for the sheer devilment of it. As horses are entered for the 2012 GOP Disappointment Derby it’s not a surprise to see Sarah Palin, the grandest, most effective political troll of our time, back in the news. Nor, obviously, is it surprising to discover that she’s not actually done anything to merit this fresh burst of attention. Not unless you include a splendid photo op at Rolling Thunder in Virginia and DC and now some kind

Irish quarter Is there any such thing as a US president without Irish roots? The US genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts has researched the origins of all US presidents and concluded that 20 of the 44 US presidents had some Irish family connections. Half of these, however, have been within the past 50 years. — Until the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961 only 11 out of 34 presidents had had some Irish blood. Since then, nine out of ten presidents have had some Irish ancestry, although it is tenuous in the case of Bill Clinton, in spite of his claim: ‘I mean, I’m sort of… I look Irish’. —

A small series: 1. I was annoyed but not surprised when Barack Obama referred to Westminster as “The Mother of Parliaments” on Wednesday. This was not a surprising error for a foreigner even if his speechwriter should have been expected to know and do better. It is England that is the Mother of Parliaments, not Westminster. (Though the Icelanders have a legitimate grievance about this.) If Obama, being a poor foreigner, can be forgiven this what is Amanda Foreman’s excuse? I’d have thought an “historian” would know better but there she was on the BBC’s This Week making the same ignorant blunder. Not good enough. 2. Canute. A long-standing peeve. Canute

The day started out looking bad for the Balkans, with the Serbian president boycotting a meeting with Barack Obama in Poland because the Kosovo president was attending. But things look rather better now. After a decade-long man-hunt, Serbian police arrested Ratko Mladic in northern Serbia. He was living under the name Milorad Komadic and had grown a beard like his former boss, Radovan Karadzic. A plane carrying Mladic is said to have left for The Hague, where he will soon be arraigned before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Foreign Secretary William Hague has rightly called the arrest a “historic moment” for the western Balkans. General Mladic is

I’m indebted to the gallant Peat Worrier for reminding me of some of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous reflections on this Kingdom. To wit, what with the seperate legal systems being much in the news lately: [I]n all countries; perhaps in all, men are most ignorant of the foreigners at home. John Bull is ignorant of the States; he is probably ignorant of India; but considering his opportunities, he is far more ignorant of countries nearer his own door. There is one country, for instance – its frontier not so far from London, its people closely akin, its language the same in all essentials with the English – of which I

‘Mr Speaker, With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter it is impractical to imprison them all and with reports that Giles Coren is facing imprisonment’ This was as far as John Hemming got in his question to the attorney general before the Speaker interrupted him to warn that he should be talking about the principles involved in super-injunctions not the people. But now that it has been said in parliament it can be reported by the press, although I do not believe any newspaper is allowed say which super injunction he has taken out or whether those naming Giggs on Twitter are correct. There were gasps in