Prime ministers are never more powerful than just before a cabinet reshuffle. Ministers fall over themselves to be helpful, hoping to secure their position or move up the pecking order. Backbenchers start hailing the Prime Minister’s every decision as an act of firm and enlightened leadership. This spectacle is underway ahead of next month’s well-trailed
There is a fascinating social media group which I think we should all join. It is called ‘DeMOCKracy — 2019 12/12 UK Election Was Undemocratic’. I hadn’t realised, but apparently the election was ‘rigged by Tory billionaires’ to ensure Jeremy Corbyn was defeated. This was done with the aid of fraudulent postal votes, Tory lies,
More and more of us are staying home for our holidays — but even so, our small hotels and B&Bs are folding at a scary rate. UK hotel insolvencies are up 60 per cent, it was reported last week. Why? Competition bites, said the papers, blaming Airbnb. But there’s another biter, too — more sinister
Just before Christmas our cat Runty died and I wasn’t in any rush to find a replacement. I like cats well enough but I wouldn’t consider them one of life’s essentials. You can’t ride them; they won’t come with you on walks or bark at burglars or gaze at you like you’re the most wonderful,
Earlier this week, we accompanied our daughter-in-law, Hannah, to her British citizenship ceremony, she having passed the necessary tests. (Hannah is American, from the great state of Montana. She retains her American citizenship.) She had been offered the opportunity of attending a free ceremony with about 20 others, but this fell on the due date
Asked to name British institutions they’d rather not see shaken to the foundations, many consumers would list the John Lewis Partnership and its Waitrose supermarket subsidiary just behind the House of Windsor. Indeed some might rank the employee-owned retail group ahead, on the grounds that Her Majesty’s family doesn’t sell Egyptian cotton sheets and organic
