Having been reprimanded by the broadcasting regulator Ofcom for a clutch of on-air errors, this report is just the most recent evidence that the Corporation is now form-filling when it should be programme-making. At times it is as if the viewers are receiving a service that incorporates all that is undesirable: a costly administration unable
It is now 12 years since the Queen was first obliged to enter the Palace of Westminster and deliver a speech studded with the most awful New Labour clichés. Over the years, Her Majesty’s dismay during the state opening of parliament has become steadily more visible — and little wonder. As Labour ekes a fifth
Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said during his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet that he wanted a meeting of allies in London in January about Afghanistan, to set a timetable and ‘identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control’. Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said during his speech
Monday Exciting trip to Norfolk for the ‘de-selection’. After a gruelling train journey east, Poppy and I tucked into a delicious spread in a heavenly tea shop with the biggest scones ever. Everything was so cheap! We bought two of everything in all the shops, and got some great deals on Haggarts Tweed. We then
Not a bad way to start the political week, picking up the Threadneedle/Spectator Award for parliamentary survivor of the year. I don’t win many awards, of any variety. The last one I recall was six years ago when I was transport secretary. Some motoring magazine named me ‘Most Boring Politician in Britain’. (Two years in
A new Telegraph survey on ‘dating’ (the romantic rather than temporal kind), reveals that 91 per cent of women and 86 per cent of men would not marry someone ‘who had everything you looked for in a partner, but whom you were not in love with’. But what, an ancient would ask, has marriage to
Where does Gordon Brown find solace in these darkest of times? In Downing Street, a rather desperate numbers game is being played. It starts with an assumption that the Labour vote has stabilised at around 28 per cent. This is rounded up to 30 per cent, and is forecast to sneak up to 32 at
Eliot’s anti-Semitism Sir: I yield to none in my love of T.S. Eliot’s work, and have even managed to defend to myself the iffy passages about Jews in his poetry. But the letters that Craig Raine quotes in his review (Books, 14 November) are so blatantly, even honestly, anti-Semitic that they leave no room for
