Columnists

Columns

Katy Balls

The by-election that should most worry ministers

When the political cabinet met on Tuesday, by-elections were on the agenda. The Prime Minister is facing four of them. David Warburton, suspended from the party last year over a sex and cocaine ‘sting’, is the latest to step down. On 20 July the Tories will try to defend his constituency of Somerton and Frome,

The trouble with teachers

A teacher once told me that he couldn’t stand Pakistanis ‘because of the smell’. I was 13 at the time and it was during a classroom debate about immigration: he was very much agin, I was for. It struck me, suddenly, that he was very stupid – an astonishing realisation, as I was accustomed to

The diversity trap

If anyone reading this ever bought shares in the diversity racket, then I would suggest you start dumping them now. Not that I would blame you for having bought them in the first place. ‘Diversity’ has been the great mantra of our age. Like ‘equality’, it is one of those words set up to be

Should we ban drones from our national parks?

I have a plan for my old age. Now that we all might live for a century or so, feeling redundant and bemused, it’s important to prepare and I have. In my eighties I will be a destroyer of drones. All drones will fall within my remit but my speciality will be hobby drones, the

Any other business

How to avert a mortgage car-crash

How real is the ‘mortgage crisis’ and what, if anything, can be done to relieve it? BBC vox pops of borrowers whose monthly costs have already rocketed or who face imminent rate resets at 6 per cent or worse certainly give a dramatic impression. But in reality this is a slow-motion car-crash – for Rishi