James Forsyth reviews the week in politics You wouldn’t know it from listening to the Prime Minister, but the coalition is on course to be a great reforming administration. In its first 11 weeks, it has announced plans to reform all four major public services. At the same time, its first Budget mandated the largest
I do wish the Prince of Wales weren’t such a terrible prat because then I wouldn’t have to say it in print and quite ruin my chances of a knighthood. But he is a prat. A dangerous prat at that — as he reminded us yet again just the other day in a speech he
People don’t half talk a lot of dross about the burka. Or rather, the burka doesn’t half make people talk a lot of dross, about everything else. Nicolas Sarkozy, the four-foot-tall French President, has decided that his countrywomen don’t have a ‘right’ to wear the burka. Damian Green, our own, taller, immigration minister, has decided
Hillsborough, Co. Down The castle here, which, despite its name, is really a handsome Georgian house, has seen some changes. It was built for the Marquises of Downshire, who laid out the elegant, almost French village, but sold up at Partition in 1922. Then it became the residence of the Governors of Northern Ireland. Since
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business A London hedge fund, Armajaro, has cornered the market in cocoa, for which prices have already risen by 150 per cent over two years. Armajaro is reported to have paid £650 million to take delivery of 240,000 tonnes of beans, all the cocoa there is in Europe in fact,
