One cannot legislate for a quiet world. When a former Princeton University college professor was elected president of the United States, he joked before his inauguration that ‘it would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs’. That was Woodrow Wilson, speaking in March 1913. Similarly, the Hawaiian-born
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that inheritance tax ‘shouldn’t be paid by people who’ve worked hard and saved and who bought a family house’ and that this would be addressed in the Conservative manifesto. Two opinion polls after the Budget, by Survation for the Mail on Sunday and by YouGov for the Sunday
I had a slight shock last week, while listening to Desert Island Discs. The admirable nurse Dame Claire Bertschinger had chosen a reading of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ as one of her eight discs. The poem, beautifully read by Michael Caine, was nearing its climax when it came to an abrupt stop. If you do this
According to a top TV scientist, in the beginning there was ‘empty space’ and ‘energy’. After a big bang, the universe started out as a ‘featureless void’. But emerging particles ‘organised themselves into the universe we see today’ by ‘clumping together’ because of ‘deviation’ from perfect smoothness in ‘warped’ space. Meanwhile, cosmic light particles are
Escapology This week marked the 70th anniversary of the Great Escape, when 76 Allied servicemen tunnelled out of Stalag Luft III prisoner of war camp in Poland. Fifty of them were executed on recapture. How successful were escape attempts? — At least 483 Allied servicemen escaped German camps. Only 12 reached home turf, including three
Why we need a free press Sir: As bereaved parents and (to borrow from some signatories of last week’s advertisement) victims of public authority abuse we wholly oppose adoption of the politically endorsed Royal Charter of Press Regulation. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Christopher, our mentally ill son, had been denied his
