Those who like to laugh abandoned Hope long ago
He may have been born British in the London suburb of Eltham; but the humour of
Any other business
Saturday
Saturday
Banned Wagon | 26 July 2003
Anyone who believes that the anti-competitive ethos in state schools originates with a handful of ideologues in our local authorities should take time to study the United Nations output on education. The UN Commission on Human Rights’s ‘special rapporteur on education’ recently attacked British schools for being too competitive. Katarina Tomasevski, a Swede, complained that
The sinister reason why the Murdoch press is attacking the BBC
One person I have been feeling a little sorry for over the past few days is Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Telegraph. His newspaper was a fervent supporter of the war against Iraq. I think we may say that it was motivated entirely by ideological concerns. There was no commercial benefit for the Telegraph
Saturday
Who is the 16th least influential person in Britain?
The Daily Mirror this week put us all in its debt by publishing a list of the 100 least influential people in Britain. Many of us are tired of those lists of the 100 richest, or most influential, or most powerful. So many of them are people of whom we have never heard. Those responsible
Mr Rusbridger has no more right to be cross than any other middle-class malefactor
Last week the Press Complaints Commission delivered two judgments which, taken together, seem highly perplexing. It exonerated the News of the World for paying £10,000 to a convicted criminal who was implicated in the alleged plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham. And it censured the Guardian for paying £720 to a former criminal for writing an
Saturday
At least the government can still rely on the dumbed-down Times for support
When Robert Thomson was made editor of the Times some 18 months ago he let it be known that he intended to take his paper up-market. There was also good reason to believe that he would not let it be so slavish towards New Labour as it had sometimes been during the long tenure of
Banned Wagon | 12 July 2003
What would it take for the Guardian to argue that mineworkers are a baleful influence on otherwise peaceful rural peoples, and that trees and flowers are more important than well-paid jobs down the pit? The answer is when the mining jobs in question are in Madagascar. The paper has joined the environmental groups campaigning against
Saturday
Will Europeanism be Blair’s answer to Thatcherism?
At last an opinion poll has suggested that Mr Blair might not remain prime minister for as long as he likes. By the time this appears, another opinion poll might return to what has long been the normal condition: Mr Blair well in the lead, the Conservatives no danger to him. But Mr Blair must
The persecution of Mr Gilligan by Mr Campbell has been odious
Many people distrust the BBC. They may like the idea of it, but often deplore the practice. They suspect that journalists who work for it are metropolitan lefties. But such people are apt to be equally wary of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spin chief. They sense a bad ‘un. They have read newspaper stories which
Saturday
Banned Wagon | 28 June 2003
The opportunity to applaud French farmers comes along once a century at most, so an overpriced, oversubsidised champagne must be in order. As I write, France is on the point of scuppering talks on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), thanks to lobbying from its dairy and cereal farmers. This is entirely predictable and
The press shouldn’t join the government in its mindless obsession with security
A favourite newspaper ruse is to sneak a journalist on to the flight deck of a Boeing 747 and then to suggest that we are all at risk as a result of lax security. It is, of course, very effective. Most of us are easily alarmed. And many of us will have been persuaded by
Saturday
Banned Wagon | 21 June 2003
In China over the past fortnight, the waters have been rising in what will eventually be a 350-mile-long reservoir created by the Three Gorges Dam. When finished, the dam’s turbines will generate energy equivalent to 18 nuclear power plants. The dam will also improve navigation on the Yangtze and mitigate the flooding risk which has
Don’t mention that Mussolini saved Jews: it is Politically Inconvenient to do so
Weidenfeld and Nicolson is about to publish a big biography of Mussolini by my friend Nicholas Farrell, which contains the following passage: ‘Just as none of the victorious powers went to war with Germany to save the Jews neither did Mussolini go to war with them to exterminate the Jews. Indeed, once the Holocaust was
Eurosceptic newspapers are too competitive to work together on a referendum
Polly Toynbee of the Guardian believes that the Daily Mail is responsible for most of what is wrong with this country. When she learnt that the paper was intending to hold its own referendum on the new European constitution, the streets of Clapham, where Polly has her house, began to tremble. ‘Who runs the country?’
Saturday
Banned Wagon | 14 June 2003
Sir Edmund Hillary has demanded that the Nepalese government closes Mount Everest for a few years to ‘give it a rest’ and thereafter opens it only to serious climbers. Tourists who pay £40,000 to be led up Everest by experienced guides are not real mountaineers, he says, and they have no right to be there.
Why was the Times so eager to do the government’s dirty work?
The Times’s campaign against the billionaire businessman Michael Ashcroft is now largely forgotten. At the time it was a sensation. In the summer and autumn of 1999 the paper ran scores of articles about Lord Ashcroft, then treasurer of the Tory party and its major donor. The Times not only suggested that Lord Ashcroft was
Saturday
How de Gaulle defeated the Vichyite tendency in the United States
Last week was the week when plenty of Britons, though not their government, seemed to place themselves on guard against M. Giscard’s constitution. It was appropriate, then, that it was also the 60th anniversary of one of the greatest among the many crises in the career of the first Eurosceptic.
The NoW is bad news, but the police were just as bad in the Posh ‘kidnap’ case
Almost everyone dislikes the News of the World, including many of its readers. It is coarse, intrusive, hypocritical and sanctimonious. It frequently puts itself above or outside the law – perhaps most famously when it so whipped up public hysteria over paedophilia that the mobs took to the streets, in one case mistaking a paediatrician
Saturday
Don’t assume that Conrad Black is about to meet his Waterloo
Before I start this piece, which is about the future of the Daily Telegraph, I should make clear that it is written by me. When I last wrote at length about the Telegraph – rather controversially, perhaps – I appear to have caused palpitations in the heart of at least one banker. The Spectator is
Saturday
Of dyers, drapers, weavers and other trichological Fabrications
One day last week, the only subject of conversation among those of us employed to observe proceedings from the House of Commons gallery was the blond hair of Mr Michael Fabricant, the Conservative member for Lichfield. It had become luxuriously longer than ever before, tumbling below his rear collar so that it was the most