I’ve much respect for the Matlock Mercury: our part of the Derbyshire dales would be the poorer without this lively and conscientious local paper. And were it not for the Mercury’s useful report I’d never even have learned about the county council’s plan. But I do take issue with the headline. ‘Big switch-off to hit
At a well-lubricated dinner the other night at a first-class Chinese restaurant called Red Emperor by the stunning riverside development on the south bank of the Yarra in Melbourne, Australia, my host made me an offer that I very nearly couldn’t refuse. ‘What would it take to persuade to you come and live in Australia?’
The black dog has descended on Whitehall. Tory ministers are, as a group, at their lowest ebb since they entered government. When I saw one secretary of state this week, he stopped halfway through our meeting to say, ‘I’m sorry this is such a depressing conversation’. He then continued in the same vein. Even the
I was in the back of a cab with Nadine Dorries once. It was after some event where politicians and the press meet up to propagate their unhealthy relationships with one another at someone else’s expense, probably yours. I can’t remember exactly what it was. All I remember is this apparently perpetually furious woman ranting
‘Sir,’ read a letter in the Daily Telegraph last week. ‘Is this the wettest drought since records began?’ High five, David Stevens of Poole, Dorset. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Drought? A lack of water? The sodding stuff is falling from the sky. All day, every day. Drought? Are you sodding kidding me?
There is a split in the Cameron circle. The divide is between those who think that the problems of the past few weeks have been a blip, one that will end when Boris Johnson wins in London, and those — including some of the Prime Minister’s closest friends — who fear the problems are symptoms
I would like to begin my article this week with a minute’s silence, please, which I would enjoin you to observe respectfully and without feeling the need to chant obscenities. This particular minute’s silence is in respect of the minute’s silence which was not observed appropriately by some football supporters last weekend. That minute’s silence,
A slow reader but someone who has to plough through stuff for work, I skim and flick uneasily, and by middle age had almost completely lost my teenage habit of unhurried reading for pleasure. But in the last decade I’ve started again in a gentle way to read fiction and biography for amusement alone. It
When is it socially acceptable for a white person to tell a black person he looks like a monkey eating a banana? For some of you the answer will be ‘never’; for others: ‘Oh my God. I can’t believe you even asked such a racist question!’ But I must confess that when my white tennis
One might think that the Cameroons would be desperate about a poll showing their leader’s personal approval rating to be the lowest it has ever been. But the Prime Minister’s negative rating, minus 27, looks positively healthy when compared to those of the other two party leaders: the same poll showed Ed Miliband at minus
‘Theoretical perspectives on contemporary cities, with a specific focus on the global nature of urban social and political change and development. The course will consider classic and recent theory and analysis emanating from ‘Northern’ academic and policy contexts, while also challenging western-centric views of the city… The course will equip students interested in urban change
There’s a big hole in the coalition’s controversial internet surveillance plans, and it comes in the shape of the point. Right now, you see, everybody is making a fuss about civil liberties. This is because making a fuss about civil liberties is a blast. Once you work up a decent head of steam, any fool
Downing Street is, in the words of one senior aide, in a mood of ‘sober reflection’ about how and why so many things have gone wrong in the past fortnight. The question now is whether the government can expect more of the same for the rest of the year. The answer will turn on two
I’m not the first columnist and will not be the last to shrink from finding out too much. For this there are subtler reasons than laziness: a half-acknowledged fear that one’s argument will lose shape; that complexity may overwhelm understanding; that counterfactuals and shades of grey spoil a simple picture, and resolution sink beneath a
The other day George Monbiot of the Guardian had me round for the weekend at his country seat in Machynlleth, Wales. You’ll never guess what we had for dinner after a fine afternoon’s sport shooting the red kite which infest that region like a verminous plague. First, we had leatherback turtle soup; then a delicious
David Cameron was in a foul mood on Monday night. ‘Cash for Cameron’, the scandal about a Tory treasurer trying to lure donors with the prospect of dinner in the Camerons’ Downing Street flat if they coughed up £250,000, is precisely the kind of story that gets under his skin. He knows that it matters,
Was the Home Secretary Theresa May half-cut when she started ranting about alcohol in the House of Commons last week? The haste and suddenness of her intervention had the whiff of addled self-disgust about it, the self-pitying fervour of the alcoholic who is determined to get clean. As if she had been bingeing all morning
I once had an idea that it might be fun to write a technology column. What Jeremy Clarkson did with cars, I thought, and Giles Coren and A.A. Gill do with restaurants, I could do with… phones and stuff. It could be one of those launchpad-type columns, I thought, where you don’t really write about
This Budget was a reminder that political tactics alone are not enough to explain George Osborne’s actions. The most striking thing about it was the political risks that it took for economic growth. If Osborne was the polling-obsessed politician that his critics claim he is, he wouldn’t have gone near the 50p rate — nor
Three jobs only a madman would covet, and all of them up for grabs this spring: manager of the England football team, Archbishop of Canterbury and director general of the BBC. Wouldn’t the world be a much happier place if, by May, something weird happened to all the applications and we ended up with John