I have an independent financial adviser. I can recommend him. He gives me expert advice. But I decide, and sometimes I disagree. Nobody would question either the propriety or the commonplace nature of this arrangement. Recently we were discussing what to do with my maturing pension fund. His suggestions looked shrewd but were predicated on
James Forsyth reviews the week in Politics To step into the House of Commons nowadays is like gatecrashing a wake. In happier days, its corridors were full of MPs quietly plotting. Now, the scene is members being offered a supportive squeeze of the shoulder by a colleague. The ones being consoled are those who have
The global warming lobby, and the terrier who won’t let go two lines If the devil is in the detail then Satan’s foremost emissary on earth must be Christopher Booker. The Booker does the kind of proper, old-school things that journalists hardly ever bother with in this new age of aggregation and flip bloggery: he
Watch what you say. There may be people around who haven’t really been listening ‘Say what you like about servicemen amputees,’ said the comedian Jimmy Carr on stage last week, ‘but we’re going to have a f–—g good paralympic team in 2012.’ Odd to see Patrick Mercer, of all people, calling on him to resign.
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics When William Hague put on his masterful performance at the Dispatch Box last year, imagining how Gordon Brown would feel as President Blair’s motorcade pulled into Downing Street, it seemed the funniest thing in the world to the Tories. But the last laugh may yet be on them.
If you’re me, one of the ways you know that broadcasters are getting desperate for a ‘balancing’ voice to counter a popular point of view is that large numbers of them start telephoning you. You realise they must be scraping the barrel. Never more so, of course, than when what’s sought is that elusive beast,
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics. There is a reason why Tory excitement about returning to government is so tempered: it could be war. The simple, grim mission awaiting them is to impose the sharpest cuts attempted by any postwar government while radically reforming many public services. The trade unions can be expected to
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics. Mud sticks. In politics everyone remembers the charge and not the denials — something Labour has exploited for years. Typically, it would denounce the Conservatives for being heartless, privileged bigots who care nothing for the poor, eat foxes and have no place in modern Britain. But that doesn’t
The Kindly Ones — Les Bienveillantes if you read it in French, which I didn’t — is probably the most brilliant piece of trash fiction ever written. I dedicated most of the summer to Jonathan Littell’s much-praised, internationally bestselling blockbuster and loved almost every minute of it. But it’s definitely not as great as Le
How long will it be before the word ‘voting’ is no longer associated with ‘governing’? How long will it be, do you reckon, before the connotations of the word ‘voting’ are all about reality television, and hardly about government at all? Not long, I’d say. With President Blair, with goats and General Dannatt, I worry
I will only ‘Think Bike’ if the bikers can be persuaded to ‘Think Motorist’ ‘29 BIKERS KILLED OR INJURED IN THE LAST 5 YEARS’, says the big yellow roadside sign as I drive along the A515 between Ashbourne and Buxton, on my way to this week’s Tory conference in Manchester. The sign is repeated many
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics It was as if the banks were taunting the Conservatives when they arrived into Manchester Piccadilly on Sunday: the cash machines at the station had run out of money. The queues were snaking around the escalators, and Tory activists could do little. This, of course, is excellent preparation
How is it that Hollywood has made Roman Polanski into a cause célèbre? He’s a paedo, but he’s our paedo. That’s what bricklayers say. Weird, I know, but there you go. He might have drugged and sodomised that little girl, these bricklayers will say, but he’s had a hard life, and he’s so damn good
I watched, helpless, as a vicious Staffie ripped up my children’s guinea pigs I’m sorry to have to break the news so brutally but there’s no other way: Pickles Deathclaw and Lily Scampers are no more. They are ex-guinea pigs. They have ceased to exist. And all because of one of those bastard, evil dogs
I’m thrilled to the core by the magnificent tribe whose talents shine the world over There’s something about a flesh-and-blood entertainer doing his nut in front of a flesh-and-blood audience that thrills me to the core. I’ve no idea why. Maybe because my great-grandfather was a pantomime dame. Maybe because I’m a far-flung twig on
RIP, then, Marcus the sheep. That’s ‘P’ as a plural in this case, obviously. As in ‘pieces’, and lots of them. Are any of the legs still going spare? Mmm. Love a bit of shank. Marcus, as you’ll have doubtless read, was a sheep reared at Lydd Primary School in Romney Marsh who was then
Was Daphne du Maurier responsible for the attempt to cross the ‘bridge too far’? A few months ago I gave a talk at Boy’s prep school on one of the most glorious debacles in British military history — Operation Market Garden — which marks its 65th anniversary this week. To bring it home, I told
‘Good afternoon to you,’ says the email I recently received from Mr Dowling of Berry Bros & Rudd, ‘and thank you for your recent order no. 884095, placed through our website, for delivery to Spain. ‘There will be a shipping charge of £66.00 for the case of Wickham Vineyards Vintage Selection Dry White, Hampshire, England,
It’s the coal station workers who make the planet worth saving Not that long ago, for an article that never quite happened, I took a tour around Kingsnorth power station. This was just after environmental activists had staged a week-long ‘Climate Camp’ there. ‘Environmentalist?’ said my taxi-driver. ‘Journalist,’ I told him. He seemed surprised. Such
I have just killed a good friend of mine. It was immensely satisfying. I got him after a long and very irritating conversation we’d had about man-made global warming (my friend, James Heneage, is a believer, whereas I, as you know, am not) but that wasn’t my main motive. Rather, I did it because those