Can I ask a small favour of you? Nothing too onerous, just something you might usefully store away at the back of your memory. Can I ask a small favour of you? Nothing too onerous, just something you might usefully store away at the back of your memory. It is this: if I am ever
With or without global warming, Britain is disappearing into the sea. We must invest more in coastal and river defences I have an idea for saving public money: replace the Department for Energy and Climate Change with one man and a sandwich board carrying the words: ‘Prepare to Meet Thy Doom’. It shouldn’t cost much
The writer Sebastian Faulks exudes a sense of calm accomplishment. But even he seems tense about the stage adaptation of his bestselling novel Birdsong ‘I’m not excited. I don’t do excitement,’ says Sebastian Faulks. Which is probably just as well. Four years have elapsed since the project he’s currently involved with, a dramatisation of his
Murray Sayle, who died last weekend, wrote regularly for The Spectator. Here is an edited extract from his column of 13 May 1989. Aikawa, near Tokyo The night of 19 December last was cold and starry. Our house stood in a clearing in a pine forest halfway up a mountainside, and the flames could be
Even leaderless and without fresh ideas, Labour has surged in the polls. Think what the party might be able to do with someone – anyone – in charge The Labour leadership contest has been easy to mock. It has set brother against brother, lasted for months and shown that the party has no heir to
‘Time for the arts to stand on its own two feet and stop sponging off the taxpayer’ From the start, the combatively worded motion came under attack. Culture secretary Ed Vaizey called it ‘brutal, vulgar, left-wing, and hostile to excellence and quality.’ He urged us not to think of the arts as a layabout teenager
Britain is a liberal and progressive utopia – and the authorities will arrest anyone who disagrees Everyone can agree that today’s Britain — which we’re always being told has become so much more liberal — is the very model of a forward-looking, tolerant society in which freedom of expression is paramount. Correct? If only. In
It feels wrong, as a journalist, to be letting outsiders into this secret, but it is really quite easy to cover things up in England. If you are determined enough it won’t cost you a penny to buy silence. Nor does it even much matter whether you live in this country: our legal system stands
The Blairite ‘Respect agenda’ is bunkum. We must all be free to insult each other or else only bullies will prevail Stealthily, an idea which was born under New Labour has wormed itself into the imagination of post-millennial Britain. It is the concept of Respect, not least as applied to how we talk or write
Academics who dare to question the scientific establishment’s consensus on Darwinism or global warming increasingly find themselves ostracised and demonised Three months ago I spent a fascinating few days in a villa opposite Cap Ferrat, taking part in a seminar with a dozen very bright scientists, some world authorities in their field. Although most had
Growing up in Glasgow I saw the word ‘Paki’ spray-painted on to the metal shutters of corner shops across the city. I was called a Paki. It was whispered, spoken and occasionally shouted, as I was pursued through the streets, running in terror from yobs. Those more attuned with the socio-geographic affairs of the Indian
In the adult world of the pub, under-18s can learn to drink alcohol responsibly Why are so many young people so bad at getting drunk? No sooner have they necked a couple of lagers or downed a bottle of sickly alcopop than they start parading through the streets, skirts up or trousers down. There’s no
John Ellis ‘Jeb’ Bush insists he doesn’t want to run for president. Don’t believe a word of it The next presidential election is 26 months away and already the parties are fretting about it. Barring a disaster, President Obama will be the Democratic candidate, but history is not treating him well. When he took office,
What a pity it is that all the hate and slime now directed against the Pope’s visit is not aimed instead at the Church of England. Why do God-haters and militant secularists have to turn on a pensionable German theology professor and head of a Rome-based religious multinational organisation, when they want to condemn the
Dominic Cummings meets Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winner who has the answer to some of the West’s intractable problems. So why won’t politicians listen to him? One day in 1974, at the height of the famine in Bangladesh, an economics teacher from a nearby university wandered into a village called Jobra. There he found the
According to Cardinal Newman, who is to be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday 19 September, it is a rule of God’s providence that Christians succeed through failure. It is hardly surprising, then, that Newman’s great contemporary Cardinal Manning has never been a candidate for canonisation. He did not care for failure. That these
Things are speeded up these days, there is no time to wait. Everything is hurried along to fit our frenetic lives, our shorter attention span, our impatience with the world. You remember poor Jade Goody, the coarse-natured and half-witted ‘reality’ TV star who presented, as the medical people put it, during an episode of the
The world’s greatest festival of music continues to grow under the splendid stewardship of Roger Wright, but there is always plenty of missionary work to do, for the world will never run short of grouches. The world’s greatest festival of music continues to grow under the splendid stewardship of Roger Wright, but there is always
This summer’s election to choose a new deputy regional sales manager of the Co-op, sorry, a new leader of the Labour party, has rather obviously failed to set the nation on fire. But one level below the sundry Eds and assorted Milibands, there’s a much clearer and more interesting battle for Labour’s soul. In the
The bubble may have burst, says Ross Clark, but a crash looks unlikely. For now, property remains a sensible investment — better than sticking cash in a low-interest account I’m getting fed up with my 2.5 per cent Northern Rock Super-Sucker’s Account. It was OK when it was paying 6 per cent and Alistair Darling