By chance, my father and I were together when we heard the news. We had both just flown to Washington DC – he from Paris, I from Istanbul – to care for my grandmother, who¹d had a heart attack. Before the words “major earthquake in Haiti” came over the car radio, we were already under
Labour’s Green Paper on families makes it clear that the party is opposed to promoting marriage. Ferdinand Mount says it’s crucial that the Tories don’t waver, but stick to their promise of a financial incentive What, if anything, should David Cameron promise in order to shore up family life in general and marriage in particular?
Ed Balls has had enough. He’s finally decided to haul in Britain’s absentee fathers and teach them a thing or two about parenthood. ‘All the evidence,’ says the Families minister, ‘is if fathers are properly engaged and involved, then they stay, they’re supportive to their children, they do all the things which lead to better
This following is definitely in bad taste, isn’t it? I don’t always have a working moral compass when it comes to black humour, but I think this is just the wrong side of the line. Although I’m not sure. A disc jockey from Revolution Radio, in Manchester, played the song ‘Jump’, by Van Halen, as
There has been one thing missing from the debate between Google and the People’s Republic of China. The decommunisation of the world was not supposed to happen this way. Countries which dismantled their systems of oppression and fear were supposed to prosper economically; while any who declined to do so would remain in economic permafrost.
Patrick Allitt says that the infuriating but reassuring can-do spirit that once defined the United States is finally dying out. But what will we all do when it’s gone? The first time I went to America, in 1977, I couldn’t believe how cheerful, peppy and purposeful everyone was. The late seventies were bad years by
On Tuesday morning I looked down at the elderly woman lying in the corner of a hotel car park and suspected that my efforts would be futile. She was in a serious condition and obvious pain: intestinal paralysis caused by a broken pelvis and shoulder, the result of being trapped under tons of rubble. Her
Last week, the Department for Communities and Local Government announced that it was lifting its ban on Whitehall contact with the Muslim Council of Britain, the self-proclaimed umbrella group of British Muslims. Quite apart from the tactical mistake of such a move — far from being an ally in the fight against extremism, the MCB
Only a year ago the American right was in a state of cataleptic shock as the Democrats won the House of Representatives, the Senate and the presidency. Conservatism looked as though it was headed for the skids, while the left celebrated its startling comeback. No longer. A populist right-wing revolt against big-government liberalism has sent
The British military has been horribly overstretched by the wars of the Labour years, says Max Hastings. But the Tories’ only option will be to cut further still. Hideous decisions lie ahead Britain’s armed forces sometimes suppose that they get a better break from Conservative governments than Labour ones, but their recent experience suggests otherwise.
Rod Liddle says that Northern Ireland’s First Minister and his wife held religious beliefs that made ordinary life — and marriage — impossible Help me out here — we need a wholesale supplier, and quickly. If we are to save the soul of Iris Robinson, we need huge vats of the blood of Christ, in
It is 3 a.m. in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, and the Horse Shoe nightclub is a tableau to inflame the Jihadi heart with rage. To thumping music, Yemeni prostitutes cavort with fat, thuggish-looking local men. The tables are dotted with bottles of single malt costing $500 each (almost a year’s wages for the average Yemeni).
Cameron’s inclinations are to help the rich and the ‘romantic’ poor and do little for those who’ve bettered themselves, says Ross Clark. But can he rely on the middle-class vote? There may be no big idea but there is an important concept lurking on the back page of the Conservatives’ draft manifesto on health. And
Dennis Sewell says that the political cage fight between the Tories and the educational establishment will be the most thrilling contest of Cameron’s first hundred days The Russell Group, representing Britain’s top 20 universities, warned this week that Gordon Brown’s cuts would bring to its knees within six months a higher education system that has
Before the advent of Political Correctness — the system of censorship which has settled over the English-speaking world like a dense cloud of phosgene gas — clever people were unashamed of being eccentric. This applied particularly to dons. I am reminded of this by browsing through a gigantic book, Magdalen College, Oxford: A History, edited
Alastair Campbell emerged from that kind of shining silver limo more accustomed to transporting the likes of Jordan and Paris Hilton than former directors of communications. He got their entourage too: a vicious ‘pap’ scrum so tight that The Chilcot Inqury’s latest star witness required the assistance of four burly coppers to get to the
One of the joys of living in Britain is watching the country fall apart when some snow falls. Trucks laden with your copies of The Spectator are, alas, no exception to this and we gather that many of our readers could face delays before receiving their magazines. So we have decided to put the
‘It’s a brand new year’, Mr Cameron told his Oxford audience last Saturday as he launched his election campaign. ‘It’s a brand new year’, Mr Cameron told his Oxford audience last Saturday as he launched his election campaign. Why, so it is. He also has a ‘new politics’ on offer — new, new, new —
The Tories have opened the new year in a blaze of speeches and promises. But what does it all add up to? Nothing, says James Forsyth — and that’s deliberate. There will never be such a thing as Cameronism Once more, search parties are being sent out to look for David Cameron’s big idea. They
Cameron’s ‘big idea’ is for a ‘Post-Bureaucratic Age’ enabled by the internet. Will it work? Peter Hoskin and Neil O’Brien aren’t sure The future: it’s all about computers. Anyone could tell you that. But not everyone gets quite as evangelical about it as David Cameron. Put the Conservative leader in a room full of tech-heads,