Gianni Alemanno, Rome’s new right-wing mayor, tells John Laughland that it’s time for the Eternal City to adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ approach There are few people, I imagine, who could make Boris Johnson jealous, but Gianni Alemanno is probably one of them. Two days before Boris’s election as Mayor of London, the conservative Alemanno conquered
At a recent dinner party in the British embassy in Kabul, one of the guests referred to ‘the Afghan-Pakistan war’. The rest of the table fell silent. This is the truth that dare not speak its name. Even mentioning it in private in the Afghan capital’s green zone is enough to solicit murmurs of disapproval.
The lady in the orange baseball cap is shouting to be heard. It is true that she hasn’t got much choice — the barking has become deafening. ‘You have to teach them to respect you!’ she screams. Owners tug sheepishly at their dogs’ leads and attempt to shush them without appearing to be unworthy of
Britain’s firefighters are under-worked and inflexible, says Leo McKinstry. It’s time we created a unified emergency service A cooling breeze wafted through the plane trees under the inky-black Provence sky. In the distance, the band played as couples danced. The rural village’s annual summer celebration presented the gentlest of scenes. But suddenly there was a
An apology to all readers: a couple of weeks ago, in a public-spirited sort of way, I offered advice as to how to go about getting stabbed. Although I hope you will accept that I was well intentioned, the article was clearly deficient and even offensive in two important respects. First, I neglected to explain
Lloyd Evans joins the dissident movement in a ritual exercise near the Chinese Embassy. He is unsettled to find himself understanding why China’s rulers get so paranoid about them Bong. Up go our hands. Bong. Down come our hands. Bong. We bend our knees. Bong. We crouch down slowly. Bong. We sweep our hands around
David Tang reflects on his visits to Beijing in the run-up to the Games, where Western expertise has been harnessed to the ruthless efficiency of China’s government machine Albert Speer was commissioned by the Chinese government to lay out a masterplan for the access to the Olympic Green in Beijing. His design consisted of one
Mark Leonard, Britain’s pre-eminent analyst of modern China, says the Olympic genie is out of the bottle. The prospect of global scrutiny has actually increased repression as the authorities try to stamp out dissent. But digital technology is impossible to police ‘For years we couldn’t wait for the Olympics to start. Now we can’t wait
The economist Richard Thaler — a favourite of the Cameron and Obama camps — talks to James Forsyth about the power of ‘nudging’: small transformative acts of persuasion No one likes to be pushed, prodded or shoved. But no one objects to a nudge in the right direction. The idea that people can be nudged
I was once kidnapped and held hostage by political terrorists in South America. My ordeal only lasted about an hour — but it was rather frightening. Like Ingrid Betancourt, it was partly my own fault for ignoring obvious security advice. Unlike her, I was able to talk my way out of it. It is hard
Archiving is not regarded by most people as sexy, glamorous or even interesting. Odd then that most of us, and especially the young, hip and trendy, seem to have become avid archivists without even realising it. My archive, which I keep on the web, and in my computer, mobile phone and iPod, is neither particularly
Scotland had the Macbeths and Romania had the Ceausescus. But while Tony and Cherie made a pretty good stab at it, in the annals of notoriety in British politics no husband and wife team can compare to the Hamiltons. Or at least it seemed like that in 1997, when allegations about cash for questions in
Rod Liddle is impressed by David Cameron’s speech in Glasgow and the Tory leader’s call for greater personal responsibility. Antisocial behaviour needs to be stigmatised, not treated as an illness to be cured Good for David Cameron. There was a grotesquely fat woman in front of me in the checkout queue at Sainsbury’s this week,
The five-year-old girl cowers naked and crying in a corner. She is so frightened that she urinates. One of the men in the room hits her repeatedly. The others laugh. Another man picks her up and throws her face down on the bed. Then the men rape her. She dies soon afterwards of atrocious injuries.
Don’t believe the Lord Chief Justice any more than the Archbishop of Canterbury, say Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi A senior establishment figure has once more raised the question of whether sharia law should be introduced as a parallel system of justice for British Muslims. Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, was
Been stabbed yet? Give it time. The latest weapon of choice for our go-getting and imaginative young people, apparently, is the ‘cat skinner’, a thin and very sharp device properly used for removing the plastic jackets from electrical cables. But also for skinning cats, I assume. And — increasingly — stabbing, or more likely slashing,
Lord Lloyd of Berwick says that the government’s emergency legislation to overturn their lordships’ ruling on witness anonymity is part of a ‘gradual usurpation’ of our liberties On 18 June 2008 the Law Lords gave judgment in the case of R. v. Davis. The defendant was charged with murder. The prosecution case was that he
On the eve of the General Synod and the Lambeth Conference, Theo Hobson says that the sleeping giant of evangelical and orthodox Anglicanism has been awoken by liberal agitation and Rowan Williams’s failed leadership. The church is damaged beyond repair Some years ago a vicar gave a sermon in which he tried to explain the
It’s draconian, expensive and ineffective, says David Davis. All the evidence shows that the Prime Minister is eroding our civil liberties pointlessly As shadow home secretary for five years, it became an office joke that, faced with difficult policy questions, I would demand ‘get me the evidence!’ I am a scientist by training and, while
It was a large thickish card. ‘180th anniversary of the Spectator’, to be celebrated at the Churchill Hotel in elegant Portman Square. It looked to be an event not to miss and I’m quite partial to a little schmoozing from the ‘Right’ since it is from within my domain on the Left that I have