Europe is one of the most divisive issues in British politics. But on one thing most Europhiles and Eurosceptics agree: that enlargement, letting those benighted former communist countries into the warm democracy-enhancing embrace of Brussels, was a good thing. Just about all respectable, right-thinking people feel that the UK should congratulate itself for opening its
Two elderly men and a woman sit on a jagged rock beside a limpid pool of water in the green hills of the Lake District. They are Indians, wearing shalwar-kameezes beneath layers of cardigans, coats and scarves; the men wear white Muslim topi caps. On the next page of Visits to National Parks — a
The Chinese word for an empire of prison camps is just as easy to remember and to pronounce as its Russian equivalent. But while most educated people in Britain know what the Gulag was, few have ever heard of the Laogai. I sometimes wonder if we will never pay any attention to such things, anywhere
Washington Observers of American politics would do well to learn how to pronounce the name of a former Republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. The first syllable should be enunciated not, as is common, like the stomach muscle, but rather like the nickname of the 16th American president, Honest Abe. Of course, Abramoff was dishonest. And this
Last November the Iranian people were privileged to watch perhaps the year’s most bizarre presidential home video, in which the new President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, described how a divine glow of light had played around him as he delivered his first address to the United Nations. ‘I felt it,’ the President recalled. ‘All of
When it comes to sex, Britain now seems to be gripped by a dangerous form of schizophrenia. On the one hand, there is mounting panic over the issue of paedophilia, where a media-driven climate of hysteria means that even the mere allegation of child abuse can be enough to destroy careers and wreck lives. Yet,
Faced with the spectacle of the cruelties perpetrated in the name of faith, Voltaire famously cried ‘Ecrasez l’infâme!’ Scores of enlightened thinkers have followed him, declaring organised religion to be the enemy of mankind, the force that divides the believer from the infidel and thereby both excites and authorises murder. Richard Dawkins, whose TV series
Douglas Davis says that Ariel Sharon’s wisest decision was his last one — to pull out of the anarchic terrorist hothouse of Gaza As the dominating presence of Ariel Sharon recedes from the public stage, his lasting legacy is likely to be not his military exploits but his final major political act: unilateral withdrawal from
While David Cameron was at a Basildon comprehensive on Monday announcing that the Conservative party no longer believes in selective education, my ten-year-old son was sitting the 11-plus at a private school in Suffolk. There are no grammar schools left in Suffolk, as it happens, nor in Cambridgeshire, nor in Norfolk: my son’s 11-plus papers
It is a long, long, time since the Conservative party had the support of a clever, truculent lesbian. In fact, has it ever happened before? Clever, truculent lesbians are usually very left-wing, in my experience. But now one of them has come out, so to speak, for David Cameron — the extremely talented writer Jeanette
I don’t believe that I can be alone in having spent a Russian or Ukrainian winter with the windows of my room wide open. Many buildings in that part of the world are dreadfully overheated, for the simple reason that energy is so cheap. Soon, however, Ukrainians will have to learn to close their windows.
31 December 2055 The deaths of the Earl of Sedgefield, aged 102, and Mr Gordon Brown, 104, brings to a sad conclusion the most remarkable and prolonged feud in British political history. It would, of course, be improper to speculate on the precise circumstances before the inquest, but police have confirmed that at around 2.30
Khuraburi is a small town on Thailand’s Andaman coast, 140 kilometres north of the tourist isle of Phuket. It was spared from the tsunami on 26 December 2004 because it was shielded by the island of Koh Pratong, which was not so lucky. Several villages on the island were totally devastated, particularly Bak Jok, whose
This year will be remembered as the one in which the psychopathology of Britain slipped down the toilet. Just last month the imagination of the nation’s television viewers was captured — some would say hijacked — first by the comedy show Little Britain, with a series of sketches about a geriatric woman who is oblivious
In all his speeches and interviews since becoming the new Conservative leader, David Cameron has had little or nothing to say about foreign policy, other than to talk vaguely about the ‘security of the British people’. Yet a radically new approach to Britain’s role in the world surely ought to be a key aspect of
‘Say seebong-seebong, say seebong-seebong,’ sang the Filipino band in their white tuxedos, swaying cheerfully from side to side. ‘Si bon, si bon,’ whispered Sweetie to the music, smiling carefully, swaying her sumptuous jade earrings in time to the Filipinos’ narrow hips and tapping her manicured nails on the tablecloth; everyone said that before she had
Cape Town ‘This is a goer,’ declares Deon du Plessis. It’s Sunday afternoon, and the Great White Hyena is presiding over a news conference in the Johannesburg offices of the Daily Sun, the largest daily in Africa. Mr du Plessis is publisher and part-owner. Seated before him are his editor, Themba Khumalo, an amiable Zulu
‘When it comes to the British courts,’ Charles Clarke insists, ‘I am a perpetual optimist.’ Which is fortunate, because he needs to be. We met on the day the Law Lords proclaimed that the government was not permitted to detain terrorist suspects on the basis of evidence which might have been extracted under torture. The
I have just spent a week in Amazonia with Sydney Possuelo, the man I regard as the world’s greatest explorer — well, at any rate, the greatest tropical explorer. Weatherbeaten, balding, with a neat salt-and-pepper beard, 65-year-old Sydney exudes vitality and charm. Although he has just had a triple heart bypass, he looks lean and
An excited twitter filled the assembly room of the Eastside Young Leaders Academy (EYCA) in Plaistow, east London. ‘David Cameron’s arrived! He’s in the corridor! He’s nearly here!’ Day three of his leadership, and just the thought of Dave’s presence has the same effect on Tories as Will Young has on teenage girls. Middle-aged charity