That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into,’ quipped David Trimble with black humour as he bounded in to meet with Paul Murphy, the Northern Ireland Secretary, in the Lady Grey Room at Hillsborough Castle last Saturday. As well he might: for the first time, Ian Paisley’s anti-Agreement Democratic Unionists had won more seats than
Have you noticed that whenever there is an armed siege these days the police quickly seal off the area, surround the site with at least 20 marksmen, send for the trained negotiators and, um …wait until the victim is good and dead before they venture in to have a peek at what’s going on? I
Thanks to a hot summer, the countryside heaves with pheasant, dead and alive, and it must be eaten, or shooting, too, will enter the sights of the anti-enjoyment lobby. If this means just cutting the breasts from the carcass — and to hell with the rest of the bird — so be it. Life may
This is the most important time of year in the calendar for that part of me which loves cheese. I yearn for it all year. I talk about it for months — perhaps not as animatedly as I bang on about the coincidental start of the shooting season, but euphorically none the less. For this
Anthony Lloyd says that the government’s plan to replace the law lords is an attack on tradition, and pointless too On 12 June the Prime Minister issued a press release announcing that the ‘post of Lord Chancellor’ would be abolished. The announcement came as a complete surprise to everybody, not least the law lords. For
President Karimov is a ruthless tyrant, says Daniel Hannan, but he supports the war on terror and is backed by the West. He shouldn’t be A strange little row has been bubbling away over the past two months concerning our ambassador to Tashkent. You may have seen the odd headline about it in the inside
They’re at it again: the Jewish conspiracy to take over the world is back in session. The former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s recent claim that the modern-day Elders of Zion ‘now rule the world by proxy’ not only garnered loud applause at the summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), but most
Until well into the 1980s, the death penalty was a problem for aspiring Tory candidates. Local associations were almost always in favour, strongly. This led to much wrestling with conscience. Conscience often lost. Matters were easier for card-carrying intellectuals. Any constituency prepared to consider one of them had already braced itself for bizarre opinions. But
Rachel Johnson wonders whether Earth has anything to show more fair than 15 beefy rugby players, especially when it’s raining. But lawyers take a more calculating view of the game The Rugby Football Union lot stuck down in Twickenham (Dee, Dave, you’ve been a great help, cheers) have, I know, been looking forward to receiving
In the www arena where the world speaks invisibly to itself, a new word has appeared: ‘fisking’, meaning the selection of evidence solely in order to bolster preconceptions and prejudices. Just as cardigans or mackintoshes are named after an inventive individual, so fisking derives from the work of Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent of
Scotland spends more per capita on the NHS than England does, but by next year it will have Europe’s lowest life expectancy, says Fraser Nelson Imagine a British National Health Service flowing with French or German levels of funding. This dream, we are promised, will soon be delivered in return for higher taxes. But for
Christopher Sandford says that Keith Richards — 60 next month — is a secret conservative: he eats shepherd’s pie, loves his mum and even goes to church He doesn’t exactly look like your average squire, Keith Richards, with his piratical swagger and a complexion that’s been compared to old cat litter. But Keith, who turns
Hardly a week goes by without the news that some criminal has pocketed an enormous sum from suing someone in an action which arises from the criminal’s wrongdoing. The government has sought to clamp down on this practice by inserting into the Criminal Justice Bill a clause that will prevent criminals from suing their victims
Bossy-boots Blunkett’s plans must be resisted, says Paul Robinson, who has acquired five new cards in recent months, and it’s been a pain in the pocket for him I recently had my fingerprints taken for an identity card. If our autocratic Home Secretary, David Blunkett, gets his way, this will in the next decade or
George Bush needs to be pictured with the Queen to impress voters in the forthcoming presidential election, but, says Peter Oborne, next week’s state visit by the Commander-in-Chief is causing chaos It is obvious why Tony Blair agreed that next week’s visit to Britain by George Bush was a good idea. It was suggested in
Behind the bar in my local pub, above the pork scratchings and jars of pickled mussels, is more preserved wildlife, a shelf of Victorian stuffed birds and rodents in glass boxes. No doubt the publican keeps these here to remind the punters of life’s fleeting nature and that they might as well get in another
David Garrick (1717–79) was widely acknowledged to be the greatest actor of his age, and he was also a successful businessman, managing the Drury Lane Theatre for nearly 30 years. He was broadly interested in the arts, wrote his own plays, and had many friends, among whom were some of the finest painters of the
Rachel Polonsky on the fight to save a private school that is threatened by Russia’s new cultural and economic thuggery Moscow In Britain, it is easy to forget what an important human freedom non-state education represents. In post-totalitarian Russia, where civil liberties are in first bud in a hostile climate, this recently regained freedom is
There is a piquancy. Back in 1997, Michael Howard launched a confident challenge for the Tory leadership. He had influential supporters, a good team and a strong case: that his experience and political stance made him the best qualified candidate. Yet his campaign never left the runway. The plane had too much baggage. Suppose he
The sound in the Grand Hall is like the chattering of sparrows. Milling at the door, most wearing bright yellow T-shirts with plasticky decals so big they practically double the weight of the cotton, are the domino sharks, kibitzing and waiting their turn for the tables. Inside, at the far end, a dais is decorated