What the result says Sir: John O’Sullivan (‘Obama’s hollow victory,’ 10 November) says that after President Obama’s re-election, ‘America looks a less naturally conservative country, more a centre-left one.’ But we ought to consider what John O’Sullivan thinks of as left and right, conservative and unconservative; what Americans think; and what most of us British
Home Abu Qatada, detained in Britain for seven years although not charged here, but wanted on terrorist charges in Jordan, could not be deported, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled, because evidence might be used against him that had been obtained from the torture of others; so he was freed on bail. The annual rate
For decades, America has dreamed about becoming self-sufficient in terms of energy, and ending its dependence on unsavoury Arab regimes. Now this dream seems within reach. The International Energy Agency this week forecast that America is undergoing a fuel revolution, and that it will overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world’s biggest oil producer by
A.N.Wilson Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie (Bloomsbury, £14.99). At last, an Anglican Father Brown. Runcie has sensibly set his detective stories in the 1950s, before the boring era when DNA and science spoilt the poetry of crime investigation. Canon Chambers, a self-effacing, clever clergyman with a taste for pubs and shove-halfpenny,
‘I’m not a reaper any more. In the modern NHS, my title is Grim Pathway Co-ordinator.’
‘OK, Pip and Estella . . . ’
‘Oh, well, if there aren’t any programmes on about policemen chasing scantily clad, drunken fat girls around the centre of Cardiff, I’m off to bed.’
‘They say that the crew are all hopeless Tories, doomed to spend eternity wittering on about Europe and limits on abortion.’
‘Let’s see. Coma. Coma. Coma. Coma. Coma. Chameleon.’
‘Fruit juice, shaken not stirred . . . ’
‘My mistake — petting zoo is next door along.’
‘We have some time to kill.’
‘We’re going to rush you straight through to intensive neglect.’
‘I’m undecided which way I would vote in an election — just as I’m undecided whether to let off the thermal nuclear device I’m building in my garage.’
‘Here endeth the texting’
