The Prince of Wales, it is said, employs a manservant for the task of squeezing toothpaste on to the royal toothbrush. The servant cannot have the most demanding of careers, but he is almost certainly providing greater public utility than are many of the state’s bean-counters. Saving money, or rather the attempt to do so,
Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, was reported to have warned ministers that plans to allow the Home Secretary to put suspected terrorists under house arrest were likely to be challenged and ruled illegal by the courts. A man known as ‘C’, suspected of terrorist activity, was suddenly released; another man, whom imprisonment had made increasingly
For a negative interpretation of events in which the rest of the world can see nothing but good, the Guardian’s editorial pages are much to be recommended. Sure enough, on Monday, while millions of Iraqis were waking up with stained fingers to the first day of democratic Iraq and enjoying generous tributes to their courage
The government proposed that foreigners suspected of terrorism and held illegally at Belmarsh prison should be let out but somehow put under restriction. Four British citizens held in America’s prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were flown home and arrested. Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, said he sought a substantial reduction
Last week the Conservative party unveiled an extremely good policy: to cut government waste to the tune of £35 billion and to pass £4 billion worth of it to the public in tax cuts. This week it unveiled two much less good ones: to set an arbitrary limit on the number of immigrants allowed to
The Conservatives published plans for spending if they were to win the next election. Presuming savings proposed by Sir Peter Gershon’s report for the Treasury, and incorporating new savings devised for them by Mr David James, they said they could reduce government spending by £35 billion, partly by cutting 235,000 Civil Service posts. Of this,
Slobs and snobs Simon Heffer’s article (‘The slob culture’, 15 January) identifies a long-standing decline. I live in Bangkok, Thailand, and on Christmas Eve I was in the lobby of a five-star hotel where milling around were representatives from the Caucasian world dressed in subfuscous clothing, ancient jeans and T-shirts — the uniform of the
Robert Jackson, the MP for Wantage, has come in for a good deal of abuse, though if anything not enough. Put yourself in the position of those who have worked for a quarter of a century to install Mr Jackson in parliament, so that he can speak in the Conservative interest, and then imagine your
Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was jolly annoyed when Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, decided not to step down in his favour last year after all, according to a new book by Mr Robert Peston; ‘There is nothing that you could say to me now that I could ever believe,’ Mr
Don’t blame Davis My old friend Bruce Anderson doubtless wishes to do his friends in the Notting Hill set some good by blaming the continued poor Conservative showing upon David Davis (Politics, 8 January). But he is unjust. Mr Davis has claimed two ministerial scalps, and not just through good luck but rather through hard
One of the less worthy reasons cited for going to war in Iraq is that it would increase Britain’s influence in the White House. If this was on the Prime Minister’s mind when he ordered British troops into combat, he has proved pathetic at exercising his advantage. Earlier this week the Foreign Secretary announced that
Sex, war and the Word It is interesting how people reveal their prejudices by the words they use. So, to A.N. Wilson (‘Holy Sage’, 18/25 December) those who oppose homosexuals taking high office in the Church of England are ‘bigots’, while those in favour are ‘enthusiasts’. He argues that because the Church has changed its
To relieve the survivors of the destructive wave in the Indian Ocean, British people donated £60 million in a week to the disaster emergency committee co-ordinated by the main aid charities. The Queen, who herself gave a substantial donation, said: ‘I have been impressed by the willingness of people in Britain to give generously.’ Mr
Since 1997, in a cynical effort to prove that it values power for more than its own sake, the Blair government has sought to tear up the constitutional map and impose its own, ‘modernised’, ways of doing things. This has not been uniformly successful. Devolution, for example, has led to financial profligacy in Scotland and
JANUARY Lord Hutton’s report declared that the government was not ‘dishonourable, underhand or duplicitous’. Mr Mikhail Saakashvili, who had led popular demonstrations in Georgia against Mr Eduard Shevardnadze, won the presidential elections. Hundreds of reformist candidates were banned from standing in the Iranian elections. Hope was given up of hearing any signal from Beagle 2,
We are not evil I am sorry that Steve (‘We are all Pagans now’, 18/25 December) believes that we Dominicans are evil. I expect he thinks that we are so awful because we are supposed to have run the Inquisition. Actually, there were many different ‘inquisitions’, some run by the Church and others by the
It may seem trivial, when so many thousands lie dead on the shores of the Indian Ocean, but we are now perhaps 14 weeks from a general election, and it is time to consider the apparent — the appalling — success of the Labour government. In circumstances that would be almost fatal to a Tory
Lord Butler of Brockwell, who had headed the inquiry into intelligence about Iraq, accused Mr Tony Blair’s administration of ‘bad government’, being unchecked by Parliament and free to bring in a ‘huge number of extremely bad Bills, a huge amount of regulation and to do whatever it likes’ with an eye to the next day’s
Ulster is not all right Leo McKinstry’s knowledge of his native province as it is today seems somewhat superficial (‘Ulster is all right’, 4 December). It is not clear how the rebranding of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as the Police Service of Northern Ireland — a move resented with good reason by many in Ulster
It is 12 years since the Queen stood up at dinner and coined the expression annus horribilis to describe the miseries of 1992. She probably didn’t even have in mind the fact that her Chancellor of the Exchequer had just frittered away £5 billion of taxpayers’ money and caused thousands of homeowners to lose their