Next Tuesday an unhappy choice confronts the American people. To suffer a gloating Mark Steyn. Or to endure the sight of a jubilant Michael Moore thumping the air in the belief that he has just personally saved the world from military and ecological disaster. Grim though these alternatives are, with heavy heart we are minded
The United States asked for British forces to be sent from the south of Iraq around Basra to positions further north to cover for American troops required to attack Fallujah, where insurgents have been in control; the government decided to send soldiers of the Black Watch. They would come under American command but retain British
Liverpool replies I am a survivor of the Hillsborough disaster, so I imagine you can guess where this is going (Leading article, 16 October). Unlike 96 less fortunate people, I was rescued from the Leppings Lane terrace on 15 April 1989 and so am able to provide a little bit of an insight into what
You can’t please some people. The Daily Mail has spent the Blair years complaining about the nanny state. But when the government finally comes up with a measure to add to the gaiety of the nation, the Gambling Bill, the Mail suddenly turns nanny itself. ‘Gambling with our futures,’ it whined last week. ‘Trashy glitter
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, coined the phrase ‘opportunity society’ to describe his objective in reforming social services and policing; National Health Service spending on independent providers of diagnosis and treatment would rise ‘significantly’, and specialist schools would become ‘near universal’. He also said, ‘We must change the culture that can write people off
Ukip voices people’s anger Oh dear! Ukip has really disturbed Matthew Parris’s normal affability and also, it would seem, his judgment (Another voice, 9 October). I usually enjoy his witty and intelligent comments, but in describing Ukip as ‘mad, bad and nasty’ he is so far from the truth as to be risible. He really
The soccer international between England and Wales last Saturday managed to display in an instant two of the most unsavoury aspects of life in modern Britain. A request by the authorities for a minute’s silence in memory of Mr Ken Bigley, the news of whose murder by terrorists in Iraq had broken the previous day,
Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the opposition, speaking at the Conservative party conference, summarised Tory plans in ten words: ‘school discipline, more police, cleaner hospitals, lower taxes and controlled immigration’. Neither he nor Mr Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor of the exchequer, would make specific promises on tax, on the grounds that former promises
The newsreader Martyn Lewis once complained that there is not enough good news on the telly. To judge by his forays into literature, he would quite happily have presided over a Nine O’Clock made up entirely of dog and cat stories, but he had a point. When there is a spot of bother anywhere in
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, in a speech at the Labour party conference in Brighton, spoke of a ‘wholly new phenomenon, worldwide global terrorism based on a perversion of the true, peaceful and honourable faith of Islam’ with roots ‘in the extreme forms of Wahabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia’. He also declared that Mr
Entrapped by Europe Niall Ferguson (‘Britain first’, 25 September) stands history on its head in claiming that ‘it was precisely the unreliability of the United States’ as both an ally and an export market which ‘convinced Britain’s political elite’ that they must ‘abandon the Churchillian dream of a bilateral Atlantic partnership’ by joining the EEC.
The most revealing part of Tony Blair’s speech to the Labour party conference was when he said, ‘modern life is being perpetually stressed out. You can do more, travel more, consume more, live longer but nothing stops still. It’s always changing.’ Possibly some psychoanalyst could tell us that it is the cry of a leader
Five protesters, who had gained access to Parliament by posing as electricians, invaded the House of Commons during the debate on the Bill to outlaw fox hunting and engaged in scuffles with several officials in tights. Pro-hunting protesters were also out in force in Parliament Square, where several were injured in clashes with riot police.
If Lord Woolf is discovered ’orribly murdered in his cellar, the editor of the Daily Mail may well find himself helping police with their inquiries. There will certainly be a motive: the Lord Chief Justice is not a popular figure with the self-professed keeper of Middle England values. In response to his lordship’s proposal to
Mr Stephen Byers, a former Cabinet minister, popped up on television to talk about Mr Alan Milburn, the new Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with undefined responsibility for drawing up Labour policy before the election; ‘I think he would be an excellent leader of the Labour party and an excellent prime minister.’ Mr Frank
The chief recruiting sergeant for al-Qa’eda is not George W. Bush but Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch EU internal market commissioner. Speaking last week on the possibility of Turkey joining the EU — and thus Muslims one day coming to outnumber Christians within it — Mr Bolkestein commented that were this to come to pass ‘the
Mr Andrew Smith resigned as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. This added interest to a Cabinet reshuffle by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and provoked reheated speculation about his rivalry with Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Queen gave a donation for the people of Beslan, through the British
Count me in As one of the (so far few) Conservative MPs to have publicly supported the proposal to debate the Prime Minister’s impeachment, I was not surprised by Cedric Talbot’s reaction to it from Tokyo (Letters, 4 September). He misses the point and in doing so falls into the trap set by the No.
Andrew Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, resigned this week, so he says, in order to spend more time with his family. Or maybe he was peeved at some of the comments made about him by his colleagues. What is certain is that he didn’t resign for the reason he ought to have done: that
The Royal Mail paid £50 million in compensation after meeting none of its 15 targets in the first quarter of the financial year, delivering only 88.3 per cent of first-class letters on time between April and June, against a target of 92.5 per cent; Oxford saw only 68 per cent delivered on time. By July