Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
Is George Osborne too much of a toff to lead the Conservative party? On the face of it, the answer’s no, even if he does look like ‘a powdered French aristocrat’ (Charles Moore). Douglas Hurd was ruled out on the grounds that he was a titled ex-public schoolboy, but that was 22 years ago. If
Things haven’t been going particularly well for the Conservatives lately. The bounce we received in the polls from the Prime Minister’s wielding of the veto proved to be short-lived, the fault lines in the coalition are growing and Steve Hilton has left the building. The odds of us winning an outright majority at the next
Last week, the West London Free School went out with offers to parents who’ve applied for places in September and it’s not an exaggeration to say my phone’s been ringing ever since. The first category of callers are disappointed parents who haven’t been offered places. We had nine applications for every place this year, making
How do you stop children fighting on long car journeys? With three boys aged six and under, not to mention an eight-year-old tomboy, it’s getting to be a serious problem. Every journey seems to end in the vehicular equivalent of a cage fight, in which all four frantically try to undo their seatbelts so they
According to early figures from wholesalers and retailers, the first edition of the Sun on Sunday has sold over three million copies, a big win for Rupert Murdoch and the team of journalists — including yours truly — who had to get the new paper out at breakneck speed. Last week, the News Corp chairman
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Roxy’s successor As I write this, Roxy, my children’s pet hamster, is spinning happily in her wheel, with nary a care in the world. Unfortunately, it’s not the same Roxy who went missing four weeks ago. That hamster still hasn’t materialised after I foolishly left her cage door open one night. This is Roxy Mark
As the co-founder of the West London Free School, I receive a lot of junk mail from ‘educationalists’ trying to sell me various bric-a-brac, most of it pretty harmless. Occasionally, though, I get something genuinely disturbing. For instance, this week a publisher tried to interest me in the novels of Charles Dickens ‘retold in a
I write this having just returned from the BBC, where I spent a hairy six-and-a-half minutes sticking up for Fred the Shred on Newsnight. Or, rather, attacking the Forfeiture Committee’s decision to strip him of his knighthood. My antagonist was Will Hutton, former editor of the Observer and currently the Principal of Hertford College, Oxford.
Last Sunday, the Observer published a hostile article about the free school being set up in Wandsworth by Katharine Birbalsingh, whom it described as the ‘Tories’ favourite teacher’. As readers may recall, Katharine lost her job as deputy head of the St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell after criticising Labour’s record on education
On Saturday 7 February my wife and I finally succumbed to the combined pester power of our four children and bought a hamster. They’ve been nagging us for over a year to buy them a pet and this seemed like the least hassle. We opted for a six-week-old Syrian with reddish-brown fur and white patches.
Since turning 48 last October I’ve begun to obsess about getting old. In 21 months I’ll be 50 and by any definition that’s middle aged. For a man, turning 50 is a bit like turning 40 for a woman. It’s an unwelcome milestone. Adjustments have to be made, humiliations prepared for. One form this obsession
The Leveson inquiry has put fear into the feral beasts of the tabloids – and that’s not in the public interest Listening to Kelvin MacKenzie give evidence to the Leveson inquiry on Monday, the most striking thing was not his admission that he’d never given much thought to journalistic ethics nor even his impersonation of
One of the most depressing things about being a journalist is that 99 per cent of your work goes unnoticed. You pour your heart and soul into a piece, congratulate yourself on having produced something rather good for once, then wait for the plaudits to start rolling in. Six months later, you’re still waiting. It’s
For me, the end of one year and the beginning of the next is a time of mixed feelings. I always take stock, looking back to see what I’ve accomplished in the year gone by, and on that score I have much to celebrate. The West London Free School opened in September, the culmination of
At around this time of year Caroline and I always have the same argument. I’m not talking about who’s going to be ‘tree elf’ on Christmas Day — a humiliation that involves picking up all the discarded paper after Caroline’s four siblings and their children have unwrapped all their presents. I’ve been ‘tree elf’ for
Much merriment was to be had earlier this week reading the Guardian’s report of its four-month investigation into the causes of the August riots. Apparently, the police were the main culprits, in spite of the fact that they were conspicuous by their absence. This feat of logic was summed up in the Daily Mash parody
At the time of writing, it looks very much as if the West London Free School won’t be affected by Wednesday’s strike. Critics of free schools have come up with a number of theories as to why this is. We’ve been accused of only hiring non-unionised teachers, which would have been some feat of telepathy
Watching Steve Coogan giving his testimony to the Leveson inquiry on Sky News, I was intrigued by his argument that, unlike some, he’s never entered into a ‘Faustian pact’ with the press. The implication is that those who have, like Katie Price, are fair game. Not an argument for a universal right to privacy, then,
The fact that the request came in late on a Thursday afternoon should have aroused my suspicions. ‘Are you available?’ she asked. This was a BBC producer asking me if I was free to appear on Any Questions the following day. I quickly ran through my commitments: pick up Caroline’s dry-cleaning, fix the lavatory seat