In 1956, Malta held a referendum on joining the United Kingdom. Since the islands were economically reliant on the Royal Navy, it was unsurprising that three-quarters of those voting believed their future lay in integrating with their colonial masters. But after a lukewarm response from the British government, the referendum result was never implemented and
Home The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced plans to criminalise trail hunting ‘amid concerns it is being used as a smokescreen for hunting’; another part of the new animal welfare strategy will make it a crime to boil a live lobster. The government revised the threshold below which, from April, agricultural assets
The chief function of the prime minister is to take the blame, and Sir Keir Starmer can no more escape this rule than his predecessors did. Having met him occasionally when he was my local MP, before he moved from Kentish Town to Downing Street, I feel a twinge of sympathy with him. He took
What with the threat of global warming and nuclear war, the new year might start with a big bang. The Greeks were preoccupied with this possibility as well and called it the apocalypse (apokalupsis), meaning ‘uncovering’ or ‘revelation’. It has a long history behind it. The Greek farmer-poet Hesiod (c. 700 BC) introduced the idea
Erasmus in England The government is to rejoin the Erasmus scheme, which allows students at British universities to spend time studying in other European countries, with reciprocal opportunities for EU students. How did Desiderius Erasmus’s own studies in England go? — In 1499 he spent two months at St Mary’s College, Oxford, where he attended
Man with man to dwell Sir: Your editorial (‘All ye faithful’, 13-27 December) suggests that scepticism about Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s (Tommy Robinson’s) Christian faith tends to coincide with credulity about conversions among refugees from Muslim-majority countries, and vice versa. This does not reflect the experience of many churches. Over the past year in our congregation, several
