I don’t know how Silvio Berlusconi finds the time. I don’t know how Silvio Berlusconi finds the time. Me, I’m ragged. Get up, write a bit, wash, eat, feed the child, stagger to nursery, stumble to work, stay there, go home, eat again, fall asleep on sofa watching The Killing; that’s pretty much my lot. But him? If it’s all to be believed?
One of the things I’ve belatedly realised now I’ve acquired the wisdom of age is that I’ve always been anti-establishment. One of the things I’ve belatedly realised now I’ve acquired the wisdom of age is that I’ve always been anti-establishment. If only I’d known this at school I would have had far more fun than I did because I wouldn’t have wasted any of my time trying to smarm and behave my way into pointless jobs like ‘library prefect’, ‘group leader’ and ‘head of house’. I could have got drunk and smoked fags and got to at least third base with the naughty girls, like all the cool kids did, instead. My problem was — and still is to some extent — that I am way, way too trusting and naive.
When one half of a couple threatens to walk out if he doesn’t get his way and the other responds by threatening to call in the lawyers, it’s obvious that all is not well. When one half of a couple threatens to walk out if he doesn’t get his way and the other responds by threatening to call in the lawyers, it’s obvious that all is not well. But this is the state of the coalition at the moment. The row between the two parties over Andrew Lansley’s proposed reforms to the National Health Service is in danger of turning into an argument that neither side ever forgets — or forgives. It was Sunday lunchtime when this row went fully public.
I know it’s absurd, I know it’s juvenile, I know that awards ceremonies are perfectly ludicrous occasions for everyone except the winners and their mothers, but I am what I am, competitive, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. I know it’s absurd, I know it’s juvenile, I know that awards ceremonies are perfectly ludicrous occasions for everyone except the winners and their mothers, but I am what I am, competitive, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. So I will not pretend that receiving the Best Columnist award at the Society of Editors Press Awards dinner at the Savoy last week was anything less than heavenly. But there are other things there’s no point pretending.
It’s about two years since my old friend Damian Thompson approached me with a couple of yellowish rocks and a pipe and said: ‘Have a puff on this. It’s about two years since my old friend Damian Thompson approached me with a couple of yellowish rocks and a pipe and said: ‘Have a puff on this. I think it might really suit you.’ No, of course not. What Damian actually introduced me to was something far more addictive, expensive, energy-sapping and injurious to health than crack cocaine. He asked me to join his elite team of bloggers at the Daily Telegraph. And now I’m having to go cold turkey and I don’t like it one bit. The reason I’m going cold turkey — i.e.
When spring arrives in England, the Prime Minister likes to roll up his sleeves and do a spot of gardening at his constituency home. When spring arrives in England, the Prime Minister likes to roll up his sleeves and do a spot of gardening at his constituency home. This year, he’ll have to find another way to pass the time. The police can only protect him properly in Oxfordshire by taking up post in the garden, and his wife, Sam, overheard her children enthusing about their guns. So it’s Chequers for the Camerons this April, where the protection officers can be both more effective and less obtrusive. And instead of pruning the roses, Cameron can turn his attention to the thorny problems of government.
But what was Oliver Letwin on about, anyway? Why doesn’t he want more people from Sheffield taking holidays? And why tell Boris Johnson this? ‘We don’t want to see more families in Sheffield being able to afford cheap holidays,’ he apparently told Boris, who told the world. But what was Oliver Letwin on about, anyway? Why doesn’t he want more people from Sheffield taking holidays? And why tell Boris Johnson this? ‘We don’t want to see more families in Sheffield being able to afford cheap holidays,’ he apparently told Boris, who told the world. But why? The only thing they can possibly have been discussing was airports in the south-east. Where Sheffield isn’t. It’s north-middle somewhere, I think. Isn’t it?
There are few things that irritate an MP in the chamber of the House of Commons more than the sight of all the journalists in the press gallery walking out in the middle of a debate. There are few things that irritate an MP in the chamber of the House of Commons more than the sight of all the journalists in the press gallery walking out in the middle of a debate. It annoys them so much not because it means their own remarks will probably go unreported but because it is a visible symbol of the shift in power from the legislature to the executive. The journalists are all dashing out to hear some government aide explain what a minister really meant by an earlier statement.
This week I narrowly failed to reach the Mediterranean coast of Spain from the north of England by train, within the daylight hours of a single day. The problem was Paris. Train buffs (and rail service planners) read on. Let’s begin at the end. High-speed rail from France has until this month always hit the wall at the Pyrenees. From Paris you set out on the TGV at a tremendous lick until Avignon, as high-speed track yields to something more sedate. And in the Languedoc, where the Pyrenees totter into the Mediterranean, everything used to slow down further. From Perpignan to the Spanish border the old line squeezes and sidles painfully slowly the long way around a bulge of coast, by way of dreary Portbou. The motorway, meanwhile, punches a huge short-cut through the range.
The other day Girl’s class found themselves with time to spare in the vast play area behind the Imperial War Museum. The other day Girl’s class found themselves with time to spare in the vast play area behind the Imperial War Museum. The children looked wistfully at the swings, roundabouts and climbing frames. ‘I’m not sure we can go there,’ said the teacher. ‘I haven’t filled in a risk assessment form.’ Stories like this explain why I almost never go into Girl’s primary school these days. I can just about do those gourmet PTA fundraiser evenings where you stand around eating high-grade sausages and drinking chilled Czech beer, congratulating yourself on how aspirational and nicely spoken your fellow parents are.
George Osborne is using his budgets not only to get the economy moving but to make Britain a centre-right country once more. George Osborne is using his budgets not only to get the economy moving but to make Britain a centre-right country once more. The political test of his economic policy will be whether the Conservatives succeed in creating a new majority who feel invested in balanced budgets and low taxes. It is tempting to dismiss Gordon Brown as a failure: a man who coveted his neighbour’s job for a decade, and then didn’t know what to do when he got it. But just because his career ended in failure, doesn’t mean that he failed to achieve anything.
In the world of sectarian Scottish football, as you may know, they have adopted the Israeli-Palestinian fight as their own. Celtic fans wave Palestinian Authority flags, in an attempt to draw parallels between the Middle East and the troubles they wish people were still having in Ireland. Rangers fans wave Stars of David in response. I always thought this was the crassest, stupidest, most historically illiterate appropriation of a conflict imaginable. But then this week Sarah Palin went to Israel. What a chump. What a cloth-eared, small-minded, blinkered idiot. She turned up wearing a Star of David T-shirt, and went on to tell some Israel politician that she has the iconography of the Israeli flag ‘on my desk, in my home, all over the place’.
The Spectator of March 2030 will wonder how the immense, mature, formidable, intelligent, capable, rational western society of 2011 got itself into such a tizz about the Arab world. Why ever (our successors will ask) did we think we had anything really big to fear from the 21st century’s most spectacularly unsuccessful regional culture? Last weekend news reached us that Arab League leaders had approved the idea of a (presumably) US-led and UN-flagged imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. ‘Great news,’ cry the muddle-headed advocates of such a plan — as though what the Arab League leaders think is of any serious importance, even in their own countries.
The Fawn came up to me the other day in a state of extreme agitation: she’d been listening to George Monbiot on the radio. The Fawn came up to me the other day in a state of extreme agitation: she’d been listening to George Monbiot on the radio. My ears pricked up. I do so love it when the Fawn gets cross about the same things as me. It makes me glad that I’m not married to one of those leftie wives — we all know the sort — who drag their more right-wing husbands down the siren path of bien-pensant foolishness. Monbiot had been on the Today programme with Tiff Needell, the likeable racing driver who used to co-present Top Gear.
The government is struggling to retain its reputation for competence. The government is struggling to retain its reputation for competence. Ministerial ineptitude has become a dangerously large part of the major news stories in recent weeks, from the Libyan crisis to the scandal surrounding Prince Andrew. This should worry the coalition, because the public will not support government cuts or reforms to public services if people believe it is incapable of carrying them out. Appearing competent is a prerequisite for successful government. The government will only get credit for what goes right if it is seen to be in charge. The team in No.
Call me a blinkered, moronic, mollycoddled idiot (seriously, I’m fine with this) but I only quite recently realised there was something intrinsically posh about skiing. Call me a blinkered, moronic, mollycoddled idiot (seriously, I’m fine with this) but I only quite recently realised there was something intrinsically posh about skiing. This isn’t because I grew up doing it; more because I didn’t, really. I thought I knew all about posh pas-times when I was a kid. They were the ones which smelled of waxed jackets and gun oil, which took you into fields in tweed. Skiing, if you lived in Edinburgh, meant a smell of cagoules and mothballs, and the diamond-matted dry slope at Hillend. My sister and I took a course there one holiday.
David Cameron was two years old when Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi seized power in Libya. David Cameron was two years old when Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi seized power in Libya. Forty-one years later, he finds himself the eighth British Prime Minister wondering what to do about the Mad Dog of the Middle East. How Cameron approaches this question tells us much about his approach to leadership. Admirers of the Prime Minister often boast that he is ‘at his best in a crisis’. This is true. But what is also true is that things too often have to reach crisis point before the Cameron machine fully engages. This is why, after less than six years on the political frontline, he has three times had to give a speech to save his career.
Dawn on Tuesday last week found me bobbing around in a small sailing boat in Sydney Harbour, yards from the wash of two of the world’s greatest liners: Cunard’s ocean liner Queen Mary 2, and the company’s enormous new cruise ship, the Queen Elizabeth. Dawn on Tuesday last week found me bobbing around in a small sailing boat in Sydney Harbour, yards from the wash of two of the world’s greatest liners: Cunard’s ocean liner Queen Mary 2, and the company’s enormous new cruise ship, the Queen Elizabeth. They were entering the harbour together, and we’d sailed under Sydney Harbour Bridge to watch what the local papers called the Royal Rendezvous. The occasion, which I wanted to write about for the Times, was breathtaking.
‘Oh Daddy, please can I have that Nazi eagle badge. ‘Oh Daddy, please can I have that Nazi eagle badge. Oh please, oh please.’ We’re standing in the gift shop of the Baugnez ’44 memorial museum outside Malmedy, Belgium — me, Grandpa (aka my dad) and Girl — and we’re peering longingly into the original second world war memorabilia display case like Tiny Tims at Christmas. There are so many things we’d like if only we had the money: original GI helmets (€400 for a good one, with decent leather strap), packets of vintage Camels, tins of delousing powder, camouflage sticks, Wehrmacht pay books and, yes, Nazi eagle badges of all shapes and sizes. Inevitably, it’s the German stuff we covet most.
Have the Tories rediscovered the Right instincts? If power without responsibility has been the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages, then the lot of a government minister can seem like responsibility without power. In private moments, ministers complain that they are overwhelmed by paperwork and have to drive change through a recalcitrant Civil Service. Members of the coalition Cabinet are rapidly finding out that the answer to the question ‘who governs Britain?’ is not as simple as they’d hoped. Nothing new there. Relative impotence is the perennial complaint of new ministers. They quickly come to appreciate that Yes, Minister was as much fact as fiction.
