It was in the spring that I went to the funeral of Andrew Cavendish, the late and 11th Duke of Devonshire, at Edensor on Chatsworth Estate in Derbyshire. It was almost five years to the day after his death that last Friday I went to the funeral of Ken Buxton in Flash, in Staffordshire. Though
There’s a new application you can get for your iPhone called Baby Shaker, where a baby cries and cries until eventually you get so sick of it you shake your mobile so that large red Xs appear over the baby’s eyes and the crying stops for good. Or rather there isn’t, because someone took offence
Mandelson’s fixation with bananas repays study: it shows that he has not really changed Bananas on the mind. It’s Mandelson’s fault. There I was at the weekend, reading an interview with him in the Times. This was the new Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, the one who longs to go on Strictly Come Dancing, and only wears
Two small professional duties, and as much pleasures as duties, have recently overlapped in an unexpected way. I’ve read a colleague’s book on genetics; and I’ve recorded a BBC programme on the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. I know of no evidence that Jung took a close interest in genetics; and I imagine a typical modern geneticist
It is difficult to overdramatise the danger that is engulfing our country. In some ways our position is more precarious than in 1940 when we stood alone against the Nazi tyranny. The danger can be stated easily enough. Far from building up reserves during the latter stages of the boom, the government went on a
The coppers round my part of south London are really pretty good. They chase the occasional burglar; they’re courteous when they come to your door; and if you can get hold of their direct lines or mobiles they’re even better. Last year, my friendly local rozzers did an excellent job of removing a large, noisy
As time moves on, and we forget about their slurs and their malice and their rather telling fantasies about seeing George Osborne dressed up as Marlene Dietrich, perhaps what we should remember about Gordon Brown’s inner circle is their control freakery. They don’t trust hospitals to heal, they don’t trust schools to teach, and they
The old wartime poster ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ has been reprinted recently and is turning up in the strangest places around Westminster. I have seen it on an MP’s desk and emblazoned on the cufflinks of a Treasury civil servant. It certainly captures the sense that we are undergoing an economic blitz, and acknowledges
What came over me? I’m not a natural lawbreaker and was never a rebel as a youth. I deplore poll-tax rioters, eco-rioters and every lawless protest against supposed injustice, and read with awe of Charles Moore’s defiant stand against the TV licence people, wondering at the desperado our one-time Spectator editor has in later years
For the last 15 years, a four-letter word has terrified and paralysed the Conservative leadership: cuts. When it has been deployed by Gordon Brown on the electoral battlefield, the Tories have had no defence. Even after they surrendered and signed up to Labour’s spending plans, Mr Brown still accused them of planning ‘deep and painful
It’s the little slights that really hurt. The ones where they just don’t seem to have thought about it. Certainly, we’re all thrilled that the great President Obama has deigned to make a visit to this little island vassal state. But why did he have to bring his own car? We have cars. Loads of
To comprehend the scale of the sickening task awaiting George Osborne if he becomes chancellor, consider the following. If he were to raise VAT to 25 per cent, double corporation tax, close the Foreign Office, cancel all international aid, disband the army and the police, release all prisoners, close every school and abolish unemployment benefit
When I was a boy I never really understood strong winds, still less storms. I’m not sure I do now. This was not due to complete ignorance of meteorology. Something of a star pupil at geography (why the weather was geography rather than physics baffled me), I absorbed with interest and some degree of comprehension
Sir Liam Donaldson, Gordon Brown and booze prices. How did that all happen, then? I could find out, probably, but only by asking one of those proper political journalists, you know the ones, who wear shiny suits and mysterious plastic passes, and use the word ‘lobby’ in myriad, self-satisfied ways, as though it were a
Once a week, about half of the Cabinet make the rather pointless journey into an underground bunker in Whitehall to learn just how quickly the British economy is disintegrating. This is all to humour Gordon Brown, who calls them his ‘National Economic Council’ and has them meet in the nuclear-proof room as if they were
At this rate, the throne might as well be replaced by a diamanté wheelchair Why do most parents who leave an inheritance leave it to their children? Why, when most people are well past middle age when their parents die, is this still considered the norm? Now that we live about a generation longer than
The right to keep one’s political affiliation secret is in many eyes a sacred feature of British life. There are households where married couples don’t tell each other how they vote. Those who grew up during the Cold War era remember the years when, in some countries, party membership was a grim prerequisite of a
Some time ago I was in a room containing perhaps half a dozen other adults, a cat on a sofa-arm, and a baby in a carry-cot far from where I was sitting. The air was filled with the noise of general conversation. I had a cold. I coughed. The baby almost jumped out of its
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics The worst thing about this week for Gordon Brown is that no one has bothered to dub it his worst week ever. Normally, a few days which saw a Prime Minister receive the succession of blows that Brown has suffered since Saturday would lead to forests being chopped
It cannot be much fun to interrogate men who are already broken, but the Treasury select committee had assembled on Monday for a show trial rather than a genuine cross-examination of witnesses. Sir Fred Goodwin, former head of RBS offered a ‘profound and unqualified apology for all the distress that has been caused’. And how