It is a matter of great comfort to me, as a football fan, that all the allegations made against the various Fifa delegates have been shown to be utter fabrications. I had been a little worried. We know now, though, that they are utter fabrications because the boss of Fifa, Sepp Blatter, a man of
If you had to think of one city on earth where the rulers should not try to impose a standard of ‘good behaviour’, it would surely be New York. Who in their right mind would seek to sanitise this concrete jungle, to sedate the city that never sleeps, to demand conformism and obedience from the
There aren’t many things on which John Humphrys is undecided, but one of them shows itself nearly every time he presents the Today programme. It’s a trait shared by many broadcasters, and indeed people from all walks of life, and constitutes one of the great social barometers of our time. It’s the inability to decide
I once became obsessed with a huge boil on the back of General Mladic’s neck. We were in Pale — the Bosnian Serb ski-resort turned capital — at a meeting of their parliament, in the summer of ’94. I was there as the Balkans correspondent of the Observer and had, by that time, met Ratko
In 1951, Winston Churchill, then leader of the opposition and aged 77, scored a humiliating Commons victory over the new chancellor of the exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell. Not for nothing did Aneurin Bevan call Gaitskell ‘a desiccated calculating machine’. His dry Wykehamist tone made his financial statements seem interminable, and this one soon had the House
David Cameron exudes a worrying confidence these days. He strolls through the corridors of the Palace of Westminster with the air of a man already thinking of victory at the next election. His head is tilted slightly skywards, as if already enjoying the sunlit uplands of victory in 2015. But this confidence is misguided, even
A couple of years ago I was walking across a ploughed field when I was struck by such a searing pain in my left foot that I fell to the ground, moaning in harmony with the rooks above me. After half an hour of massaging my toes I was able to hobble the half-mile home.
It emerged today that Helen Wood is going to set to appear on the next series of Big Brother, which begins this evening. Here’s her Spectator Diary from 2011, in which she explains how the daughter of a university lecturer ended up as a call girl. A few years ago I was offered £450,000 to
At last we crusaders for truth can reveal exactly what happened when a famous footballer who is married met the former Big Brother contestant, Imogen Thomas. I suppose you could guess what happened, but it’s better to know for sure, isn’t it? Don’t worry, we’ll use phrases like ‘asked her to perform a sex act’
When Barack Obama and David Cameron met in London this week, one problem would have been foremost in their minds. It’s more than six weeks since they penned their joint article with Nicolas Sarkozy demanding that ‘Gaddafi must go’. It’s more than two months since they started airstrikes in Libya. Yet Gaddafi is stubbornly refusing
Carmen Callil isn’t ‘Prizes are for little boys,’ said Charles Ives, the American composer, ‘and I’m a grown-up’. That, most sensible people will agree, is a proper response to the world’s follies. But when a gong is struck for outstanding work over a lifetime then there can be merit in it, which is why we
I am a long-serving officer in the Metropolitan Police and my passion for the job is matched only by my frustration and anger at what I see going on around me. The Met is capable of, and frequently achieves, great things. But this happens in spite of the way it is run, not because of
Shortly after I began my working life, on the edge of the Westminster jungle, I landed a job with a political ‘big beast’; an alpha male, in very much the same mould as Dominique Strauss-Kahn: silver-haired, heavy-set, charismatic. For a few months, he ignored me as I busied away researching stats. Then, during what should have
One of the first things David Cameron will tell Barack Obama when they meet during the American President’s state visit to Britain next week is that hundreds of British soldiers are going to be withdrawn from Afghanistan this summer. Of the 10,000 British troops currently based in southern Afghanistan, around 450 are to be brought
You could not mistake the atmosphere in Dublin this week: the state visit of the Queen and Prince Philip has had the full panoply of a historic occasion. It was obvious that the Irish state was wholeheartedly committed to its success, with the most formal protocols in place. Both David Cameron and William Hague have
I think we’re all very relieved that Vicky Pryce, the estranged wife of the Cabinet minister Chris Huhne, is not motivated by revenge in writing a book about her ex-husband and dobbing him in to the police. I think we’re all very relieved that Vicky Pryce, the estranged wife of the Cabinet minister Chris Huhne,
The government’s new emissions target will despoil the countryside, rob the poor – and enrich landowners like me ‘Greener food and greener fuel’ is the promise of Ensus, a firm that opened Europe’s largest (£250 million) bio-ethanol plant at Wilton on Teesside last year, and has now shut it down for lack of profitable customers.
The last surviving leader of Norway’s anti-Nazi resistance Oslo Even in the glare of a crisp spring day the execution ground at Akershus Fortress is a chilling place. Snow still fringes the old gun battery and the Oslofjord clinks with ice. Sitting above this small patch of ground, in Norway’s Resistance Museum, I’m reminded of
In the field of public diplomacy, the tiny Gulf state of Qatar has become a mouse that roars. According to Hillary Clinton, the Emir of Qatar’s television network, Al Jazeera, is knocking spots off the broadcasters of three superpowers in a global struggle for influence being played out across the airwaves. ‘We are in an
Liverpool The payday loan shop in Breck Road erupts from its grey surroundings. Everything is painted yellow, black and red — colours that in the natural world mean ‘do not touch’ but that serve here as a lure. ‘Need cash now?’ ask the posters in the windows, in scarlet block capitals on a sunburst background.