Ioannina, Greece Like a penitent sinner, or an addict entering recovery, the European Union has developed a fondness for confessing it has lost the public’s confidence. Among EU leaders and top Eurocrats, there is much talk of ‘reconnecting with citizens’. To know why you should be sceptical, go to the ancient bazaars of Ioannina and
Rod Liddle say that — whatever his political failures — the Deputy Prime Minister is the victim of a deplorably hypocritical press assault I spent Bank Holiday Monday trying to find out everything I could about Jo Knowsley, for your benefit. I didn’t find out very much. Certain questions, crucial to the public interest, remain
Tom Stacey, a prison visitor for 30 years, says that jails devote scandalous resources to ‘diversity’. No wonder the Home Office has so little time to manage deportations Political defenders of Charles Clarke insist it’s unreasonable to expect ministers to be acquainted with ‘every nook and cranny’ of the department they are responsible for, especially
Fraser Nelson says that the Tory leader knows that his campaign to win over the Lib Dem voters may not succeed in the local elections. But he has decided not to change his strategy a jot: the chameleon’s not for turning David Cameron could hardly wish for a better backdrop to next week’s English local
Washington In early April a silver-haired lady held up a placard at an Iraq war protest that has since been replicated on bumper stickers across America and blogs all over cyberspace. ‘Will Someone Please Give George W. Bush a B*** Job,’ the sign read, ‘So We Can Impeach Him?’ For partisan Democrats — at least
Allister Heath meets Radek Sikorski, the Polish defence minister, and hears his robust views on al-Qa’eda, economic reform and the European Union There are old Cold Warriors — and then there are those who actually donned combat fatigues, picked up AK-47s, and trekked halfway around the world. In the case of Radek Sikorski, a Polish
How should our unelected and unaccountable television and radio presenters and interviewers conduct themselves, so as to avoid the continual allegations of political bias? Last week, in this magazine, Charles Moore had a bit of fun at the expense of Jim Naughtie, the Today programme presenter, for having balked in a rather sententious manner when
It’s wrong, I know, but there’s something thrilling about a really humungous lie. It’s wrong, I know, but there’s something thrilling about a really humungous lie. Consider, for example, the sheer brass neck of Alan McIlwraith — or Captain Sir Alan McIlwraith KBE, DSO, MC, as he prefers to be known. This mysterious young war
Roger Scruton says that the century and a half since Freud’s birth has been marred by his imagined diseases of the mind Freud was born 150 years ago, on 6 May 1856, the same year as Wagner finished work on Die Walküre, the work which dramatises all the themes, from dreams to incest, that were
Philip Bobbitt tells Matthew d’Ancona, we must start from scratch if we are to beat the terrorists Cometh the war, cometh the guru. South of Baghdad, insurgents shoot down a US helicopter, killing two US servicemen, days after five British military servicemen died when their Lynx was brought down in Basra. Iran’s President scornfully rejects
William Hague tells Fraser Nelson that the Tory party has changed completely since he led it — and that the best advice he has given David Cameron is dietary William Hague had almost cracked Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata when David Cameron called him back to front-bench politics. He has been teaching himself to play the piano
Bucharest In 1950s Romania, as Stalinist terror descended, a mania evolved for hunting down ‘foreign spies’. Early victims included former staff at the British military mission in Bucharest, some of whom were shot for their services between 1944 and 1947. Even doormen at the mission, or secretaries, were sentenced to hard labour. As the terror
This year’s most compulsive television viewing came on BBC News 24 last week, when they interviewed the wrong man. They were doing a story about the legal battle over registered trademarks between the computer company Apple and the Beatles’ record label, Apple Corps. They intended to speak to an acclaimed information technology expert, Guy Kewney,
Lynchburg, Virginia John McCain has definitely had happier days than last Saturday. As he mounted the podium at Virginia’s Liberty University, once memorably described by its founder, his long-time enemy, as a ‘bible boot camp’ he had a wistful, almost haunted expression. When it was his turn to address his audience of starry-eyed Christian students,
My fiancé is engrossed in a book called Happiness by the economist Richard Layard, from which he reads aloud pertinent statistics. ‘People are happiest in the year they get married,’ he will lugubriously announce, ‘and after that it’s downhill all the way.’ Or: ‘Having children does make you happy, but only for two years.’ Or,
David Cameron’s first full interview since the local elections Evidence of the hardship suffered by the Conservative party over the last decade can be found on the right foot of the Churchill statue which guards the entrance to the House of Commons chamber. His toecap is gleaming, thanks to the tradition of Conservative politicians giving
Sir Cliff Richard has sold his palatial home on the St George’s Hill estate in Weybridge, Surrey, but the entertainer is not forsaking Britain for America, as you might have heard, but merely downsizing. Indeed, he has already put in an offer for a smaller place scarcely 20 minutes away. At 65, Sir Cliff is
Your chances of being abducted by a grey-skinned, blank-eyed alien creature have receded very greatly over the last decade or so. If you haven’t already been abducted, bad luck — it might never happen. Your chance has probably gone. Last week a report into UFO activity over Britain was made public by the Ministry of
When I taught logic at an American university, the chief problem was to entice students to take the course. The smorgasbord approach they used to build a degree meant that students wanted things which might be useful to them, or ones they might be good at. Logic, alas, was perceived as neither, and classes were
I am wandering the gilded streets where it all began. A few hundred yards from here a handful of clever, public-school-educated young men met of an evening to discuss how best to transform the thing they loved, the Conservative party. They would meet for something called ‘supper’, apparently. Yes, I am in that little, extortionately