…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson calls Berlusconi the latest victim of Europe’s Gnirps Bara. Peter Hoskin says Cameron can’t ignore criticism from Patrick Mercer, and takes issue with Ed Balls’ claims. James Forsyth urges Nick Clegg to look again at cutting regulation, and says an EU treaty
• Democracy in Zambia Sir: There are undoubtedly dubious countries in Africa but Daniel Kalder (‘Mr Blair goes to Kazakhstan’, 5 November) is wide of the mark in including Zambia among them. It may not be perfect but its record in terms of human rights and relative freedom from corruption is one of the best
Another world Six cosmonauts have completed an experiment in which they were isolated inside a container for 520 days to simulate a voyage to Mars. A similar experiment, the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project between 1995-97 isolated crews for 91 days at a time. These were some of the findings: — Without natural daylight, the
Home Theresa May, the Home Secretary, blamed Brodie Clark, the head of the UK Border and Immigration Agency’s ‘border force’, for ‘relaxation of border controls without ministerial sanction’. Mr Clark left the agency, declaring that what Mrs May had said in parliament was wrong. An online petition urging ministers to reduce immigration gained more than
No job in government has its path so strewn with banana skins as that of Home Secretary. A missing criminal, slippery detainee or foreign terrorist can end a ministerial career. And with tens of thousands of people going in and out of the country daily it can happen at any moment. The Home Office has
A further selection of our reviewers’ favourite reading in 2011 Richard Davenport-Hines Amidst the din, slogans and panic of modern publishing, my cherished books are tender, calm and achieve a surpassing eloquence by dint of tightly controlled reticence. Anthony Thwaite’s Late Poems (Enitharmon, £10) are written by a man of 80. Each of them is
