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If Lord Woolf is discovered ’orribly murdered in his cellar, the editor of the Daily Mail may well find himself helping police with their inquiries. There will certainly be a motive: the Lord Chief Justice is not a popular figure with the self-professed keeper of Middle England values. In response to his lordship’s proposal to
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Mr Stephen Byers, a former Cabinet minister, popped up on television to talk about Mr Alan Milburn, the new Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with undefined responsibility for drawing up Labour policy before the election; ‘I think he would be an excellent leader of the Labour party and an excellent prime minister.’ Mr Frank
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The chief recruiting sergeant for al-Qa’eda is not George W. Bush but Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch EU internal market commissioner. Speaking last week on the possibility of Turkey joining the EU — and thus Muslims one day coming to outnumber Christians within it — Mr Bolkestein commented that were this to come to pass ‘the
Mr Andrew Smith resigned as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. This added interest to a Cabinet reshuffle by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and provoked reheated speculation about his rivalry with Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Queen gave a donation for the people of Beslan, through the British
Count me in As one of the (so far few) Conservative MPs to have publicly supported the proposal to debate the Prime Minister’s impeachment, I was not surprised by Cedric Talbot’s reaction to it from Tokyo (Letters, 4 September). He misses the point and in doing so falls into the trap set by the No.
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Andrew Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, resigned this week, so he says, in order to spend more time with his family. Or maybe he was peeved at some of the comments made about him by his colleagues. What is certain is that he didn’t resign for the reason he ought to have done: that
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The Royal Mail paid £50 million in compensation after meeting none of its 15 targets in the first quarter of the financial year, delivering only 88.3 per cent of first-class letters on time between April and June, against a target of 92.5 per cent; Oxford saw only 68 per cent delivered on time. By July
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To the parents of Victoria Climbié, the eight-year-old girl who died in 2000 after being battered by her great-aunt and great-aunt’s boyfriend in a seedy Haringey council flat, the disciplinary procedures employed by British local government must seem to take place in a parallel universe. On Wednesday morning, listeners to Radio Four’s Today programme were
Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, visited Sudan, seeing some refugees in one of the better camps in Darfur, and meeting the Prime Minister and minister for foreign affairs; he confirmed that British troops would not be sent to Sudan. Sir Mark Thatcher Bt, the son of Lady Thatcher, was arrested by South African police
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The impeachment of Tony Blair would form a fitting end to a prime ministership which opened with the promise to be ‘purer than pure’, but ended in the arrogant deception of the British people. This ancient form of trial, which has lain disused but not defunct in the armoury with which we defend our liberties,
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Eight men, arrested two weeks ago, were charged with planning to commit murder and to launch radiological, chemical, gas or bomb attacks. A-level candidates did better than ever; Mr David Miliband, the schools minister, said evidence from reports he had seen did not suggest ‘dumbing-down’. Mr Richard Thomas, the independent Information Commissioner, criticised the Home
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Alternatives to war In his extended defence of the ‘war on terror’ George Osborne (‘While England sleeps’, 14 August) asks what other response there could be. History suggests several alternatives. When Britain was faced with terrorism in Malaya the civil authorities were resolute about the need to remain in charge and so the ‘war’ remained
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That England should have a 3–0 lead in the present Test cricket series against West Indies is something that, only a few years ago, would have exceeded the most insane expectations of its supporters. In great measure the success is down to the discovery of excellent talent — Flintoff, Strauss and Key notably — and
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More than 140 cockle-pickers were rescued four miles from shore on the sands of Morecambe Bay after the tractors of two rival gangs collided. Four rowers attempting to break the west-east Atlantic crossing record were rescued on the 39th day after huge waves split their boat 300 miles off the Isles of Scilly. Five British
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Pole position As Simon Heffer says (‘It’s time to move on’, 7 August), there is no earthly reason why Britain should apologise to Poland for not doing more to help the Poles during the Warsaw uprising. Nor could Britain’s ally the United States have done anything. Prime Minister Belka thinks that Churchill should have dispatched
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Dick Pound, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee, speaks for many when he says of the Greeks: ‘They think things being ready at 11:59 is plenty of time. It drives the rest of the world nuts.’ It has become commonplace over the past months to portray the modernday Greeks as unworthy inheritors of
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Thirteen men of Asian appearance in their twenties and thirties were arrested by police investigating terrorism; the arrests were in north-west London; Bushey, Hertfordshire; Luton, Bedfordshire and Blackburn, Lancashire. Separate plans by al-Qa’eda terrorists to attack buildings in Britain were discovered after arrests in Pakistan, but the Home Office said no more than: ‘We are
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Listen hard and you can hear J. Bonington-Jagworth grumbling loudly. The Association of London Government has announced that it is to fine motorists up to £100 a time for driving in the capital’s cycle lanes. The RAC Foundation, one of the many real-life organisations which have come to ape Peter Simple’s splendid Motorists’ Liberation Front,
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The government is to post a leaflet called ‘Preparing for Emergency’ to all 25 million households in Britain; it recommends keeping indoors with bottled water, tinned food, a battery radio, spare batteries and a first-aid kit in case of terrorist attack. Mr Peter Mandelson, the Labour MP who was twice obliged to leave the Cabinet,
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But why is Diana’s fountain being closed? Some people are decently embarrassed at the failure of this £3.6 million waterwork. Some people may be secretly amused. They look at the bone-dry channels of the Hyde Park memorial, and the metal security barriers that now surround it, and they feel that distinctive British joy in architectural