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Comment on Sword of honour by Paul Robinson (26/07/2003) National honour is a valid reason to go to war, but in the current case, there is also the principle of self-defence. When someone announces he’s going to do you serious or fatal harm, it is not required to give him one free blow before initiating
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It is a sad sign of the times that a man who shot a burglar dead and wounded another should have become a national hero. The frustration that millions of householders feel about the inability or unwillingness of the British state to perform its one indispensable function – namely to protect the person and property
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Dr David Kelly, a Ministry of Defence scientific expert on Iraqi weapons, was found dead near his home in Oxfordshire with a cut wrist and a container of pain-killers. Hours earlier he had appeared before the Commons foreign affairs select committee and, when asked if he was the main source for an article by Mr
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Comment on No flies on Bush by Mark Steyn (19/07/2003) I read Mark Steyn’s article on the harmlessness of the lies told by the USA and the UK on the world stage and tried to be reassured by his joviality. After all, I thought, what’s a few thousand dead people when, as your poll showed,
From our UK edition
Not since the end of the war, and the flight of Saddam Hussein, have the skies of Baghdad been so illuminated with gunfire. Uday and Qusay, the tyrant’s princes, have at last been found, and the heavens themselves tell forth their death. The Iraqis are jubilant, and no wonder. In their sadism, egomania, luxury and
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Miss Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, said the government would build thousands of offshore wind turbines to supply up to a sixth of homes with electricity by 2010; the sites are in the Thames estuary, the Wash, and off the north-west coast between the Solway Firth and Rhyl. A government
Comment on Girls just want to have funds by Rachel Royce (12/07/2003) Rachel Royce gives women a bad name when she accuses men of greed yet expects a return of between 200% and 800% on her “investment”. Simple logic will tell her that it is not men, but elementary maths that make a pyramid scheme
From our UK edition
We all know what we think. Week in, week out, we hear what the British view of the war in Iraq is, and the polls tell us that we are becoming ever more sceptical. We know what the Americans think. We know what the French think of it all (not a lot). Now, for the
From our UK edition
Tony Blair insisted that weapons of mass destruction will still be found in Iraq, even though none has been discovered yet. A committee of MPs acquitted Mr Blair’s right-hand man, Alastair Campbell, of ‘sexing up’ a dossier about such weapons published in September 2002, but the committee said the claim that the weapons could be
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Comment on Tomorrow he’ll be yesterday’s man by Mark Steyn (05/07/2003) Howard Dean has been propelled to a leading role in the Democratic race because millions of Americans realize that George W Bush took America into an ill-considered war. Howard Dean, for all his faults has opposed the Iraq War, and his campaign gives Americans
From our UK edition
The interests of Englishmen are not threatened with impunity: and the danger of molesting them does not disclose itself till the threat has been uttered, and their enmity has been irrevocably incurred. They have a habit of sleeping up to the very moment of danger, which is equally embarrassing to their champions and their assailants.
From our UK edition
The government set out some pretty rum plans for homosexual partnerships, securing tax benefits and severance by ‘divorce’, in a paper called ‘Civil Partnership: A framework for the recognition of same-sex couples’. After a last-minute procedural concession by the government, the Commons voted by 362 to 154 for an outright ban on hunting. A High
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Comment on The defence of liberty (28/06/2003) It was disappointing to find The Spectator toeing the official pro-war line in this editorial, especially when even a periodical as supportive of the war as The Economist has issued withering criticism of the blundering incompetence of the occupation when such criticism was warranted. As someone who has
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Tony Blair has deserved praise for his commitment to the building of democracies in parts of the world where political debate has more commonly been conducted via the shredding machine. But it is to be hoped that citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan, now learning how parliamentary systems can work for the greater public good, did
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Mr Alastair Campbell, the director of communications at the Prime Minister’s office, agreed to give evidence about statements on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction before the televised Commons foreign affairs committee. Earlier Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, had told the committee that the second dossier on the subject was commissioned by Mr Campbell
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Comment on Crippling burden by Rod Liddle (21/06/2003) Your tawdry article on those of us who are disabled adequately shows us that you are indeed genuinely disabled – by blindness to the facts, arrogance, facetiousness and selective deafness amongst others. You chastise us for almost daring to claim what is the birthright of every citizen:
From our UK edition
The overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime remains a triumph of British and American arms. Casualties have been much lower than might have been expected in such extensive operations: a fact which the death on Tuesday of six British soldiers and the wounding of eight others should not be allowed to obscure. Such losses are regrettable,
From our UK edition
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, tried to abolish the Lord Chancellor overnight by ukase, and to reassign his powers. But Lord Irvine of Lairg disagreed and was sacked. Lord Falconer of Thoroton was made Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, but it was discovered that the Lords could not sit without a Lord Chancellor,
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Comment on Why was the Times so eager to do the government’s dirty work? by Stephen Glover (14/06/2003) Mr Glover is correct when he implies that the settling out of court of the action brought by Michael Ashcroft is evidence of the government wishing to avoid the process of discovery and have their lies exposed.
From our UK edition
It is now a week since Alan Milburn seriously inconvenienced his patron, Tony Blair, and threw the reshuffle into chaos by announcing that he was quitting the Cabinet to spend more time with his children. In the interval, the entire resources of Fleet Street have been deployed to uncover the truth behind this extraordinary move.