J. K. Rowling’s work, I confess, leaves me somewhat cold. Harry Potter is just an Enid Blyton boarding school story with sprinklings of magic, cod Latin and dubious politics (the Ministry of Magic imprisons and tortures its political opponents and they’re the good guys. Really?). One thing she got brilliantly right, I think though, was […]
I recently spent some happy hours with Noel Edmonds. That he was in New Zealand and I was in the London ‘burbs was perhaps for the best because, beloved childhood figure though he was, his beliefs are most politely described as unconventional batshit. I find crystal beds and healing energy every bit as interesting as
Chariots of Fire was on the “drop everything and watch” list my ex-wife and I compiled. A cry would go up when one of us spotted it on the telly, and we would settle down for a pleasant couple of hours cocooned in that cosy hymn to clean-limbed British manhood. Shot partly in a place
Terry Thomas’ England Read More »
The word “radical” derives ultimately from the Latin radix meaning “root” (every so often my classical education demands an airing – yes, radix is “root’s” root). It retains an air of this in our current usage. A radical reform is a root and branch reform, one which rips up that which has gone before and
The Curious Conservatism of the Radical Right Read More »
The impeachment of Warren Hastings, the Norway Debate, Sir Geoffrey Howe savaging Margaret Thatcher – great parliamentary moments all. No matter how long our country lasts, or how low our descendants’ standards stoop, we can be confident no session of the current PMQs will be counted in their number. Every week, the stoppable force of
Burqas and British Values Read More »
Shoplifters and Liberal Democrats have more in common than either group might care to admit. When one walks out of a shop with a packet of butter down their trousers (for whatever later use…) or the other blocks a development to preserve the value of their property, both are seeking to maximise their own benefit.
Can Democracy Survive? Read More »
Picture the scene. A kitchen table anywhere in the country. A child’s dinner time. Food is served but not eaten, just pushed around the plate. It may, depending on the dish, be rearranged into a pretty shape. It may be piled up or spread around. Parent grows concerned: “Are you not hungry?” “I want pizza.”
Free Speech – For All I Care Read More »
I am old enough to know that The Sweeney existed, but young enough (save for one episode stumbled upon on one of ITV’s cadet channels) to have never seen it. Even as Regan and Carter fade into history however, the memory of what they represented lingers – and not just among those of my advancing
“Well then, it should all just go away,” says the President in Tom Clancy’s Clear And Present Danger, the “it” in question being the secret and deeply illegal war he has launched against the Colombian drug cartels. For a writer of mass-market fiction, Clancy was an unusually acute observer of the political animal. “They want
Looking the Other Way Read More »
The Parties did not, as someone once put it, send their best. Lower tier cabinet and shadow cabinet members turned up, along with the Lib Dem Deputy Leader. To the Greens and Reform, the event did not even merit an MP. But if the audience at Channel 4’s Local Election Debate (more of a Q&A
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