It is time to end this crisis, and rescue the Lords, by insisting on a fully elected chamber, in which all peers are chosen by the same method, and yet without the same democratic mandate as the commons.

Elect the Lords – and stop our gongs going for a song

I was stuck at a traffic light yesterday when a brand new red Toyota 4X4 drew abreast, containing three extraordinary women. Their cheeks were flushed, their lips were red, they wore sexy little cream pant suits and matching cream hats, and identical pink shirts to go with the flowers in the brim.

They were in that state of innocent euphoria that causes human beings to hail complete strangers. “Oi Boris,” they shouted through the window, “we’ve just been to see the Queen!” And then the Beverley sisters (for that was how they introduced themselves) waved the square blue leather case containing the three identical ribbons and medals they had earned for a lifetime of belting out hits (I think they said there was one called Sisters) that have no doubt brought pleasure to millions, if not to you or me.

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All around us, in our courts, in the oppressive liberty-destroying Bills being rushed through Parliament, we see the disasters of multiculturalism, the system by which too many Muslims have been allowed to grow up in this country with no sense of loyalty to its institutions, and with a sense of complete apartness.

The Shabina Begum case never had anything to do with modesty

I don’t know whether you caught young Shabina Begum talking on the television yesterday, but, as I studied the pictures of this exceedingly good-looking and confident young woman, I was suddenly conscious of a paradox.

Here she is, at the centre of a national media storm, and one that has been very largely whipped up by her own supporters. There goes our Shabina, batting her (rather beautiful) eyes through her visor, and thereby exciting the interest of millions of otherwise apathetic viewers, who are not only infidels but very possibly male infidels at that.

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there is something about the Italian leader that makes me warm to him

he defends his remarks with all the confidence and insouciance of one who has a personal fortune estimated at $12 billion, making him the richest man in Europe

I cannot help hoping that this peacock will be given one last chance to convert his outrageousness into real political bravery, and reform the Italian economy

Berlusconi has his faults, but dullness isn’t one of them

Before we go any further, I want to make it absolutely clear that I have not received a penny from Silvio Berlusconi.

Yes, I have been to his socking great villa, strewn with helicopter pads, amphitheatres and thalassotherapy baths, on a Sardinian promontory. In common with other world leaders, I have been driven by Mr B around the estate, and admired his demented Dr No-style cactus collection, including a spiny mutant which he likened to “the brain of my finance minister”.

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We need nuclear power and a new generation of boffins

It’s enough to make you weep. Here we are, a nation that once led the world in scientific discovery. Who proposed the theory of gravity? A Briton. Who discovered the circulation of the blood? We did. Where did Faraday hang out, when he came up with the theory of electromagnetism? Right here in Britain.

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