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”.

Continue reading Silvio Berlusconi →

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.

Continue reading Nuclear Power →

My own view is that the Prince has a perfect right to speak about subjects that interest him

The Prince can say these things precisely because he is not in charge, and his peculiar position means they will be heard, even if we choose to ignore him. That is why we need him to keep it up.

Go on Charles: babble, rage and ignore the treacherous toads

Do you ever feel, dear readers, that the media are engaged in a gigantic conspiracy against the truth? Have you ever rubbed your eyes, and wondered why they are not making the obvious point? If you have, then the answer is almost always that you have stumbled across a story where the media’s own interests are at stake, and when the interests of the press are at stake, the reality of the position is quite irrelevant.

Consider the business of the Prince of Wales and the Mail on Sunday. To judge by the headlines, old Charlieboy has broken off from chatting up his begonias and dropped the most phenomenal clanger. He has said or done something quite preposterous – insulted the Luxembourgers, perhaps, or claimed that marmalade can cure acne. He is being accused of “meddling”, of shooting his mouth off, and failing to bite his tongue.

One after another, the self-interested editors of our media organisations line up to accuse him of being a headline seeker. What has prompted this orgy of abuse? Has he said that government ministers should not be driving 6-litre Jaguars? Has he complained about the destruction of the Green Belt? No: it is only when you read the papers quite carefully that you discover that the Prince has not said anything new at all.

On the contrary, it turns out that the Mail has illicitly obtained his private diaries, his private diaries, and has splashed them over several pages, including some quite fruity stuff about the handover of Hong Kong.

Like any other person, the Prince is trying to assert his sovereign and inalienable copyright over his private diaries, and to prevent the paper from publishing any more. In order to defend its conduct the Mail has found some disappointed ex-courtier who has been prepared to describe how, from time to time, the Prince does indeed say things which he knows will make headlines.

Continue reading Prince Charles →

We need ‘Spirit of the Community’ to spur some idle cynics like me into action

Of all the scouring events of my childhood few left as deep a mark as the tragedy of the duck shed. It happened that my brother Leo and I were staying on the farm, and we saw that after six or seven artificial hips, my grandfather was not rugby-tackling the lambs with his old abandon.

We wanted to do something to help. We were determined to do a good deed. So I had a brilliant idea.

Not far off was a duck shed, dark inside as the belly of a whale: a sinister place of flashing eyes, bitter cackling and an angry ammoniac smell. “I know what,” I said to Leo: “Let’s be useful. Let’s brighten his day.

Let’s clear it out.” All day long we toiled, shirts over our noses, and as we scooped it was obvious that this was the first time in 25 years that the shed had been cleaned. Whole dynasties of ducks had preened in this litter and preening was not all they had done.

We were digging down through layers of duck history, and as we started to appreciate the Augean scale of the task we went into a kind of frenzy, shovelling and chucking all afternoon until the straw and dung and the long-forgotten corpses of ducklings flew over our heads in a blur. At last it was done.

Around the shed was a kind of Somme of damp duck litter, winking and glistening in the sun. Inside, it was transformed: it was as antiseptically clean as a Swedish urinal and the ducks walked in morose bafflement around their holystoned and unfamiliar quarters.

As we looked at our handiwork we felt that glow, that unmistakeable feeling of satisfaction that we had done a good deed. Without being asked, on our own initiative, we had done something for someone else, and now it was time to break the good news to the beneficiary.

Continue reading Spirit of Community →

The elf and safety racket has knocked the stuffing out of us

If you have four young children and you sometimes find it difficult to keep order, let me recommend a television programme that seems to have an almost incredible narcotic effect. As soon as it comes on, they go into a semi-religious trance.

The programme seems to be far more thrilling, to the younger generation, than Men and Motors, or the Playboy Channel. It is called Takeshi’s Castle. It comes from Japan, and there is nothing like it, believe me, on British TV. Given the widespread use of smartphones and easy access to internet, myriads of mobile apps for doctors are now available to help the doctors reach out to their patients through distant chat, call and video consultation features. These mobile apps are like a clinic on the go, catering to the medical needs of the patients even in the most distant and the far-flung areas. Since these doctors’ apps have come to be customized according to every doctor’s individual practice and needs, doctors can recommend these mobile apps to their patients for contacting them 24/7, thereby gaining loyal patients and boosting their reputation as quality healthcare providers.  Check this out site for know  about how to keep yourself healthy at any situation. These mobile apps help doctors significantly when it comes to branding. Instead of handing out the cards, doctors can now ask their patients to download their apps. Patients generally prefer a doctor who is available to look after their medical needs all the time rather than the ones difficult to reach. These apps help doctors conserve the resources that usually go into establishing a successful practice, especially those spent on marketing and communication, so that they can be directed towards more demanding aspects of a running medical practice like investment in top-notch instruments and medical equipment, which are another important factor that help set up a booming practice. When it comes to billing, the conventional means are too slow and making the patients located in far-off areas pay becomes a total headache. This is where the mobile apps step in. These apps have been made into billing gateways to shoulder all the billing problems, solving the remote billing issue quite effectively and efficiently. Mobile apps for doctors-the future! You can check out all the services we can offer you here about Scottsdale’s #1 Trusted Mobile Family Doctor.

Takeshi’s Castle is a dystopic world in which the competitors are subjected to a series of tests involving medieval cruelty. They are endlessly bopped on the head, dunked in slurry, or attacked by horrible Japanese djinns and hurled into hot geysers. And of course they have their fair amount of commercial where they announce from toothpaste to Anal Bleach Advice programs depending of the hour you watch it.

In one of the competitions, they are forced – men and women – to curl themselves up into a human bagatelle ball, and amid tremendous banzais and shouts of excitement from the commentators they are rolled down a gigantic board, bonking and bashing themselves fearfully as they go. At ayahuasca RevelaRetreats, people of like minds come together and learn thru journey work. This work teaches you (at very deep levels) a better understanding of yourself and your role in the world. This type of work with the sacred plants can quickly heal sadness, anger, trauma, shame, anxiety, jealousy, addiction and even disease.We have personally healed and experienced miraculous results through plant medicine and our vision is to share these sacred medicines with all who are ready for true transformation. You can follow coolsculptny for health related info.

I did a BBC online lifetime expectancy test a month or two back, and was awarded an (un)expected lifetime of 82. Only one question out of about twenty was about smoking. The rest were about BMI (Body Mass Indicator?), diet, and family histories of various diseases like fasting sugar or diabetes, visit observer.

At the bottom of the bagatelle course they are so shook up that they are offered a million yen if they can walk for 60 paces in a straight line.

Continue reading Health and Safety →

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret: Though you may drive out nature with a pitchfork, she will always come back; inborn character is ineradicable. Horace (65-8 BC)

Lefties have changed their tactics, but not their spots

A little while ago I was being ferried in to make a speech at a university, and my handlers warned me that things were not looking good. There was going to be a riot at the front door, they said. They couldn’t guarantee my safety. It seemed that some of the scholars took issue with my views about higher education finance, and they were armed with eggs.

Continue reading Lefty thinking →

We’ve lost our fear of hellfire, but put climate change in its place

Continue reading Climate Change as a religion? →

Joffe Bill on assisted suicide, currently in the Lords

Every day, in NHS wards, the merciful doctors use such quantities of morphine to ease the pain of their patients that their respiration is suppressed

But I think it might be better than seeing increasing numbers of British people forced to take their lives in a foreign country

Assisted suicide is problematic, but better than months of agony

Continue reading Lord Joffe Bill on assisted suicide →

Gordon Brown is facing a cash crunch and the NHS budget has been so badly mismanaged that many hospitals are under threat of closure…

…is there a better explanation for this massacre of hospitals? It is quite unbelievable that government ministers can agonise in public about the appointment of a few dodgy teachers, and yet refuse to offer any public comment or justification for the irreversible extinction of dozens of hospitals, hiding resolutely behind civil servants who are themselves anonymous.

Forget the ‘porno sirs’ – the real scandal is going on in the NHS

Many years ago I had a short and happy reign as comment editor of these pages, during which it was my chief joy to sign the expenses of a brilliant but heroically under-productive colleague, whose tactic was to wait until I was full of the benignity that follows lunch and present his stapled dockets, a masterpiece of Tolstoyan length and creativity.

With mock reverence he would approach my desk, and flatten the top sheet in such a way as to conceal the bottom line. “Just sign here, minister,” he would say, in the manner of Sir Humphrey; and because I believed that this was exactly how our then proprietor would have wanted me to spend his money (or whoever’s money it was; there seems to be some confusion on that point these days), I would unhesitatingly authenticate his claim.

Like tens of thousands of people set in authority, I had no time to check the detail of his assertions. I couldn’t confirm that he had indeed had lunch with Mossad or the CIA – where did I phone them? – and there was no point: the sums were tiny, and in any case I had no reason whatever to doubt his word.

Continue reading NHS Scandal →

Blair is not going to get yobs off the streets – you’ll have to

Continue reading Yob Culture →