Category Archives: articles

A positive vision of Europe

From an odyssean experience came a vision of a Europe

that builds on the steady exchange of people and languages, culture and ideas, until we create a wider, looser, more generous Europe, that includes the Turks

Let’s buy into the good things about Europe

Much as I love my fellow countrymen, I couldn’t quite believe how many of us decided last week to pick the same small set of beaches on the island of Lefkas. There we were, alone on some stretch of bone-white sand, the sea the colour of forget-me-nots, the sky like blue fire; and then dots would appear at the far end. Would they be French? German?

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TV Licensing

I won’t pay to be abused by the BBC

I want to save myself the price of a stamp or a phone call today by writing an open letter to Mr Richard Goodbody, the regional manager of the Swindon enforcement division of the TV Licensing Authority. I have no reason to doubt that Mr Goodbody is a perfectly pleasant man in private life, but in his public capacity he is, in my view, a blithering nincompoop; and if my language is intemperate it is because Goodbody has just sent me one of the rudest and stupidest letters I have ever received.

If you like to watch tv, you have to know that keeping a fully-fledged TV on a table or attaching it to a corner is a space-consuming affair, that is why many people prefer to use a tv ceiling mount ​to hang the TV.


“Mr Johnson,” he begins, without any of the conventional civilities, and then tells me that he has obtained authority to visit my premises in Oxfordshire. Indeed, he says, he can come at any time during the day, the evening or at weekends. He can use any technology he chooses. He can caution me, take a statement, and file a report which may be used in proceedings before a local magistrates’ court culminating in a £1,000 fine.

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DT column – French vote on new European Constitution

The no campaign is ahead in the polls in France, which votes on 29 May.

The European constitution means more irresistible and pernicious regulation, with more majority voting envisaged on questions of technology, education, social affairs … The French are being scarified by unscrupulous politicians with tales of a Tebbit-like constitution, full of free-market on-your-bikery

On the reason to vote no:

the last thing the French (or anyone) need is more detailed prescriptions from Brussels about the labour market or anything else

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Prince Harry’s Art

DT Column:

life isn’t like coursework … It’s one essay crisis after another

Exams work because they’re scary

Well I don’t know about you but I like Prince Harry’s aboriginal crocodiles. Speaking with the authority of a former shadow minister for the arts, I would say that they are jolly colourful. And, um, bold. And who cares if – as is now suggested – he did not paint every detail of the little Abo critters himself? Harry, old chum, we have all been there.

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Vote Tory for freedom, democracy and taxpayer value

As in the DT column today

Boris was seen to be going begging recently …..

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I threw off my bedclothes and charged out into the rain to continue knocking on doors and accosting strangers in the hope of persuading them to vote Conservative

Labour has run out of hope, money and ideas

Look. Please. I know it is always undignified when a grown man begs, but I woke up recently and had a horrifying thought. I seemed to see Tony in power for another four years. There he was, once again on the steps of Downing Street, with Cherie draped all over him like a flannel, and then the camera zoomed in for the tight head shot, and the look of holy rapture on Blair’s face started subtly to mutate, and omigosh, I thought, it’s coming, here it comes, here it comes… And aaargh, I thought. This is it.

The lips drew back; the corners of the mouth went up, and there it all suddenly was, that gigawatt dentistry, grinning a smile of luminous and incandescent prime ministerial triumph, like a cross between the Joker in Batman and a sex-crazed chipmunk. And with a howl of horror I threw off my bedclothes and charged out into the rain to continue knocking on doors and accosting strangers in the hope of persuading them to vote Conservative, and I hope you will not think it amiss, dear reader, if I now ask you, at this eleventh hour, to consider doing the same.

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We don’t need any lessons from Labour!

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We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom – teachers leave them kids alone

The Daily Telegraph column today echoes Pink Floyd’s 1979 classic single “Another Brick in the Wall

Labour needs to be taught a lesson

Even if you have no children yourself, you have only to read Lord of the Flies to know the reality. There can be few experiences more terrifying than to stand before a crowd of juveniles and to try to command their respect and their interest; and as soon as you do it, you are lost in admiration for the daily achievement of teachers.

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Who’s fighting for the hard-working Road Sweeper?

Boris has been having fun canvassing recently but was shocked when someone blanked him out earlier this week:

“Hello!” I cried, and extended my hand. Blank. Nothing. He simply walked on by, cutting me as dead as a doornail, and shot into his house. For all the notice he took, I might as well have been a bollard, or some other item of pavement furniture

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Boris back safely from Iraq – Spectator article

More tales from Iraq:

They are beheading dozens of people every day

Here we are in 2005, and not only are all the main public buildings still twisted and pancaked and full of gaping cruise-holes, but the lights are still intermittent, sanitation mediaeval, inflation at 30 per cent, petrol queues lasting two days and corruption – without the restraint of Baathist terror – worse than ever

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