the whole lot of them could go on strike between now and Christmas, and I wouldn’t consider myself in any way starved of information
I have a terrible confession to make. I have to own up to a cultural shortcoming that will scandalise many high-minded readers of this paper. It is even more lamentable than my habit of falling asleep during the theatre or my failure to finish reading War and Peace (I got to page 1,216 and then lost my copy, just as it was hotting up). The dreadful truth is that I do not regularly listen to the Today programme.
it is all the more baffling that we do not make the obvious move and reverse yesterday’s ludicrous clock-change so as to increase the quantity of joyous sunlight that is available to us all
lighter evenings would save lives, save CO2, save money, generate jobs and growth
Just when you think the world can’t get any madder, along comes dear old Hattie Harman and takes the biscuit. At last the bossyboots Paulina has decided to pick on someone her own size — herself!
… by aiding the Indians, as we must, we are effectively supporting them to achieve a nuclear independence that we cannot ourselves afford
We do not yet know whether Commander Andy Coles will face a court martial for his heroic exploits aboard HMS Astute, but some disciplinary procedure seems inevitable. The poor fellow will be frogmarched down a holystoned Admiralty corridor until he stands before a bench of grizzled sea-dogs, champing their pipes and gazing with pitiless gunmetal eyes as they spit out their staccato questions.
How the devil, they will want to know, did he manage to ground Astute (magnificently named, eh?) off the Isle of Skye, a stretch of water hardly unknown to the Royal Navy. “Coles,” they will growl, “you have held us up to ridicule. We have spent billions devising a state-of-the-art stealth submarine, and you have contrived to reveal its secrets to the Russians, the Chinese and to every dinghy of chortling rubberneckers that went out to look. What have you got to say for yourself, hey?”
Watch out, folks, we are about to be hit by a snowstorm of economic data. So put on your goggles and look out for the one big hurtling fact that really matters. The key point you need to remember during this week’s spending announcements is that the population of the UK is set to rise by an incredible 10 million over the next 20 years. That is more than the population of Greater London crash-landing on a land mass half the size of France.
Not since industrialisation, not since medieval England recovered from the Black Death, has there been anything like it. Thanks very largely to Labour’s deliberate failure to control immigration, and to higher birth rates, the Big Society is about to get very big indeed.
It is no use expecting the universities to sort all this out by going to 18-year-olds and dangling bursaries in front of them, if those 18-year-olds have long since been let down by the educational system, or if they have concluded that university is not for them
If the omens are right, this could be an epoch-making week. Lord Browne, formerly of BP, is finally about to unveil his recommendations on university finance, and I predict the political equivalent of an undersea oil-rig blow-out. He will say that universities should be free to charge more for tuition fees – and there is going to be fury from Left and Right.
I address myself directly this morning to the three million people – including many readers – who use the London Underground network; and I have no inhibitions whatever in focusing on these passengers, because the irritation they are experiencing as a result of industrial action is not only disgraceful, but an omen for the entire country as we struggle to come out of recession
If you have been kept waiting, or if your day has been wrecked, or if your colleagues and staff have been unable to make it to the office, then the first and most important thing I should say is how deeply I regret this strike and the inconvenience you are suffering. And if you are wondering why it is happening today, when the Tory party conference is taking place in Birmingham, then I hope the answer is obvious.
This is a nakedly political strike. It has nothing whatever to do with health and safety – nor have the union leaderships raised any such fears in the course of the negotiations.
Labour’s new leader looks like being under the thumb of the unions — harking back to the bad old days of the 1970s, says Boris Johnson.
~ · ~
It is an unsettling fact that I went to the same school as the party leader. Indeed, there are some people who have taken to complaining about this coincidence. They say it is unacceptable in the 21st century that so much political power should be concentrated in the old boys of one educational establishment. It is a sign, they say, that the country has failed to move on.
Both of us went to the same institution of ancient rituals and gorgeous brickwork, ideally situated by one of the nation’s most famous waterways and blessed with lush green spaces nearby. It is a forcing-house of talent, where the offspring of privilege acquire that patina of good manners, the ever so slightly infuriating habit of putting people at their ease, together with that sense of entitlement that propels them to the top and marks them out ever after as Old Primroseans.
No wonder we had a complex. No wonder we had always been divided in our feelings towards continental Europe. We had a deep childhood sense of rejection
There we were on the tarmac at Heathrow as the papal jet prepared to land. The cameras were trained on the night sky. The red carpet was rolled out. The charming Foreign Office people tried for the umpteenth time to remind me where to stand – and all the while my mind was whirring with a single question. It is a problem that goes to the heart of the relationship between church and state. It is a question that will be studied by future generations of students of theology and patristics, because the answer we give – and the answer you give, off the top of your head – is an indication of the balance currently existing between the privileges of spiritual leaders and the egalitarian demands of our temporal world.
I like to think I have campaigned pretty consistently against pointless quotas and restrictions
Sheesh. Cool it, folks. I know that from time to time this column has scandalised some readers with its laissez-faire approach. I opposed the ban on fox-hunting. I had a pop at mandatory booster seats for 10-year-olds and warnings on wine bottles that the contents can make you drunk, and I have drawn attention to the paranoid airline rule that an unaccompanied adult male may not be allowed to sit next to children. I have even defended the inalienable right of every freeborn Englishman or woman – provided he or she is in full command of the vehicle – to ride a bicycle while talking on a mobile phone.
I like to think I have campaigned pretty consistently against pointless quotas and restrictions, and sometimes readers have objected to my libertarianism. But never have I provoked such pant-hooting anger as when I suggested, the other day, that we might revisit the new cap on the number of talented people who can come to work in this country.
