Stop Brussels and save our home-made jam

Eat your heart out, Nigella. Look to your laurels, Jamie. I am about to reveal exclusively to readers of this newspaper the secret of making impeccable damson jam.

After two seasons of experiment, in which I have burned saucepans, smashed Moulinexes and splattered so much jam over the kitchen that it resembled a scene from Goodfellas, I have cracked the great damson stone problem. I now present my findings to the Royal Society of Telegraph Jam-Makers with the sense of exhaustion and pride that Rutherford must have felt after splitting the atom.

I believe the recipe to be idiot-proof. The result is sensational – sweet and yet tart, but not wince-makingly tart, and once I have explained it, you will want immediately to join the great jam-making community. You will want to rise up and protect the interests of British jam-makers – and indeed small businesses of all kinds – against the insanity of some EU regulations; and when you hear what I mean, your blood will boil hotter than the jam itself.

Continue reading Review of EU Directive on Jams, Jellies and Marmalades →

How can we let children live in fear?

As soon as we saw the gun, we knew what was going to happen. We all leant forward, hundreds of us watching the flickering film, and all around me in the school in east London I could see the anxious faces of the children.

Some of them were averting their eyes, or staring through splayed fingers; and then – Bang! – came the inevitable shot, and a gasp went up from the audience as the life of another child began to leak away, like the lives of the 21 teenagers who have died in London this year, shot or stabbed at the hands of other teenagers.

And then it was the climax of the show, and a hip-hop group called Green Jade came on, and started singing a very catchy number all about what it was like to be caught in the crossfire. It was called Brah-kah-kah, and on the instructions of Wizdom, the lead singer, we all started waving peace signs in the air.

It would be an exaggeration to say that I understood every word of the lyrics. But I certainly understood the chorus, and I can still hear it in my head. “Brah-ka-kah”, sang Wizdom, ducking and weaving his body like a man dodging bullets, and I looked at the singers making their Eminem gestures, flicking their fingers as though trying to rid them of a particularly irritating piece of Sellotape.

Continue reading Children and Violence →

Gordon Brown is a quivering jelly of indecision

My friends, I have a feeling that everyone is under some misapprehension.

People seem to assume that the Prime Minister is cunningly manipulating events. They think he is some gigantic puppetmaster, ingeniously pulling our strings as he prepares for his “snap” election.

That’s why we are seeing the ballot boxes wiped down on the TV news. That’s why troop withdrawal announcements are being brilliantly and disgracefully spun. That’s why ad space is booked and halls reserved and Labour candidates are even now being thrust on constituencies.

The world assumes that the die is cast; and yet if you talk to Labour MPs they will admit the awful truth – namely, that even at this eleventh hour, at the climax of the Tory conference, the Prime Minister has yet to make up his mind. Yes, after three weeks of solid havering this putative election has less snap than a piece of celery lost at the bottom of the fridge.

I stick by my psychological diagnosis of earlier in the week. It is not so much that Gordon Brown is internally divided on the question. His condition is far worse than that. He is a great quivering protoplasmic jelly of indecision, and if you come with me now into the Brown study in Downing Street, you will see what I mean.

The floor of the Brown study is littered with fingernail chewings and scrumpled poll findings, and there in the corner is the burbling TV.

Continue reading Thoughts on an early election →

Supporting troops needn’t mean backing war

It’s embarrassment, isn’t it? That’s the only explanation. It’s good old-fashioned British horror of anything that might provoke any kind of controversy, any public display of untoward emotion.

That’s why the local authorities of this country have displayed such glacial indifference to the 13,000 servicemen returning this autumn – hundreds of them grievously injured – from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s why the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Richard Dannatt, was driven to his sad complaint last week.

That’s why there will be no parties or treats for men and women who have given so much.

That’s why no one is laying on a parade. It’s nothing to do with our so-called stiff upper lip, or dislike of show. Don’t give me that guff.

This is a nation awash with cheap sentimentality, a nation that went into an ecstasy of mourning for the death of the Princess of Wales, and which is still far more interested – to judge by the news coverage – in the fate of one four-year-old girl than in the losses and injuries now being sustained by the entire Armed Forces.

But when British politicians, local and national, try to imagine any public act of thanksgiving for military sacrifice, they go into a kind of swoon.

Continue reading Servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan →

End of Belgium should be a warning to Gordon

At the end of some office crisis, the late, great Bill Deedes had a way of turning to you – if you were lucky enough to have been through the crisis with him – and saying, in his conspiratorial way: “Well, old cock, I think we got through that one all right.”

And that, I imagine, is the feeling in Downing Street today. The panic is over, apparently. The queues of frenzied depositors have died away. By the amazing expedient of nationalising Northern Wreck, and by offering unlimited sums of taxpayers’ money to guarantee the liquidity of everyone else, Gordon Brown seems to have contained the damage caused by the first run on the banks since the collapse of Overend and Gurney in 1866.

So, before the next building society goes belly up, and before Gordon uses yet more of our dosh to protect the financiers from the consequences of their reckless deals, let me warn the Prime Minister of another crisis on the horizon; a problem that is more pregnant with risk for this country than any collapse of the housing market.

Once again the bad news comes from abroad, and no, I am not talking about American mortgages, or the terrifying prospect of a Bush-led bombing raid on Iran.

It is a sign of this column’s complete indifference to fashion that this week I take my text from Belgium.

Yes, Belgium is the place that Gordon should be watching: because lovely, misty little Belgium, with its triste cobbled streets and Calpol-tasting beer, is now on the verge of a tragic disintegration. For 102 days, the country has been without a government. The Walloons can’t abide the Flemings, and the Flemings want to maroon the Walloons, and there is now a real chance that they will call it quits.

Continue reading The Future of Belgium →

Madeleine McCann saga reflects our society

I can’t stand it any more. I can’t stand the dizzying manipulation of my sympathies.

First I had a pretty clear idea of what had happened to poor little Maddie McCann.

Then all these horrible rumours started to emanate from the Portuguese police, and my emotions lurched off in the opposite direction; and then there would be a pretty compelling counter-rumour, and a learned essay from some expert in forensic science explaining that DNA tests were not all they were cracked up to be, until I have reached the position at 5.30 on Wednesday afternoon – the latest I dare to sit down to write this piece – when I frankly haven’t got a clue what to think.

I look in vain for guidance to the tabloid press, with its legions of reporters in Praia da Luz and long expertise in knowing which way to fan the hysteria of their readers. Which is it?

Are the McCann parents a brace of cold-hearted child killers who have managed to concoct a gigantic fraud involving the police forces of western Europe, the Papacy and hundreds of yellow ribbon-wearing British MPs?

Or are they loving and normal parents who have fallen victim to a terrible crime, and who now see their agony compounded by a half-baked stitch-up operation conducted by Portugal’s equivalent of Inspector Clouseau?

Either way, it is a sensational tabloid story; and yet the papers cannot go either way. The journalists are stuck in the middle, uncertain, cautious, hedging.

The heavy artillery of Fleet Street have their barrels loaded, ready to make either case. But they don’t dare to fire them. They don’t know. I don’t know. You don’t know. None of us knows.

We are all in principle on a huge knife-edge of doubt – and yet that is not, alas, how so many of us behave.

More and more of us now seem willing to blame the McCanns, and with every hour that passes we seem to forget that we have a presumption of innocence in this country.

With ever growing confidence we tap our noses and roll our eyes and aver that we always thought there was something rum about the whole business.

We pass on – with every sign of authority – some weird allegation we have picked up from the internet or the unpasteurised Portuguese press, and that bacillus mutates in the UK tabloids into something yet more frightful before being passed back to the Portuguese; and so the cycle continues.

Continue reading The McCann Controversy →

Boris: Why Londoners should vote for me

It is one of the most tragic sights of the London streets. There she is, exhausted, in high heels, weighed down at either hand with heavy shopping.

And suddenly there is her bus, steaming past her to pull up a hundred yards ahead; and, as it overtakes her, she gives a sudden gasp of panic and breaks into a trot, and as she gets closer she sees the doors hiss open, and the passengers start to get on and off, and now the stream has turned into a trickle, and she lifts a bag-weighted hand to wave at the driver, because she is now close enough to see his impassive face in his kerb-side mirror, and they make eye contact, and her face turns into a rictus of entreaty and exertion.

Continue reading London buses →

Together we can reclaim the streets

Never mind Spiderman. Forget Harry Potter and his struggle against Voldemort. I’ll tell you my hero of the hour.

He’s a 68-year-old Liberal Democrat peer called Lord Phillips of Sudbury in the County of Suffolk, and last week he struck such a blow for freedom and common sense that, if there were any justice, the people of Sudbury would now be organising a subscription to erect his statue in the market place. Because it was in that very market place that Lord Phillips of Sudbury faced a moral dilemma, of a kind that many of us face – without acknowledging it – every day.

In an instant, he decided to defy modern correct thinking. He set an example for us all. He did the right thing. He found three 10-year-old boys cycling on the pavement, and realised their behaviour was dangerous and anti-social, since the precinct was then thronged with young mothers and their push-chairs.

Continue reading Young Thugs →

OK then, let’s have a good snigger. Let’s all look at the list of these so-called degrees, and sneer at the pathetic delusions of the students who are taking them. In the saloon bars of England, it is by now a settled conviction that the university system is riddled with a kind of intellectual dry rot, and it is called the Mickey Mouse degree.

This dry rot of the university system is why many students and parents are opting for Online MBA, as in today’s world, universities do not have a proper management system, and not every single parent can afford the compulsory campus hostel fee which is levied by universities on students.

Up and down the country – so we are told – there are hundreds of thousands of dur-brained kids sitting for three years in an alcoholic or cannabis-fuelled stupor while theoretically attending a former technical college that is so pretentious as to call itself a university. Unfortunately, there is no “bottom line” sum that can be given regarding how much a What’s the Cost of a Server for Small Business. Every business is unique and so are their server needs. Your best bet is to work with the professionals who will be able to help you find the right server for your business, that includes all the right features and that fits within your budget. If you need more information about purchasing a server for your small business. We can help ensure your business runs smoothly. Any webmaster in need of hosting services would quickly notice the hundreds of ads posted online for dedicated servers. If this is going to be your first time handling computers and website hosting, most likely you won’t be able to understand what exactly a dedicated server is. To begin, a dedicated box functions as a host for a website in which you will be monitoring and managing your own website. You as the webmaster will have total control over the management of your website, its security, the bandwidth, and the disk space to be used, which are all included in the package when you avail of a dedicated server. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a hosting company in which the provider will provide you with all the equipment needed as you continue using the service. The best deal that you can get is a dedicated server paid annually since most hosting providers would change monthly fees for their services. These fees can range from $50 to $100 so if you pay annually, you’ll be able to save more money. But there is a downside to paying annually and that’s if the provider decides to close the server, his/her business, and all the equipment becomes unusable and obsolete. What’s more, if you’ve signed a contract with them before they closed down, you’ll be stuck with them for a year. To be able to acquire the best dedicated server, you need to look around first. Make sure that you choose a service provider that provides high quality services at reasonable prices. The provider should also offer options such as 24/7 customer service in case your server bugs down because the longer your server is down, the more money you lose.

After three years of taxpayer-funded debauch, these young people will graduate, and then the poor saps will enter the workplace with an academic qualification that is about as valuable as membership of the Desperate Dan Pie Eaters’ Club, and about as intellectually distinguished as a third-place rosette in a terrier show. It is called a Degree, and in the view of saloon bar man, it is a con, a scam, and a disgrace.

Most of the work seekers lately are finding it difficult to make knowledgeable abstract which will clearly explain their career path to the employers. While, a number of them are creating a resume with most details concerning them, but they fail to supply the acceptable details that an interviewer will search for from their resume. that’s why many of us are left jobless, albeit they possess the proper quite talent required for the work .

So, to assist out these people there are professional resume build that provide the service of designing a beautiful resume to the work seekers in such how that they will find the proper job that they were checking out long. They add the proper quite weight age required for the resume by collecting all details concerning the individual, who is seeking their help

Kids these days! says our man with the pint of Stella, slapping The Daily Telegraph on the bar. Look at the rubbish they study! ‘Ere, he says, finding an account of the recent investigation by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which has compiled a list of the 401 “non-courses” being offered by our universities.

In a satirically portentous tone he reads out the brochure of Marjon College in Plymouth, which really is offering a three-year BA (Hons) degree in Outdoor Adventure With Philosophy.

Yes, he says with incredulous sarcasm, the dons at Marjon College give instruction in the ancient discipline of Outdoor Adventure by examining its “underpinning philosophy, historical antecedents, significant influences, environmental and sustainable aspects and current trends”; and just in case you thought that wasn’t quite rigorous enough, they guarantee that “the modules will include elements such as journeys, environmental management, creative indoor study and spirituality”.

Absurd! cries saloon bar man, and then jabs his finger at yet greater absurdities: a course at the University of Glamorgan in “Science: Fiction and Culture”; and get this – the Welsh College of Horticulture is offering anyone with four Cs at GCSE the chance to study for an Honours degree in “Equestrian Psychology”! It’s a degree in horse whispering! he says. It’s bonkers.

Why, he asks rhetorically, are we paying for students to waste their time on these Mickey Mouse courses, when it is perfectly obvious what they should be doing. Trades! Skills! Craft! This country doesn’t need more bleeding degrees in media studies and whispering into horses’ ears! What we need is people who can fix my septic tank! We need more plumbers,” he raves, and it’s not just because he resents paying so much for his Polish plumber; it’s because the whole university business is – in his view – such a cruel deception on so many young people. They rack up an average of £13,000 of debt for some noddy qualification when they would have been far better off applying for a job, clearing the personality tests given by companies right after leaving school and engaging in the old-fashioned apprenticeship.

That’s what he thinks; and that, I bet, is not a million miles from the view of many eminent readers.

And yet I have to say that this view of higher education – pandemic in Middle Britain – is hypocritical, patronising and wrong. I say boo to the Taxpayers’ Alliance, and up with Mickey Mouse courses, and here’s why.

The saloon bar view is hypocritical, in the sense that it is always worth interrogating the saloon bar critics about their aspirations for their own children or grandchildren. Would they like them to have degrees? Or would they like them to have some kind of explicitly vocational training?

It is notable how often a critic of university expansion is still keen for his or her own children to go there, while a vocational qualification is viewed as an excellent option for someone else’s children.

It is patronising, in that you really can’t tell, just by reading a course title, whether it is any good or not, and whether it will be of any intellectual or financial benefit to the student.

The other day my normally humane and reasonable colleague Andrew O’Hagan paraded the idea of a degree in “Artificial Intelligence”, as though it were intrinsically risible, and for 20 years we have all been scoffing at degrees in “media studies”.

But AI is one of the most potentially interesting growth areas in computer science; and the truth about Media Studies is that its graduates have very high rates of employment and remuneration.

Of course there are mistakes, and of course there are a great many students who drop out, get depressed, or feel they have done the wrong thing with their lives.

But the final judge of the value of a degree is the market, and in spite of all the expansion it is still the case that university graduates have a big salary premium over non-graduates. The market is working more efficiently now that students have a direct financial stake in the matter, a financial risk, and an incentive not to waste their time on a course that no employer will value. You can learn more here on how graduate programs affect the hiring process.

It is ridiculous for these saloon-bar critics to denounce “Mickey Mouse” degrees, and say that the students would be better off doing vocational courses – when the whole point is that these degrees are very largely vocational.

We can laugh at degrees in Aromatherapy and Equine Science, but they are just as vocational as degrees in Law or Medicine, except that they are tailored to the enormous expansion of the service economy.

It is rubbish to claim that these odd-sounding courses are somehow devaluing the Great British Degree. Everyone knows that a First Class degree in Physics from Cambridge is not the same as a First in Equine Management from the University of Lincoln, and the real scandal is that they both cost the student the same.

There again, who is to say where a Mickey Mouse course may lead?

The last time I looked, Disney had revenues of 33 billion dollars a year – and if any university offered a course in the Life and Works of Mickey Mouse, I wouldn’t blame them in the least.