Society

Poor, dear, awkward George Osborne. Just when he seems to be doing things right — the economy, for instance — he gets something wrong. Very wrong. In The Spectator this week, James Forsyth reveals that, at Matthew Freud’s now notorious 50th birthday bash, when Bono and Bob Geldof sang a duet, Osborne insisted on whipping out his mobile telephone and filming the performance. Just what the Chancellor was doing there is one question. But if this were a 15- year-old and not, er, the Chancellor, his Bono-worship might be endearing. Perhaps the proper response is one of pity. But politicos are not a forgiving bunch. As James puts it, Osborne’s “act of

Allegations that Nigella Lawson used cocaine and prescription drugs on a habitual basis have emerged in court today after the trial judge lifted a reporting restriction. Lawson’s former personal assistants Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo are accused of fraud by Charles Saatchi, Lawson’s former husband. The court heard, in pre-trial hearings, evidence for the defence which apparently shows that Saatchi accepts the Grillo sisters’ argument that Lawson had allowed them to spend more than £300,000 on the proviso that they did not divulge details of her drug use to him. The judge read out part of an email that Saatchi wrote during the prelude to the trial: ‘Of course now the Grillos will get off on the basis that you were so

The Met Police took 166 of London’s traffic junctions hostage this morning. After a recent spate of cycling fatalities across the capital, a ‘major road safety operation’ kicked off today, with 2,500 police officers on the streets ‘making busy London junctions safer’. Codenamed Operation Safeway, the Met are watching for anyone committing an offence on the road. In reality, the Bobbies appeared to be targeting cyclists jumping red lights, absorbed in their music and generally misbehaving on the road: Boris Johnson has acknowledged there is much to be done to make London safer for cyclists, especially as more and more people are taking up two-wheeled commuting. But is ‘handing advisory

Unfortunate timing. In the Sunday Telegraph today is an article by Gyles Brandreth eulogising the crossword; we are approaching its 100th anniversary. Yes, all well and good. But travel to The Telegraph crossword site and this is what you will see: Sorry we’re experiencing some technical problems and we’re working to try and fix them. Please try back again soon. That message has been up since Friday. I pay forty quid a year for the pleasure of doing Telegraph crosswords online. I realise that this isn’t a tragedy on the scale of Darfur, or that cyclone which hit the Philippines. It’s just annoying. I can’t start a day without doing

It is correct that I have long thought Rupert Murdoch history’s most formidable media proprietor, by his unique combination of bold vision, thorough execution and unlimited energy and ambition. It is also correct that our 20 years of cordial relations lapsed when his media group, allegedly at his direction, fell to the most uniform and vituperative defamation of me when my legal travails arose, to which I replied in robust strictures as best I could. But in a response to a question, in Australia, last year, he was quoted as saying that he did not believe that I had committed crimes, but was betrayed by a dishonest associate. When asked

Regardless of your views on social housing, you’d have to admit there are far more obvious, and natural, targets for people to choose to protest against rising rent levels in London and elsewhere. So it’s with a strong sense of irony that I find myself defending the sector against accusations that have been levelled at us during the course of the last week. As mentioned in this blog, Genesis is part of a group of housing associations known collectively as the G15. Between us we’re responsible for around a quarter of all the new homes that are being built in the capital. Yes, that’s right: social landlords are stepping up