I was surprised to hear about Chris Smith. His revelation in last Sunday’s papers that he had been HIV-positive for the past 17 years was news to many of his friends. Sombre, I suppose, but in a loose-tongued age it is satisfying to find a really well-kept secret, and one salutes Chris (as I saluted
The main reason that Charles Clarke has now decided to impose powers of house arrest upon the British people is ‘human rights’. Even this authoritarian government would not have gone so far without the decision of the Law Lords before Christmas in the matter of the 11 foreign suspected terrorists held, without normal trial, at
To read the mind of Rupert Murdoch is difficult and not necessarily pleasant — difficult because he is cleverer than almost any other publisher who has ever lived, and not necessarily pleasant because he is nearly always planning to do someone down. But students of the man generally agree that the only thing that drives
