Since being appointed Home Secretary, Sajid Javid has taken a series of bold and overdue decisions. On immigration, he understood that most people would like skilled doctors and nurses to come and work for the National Health Service, so he removed them from the cap that Theresa May had imposed on skilled workers coming to
Home Mark Carney kindly said he would stay on as governor of the Bank of England if it helped the government ‘smooth’ the Brexit transition. Lord King of Lothbury, Mervyn King, a former governor of the Bank of England, said that ‘incompetent’ preparation for Brexit had left Britain without a credible bargaining position. Paul Pester
I begin my 87-day reading tour of the US, UK and Canada on a BA flight that will take me to Edinburgh for the book festival. I catch up on my Ab Fab and Peppa Pig and eat some back bacon. I land around 10 p.m. and take a walk through the city. I love
The ex-leader of the SNP, Alex ‘Five Pensions’ Salmond, has scrounged nearly £100,000 from the people to help him in an impending legal case. How shameless can you get? In the ancient world, it was commonplace for the wealthy to massage their reputations by magnanimous public gestures — providing the cash to build a library
Origins of Wonga The payday lender Wonga has gone into administration. How did ‘wonga’ come to be used as slang for money? — The term is believed to have derived from the Romany word ‘wangar’ which, although used as a term for money, in fact means ‘coal’. This in turn has Indo-Iranian origins. — In
Chinese burn Sir: Your leading article last week ended up saying ‘It is unrealistic to expect that we can achieve what China has in Africa over the past decade.’ If we were to have done that, I for one would wish to resign my British nationality. What they have done there for the past 30
