The Joint Committee on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill could have saved itself a lot of bother if, instead of producing a lengthy report, it had simply quoted the words of Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, in the House of Lords in 1641: ‘When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary
Home The British economy went back into recession, shrinking by 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, following a contraction of 0.3 per cent in the last quarter of 2011. Government debt rose by £117 million over last year’s figure, to £1,022.5 billion, equivalent to 66 per cent of GDP. George Osborne, the
No great April Fool’s Day spoof this year. The best ever was in Panorama on 1 April 1957. I was mildly connected with it — I was on the Panorama production team that devised it, though I did not think of it or produce it. It was a film of the spaghetti harvest in Italy.
The trial of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik might have met with Plato’s approval — for the time being. In his last work Laws, Plato provided a detailed description of the vision that would inform Magnesia, his unchanging, perfect utopia, covering everything from size, population, occupations and education to religion, laws and government. In
Marathon mortalities A 30-year-old hairdresser collapsed and died in the final mile of the London marathon, echoing the alleged fate of the world’s original marathon runner, Pheidippides, who according to legend ran 26 miles to Athens to announce victory in the Battle of Marathon in 490 bc before collapsing and dying. — A paper published
Time-honoured paradox Sir: Tristram Hunt’s argument (‘Gove’s Paradox’, 21 April) seems convincing. At first glance, economic liberalism does appear at odds with social conservatism. However, one cannot exist without the other, as Thomas Hobbes realised over 300 years ago. Without a social contract based upon shared values and common interests, anarchy would ensue, making it
