Don’t you just love those socio-economic league tables which put Britain a miserable 25th, virtually down among the developing nations, while Scandinavian nations emerge on top? The first time I went to Denmark I wasn’t quite prepared for the frumpiness, so often had I seen its social democratic model depicted by left-leaning academics as a
The debate about P.G. Wodehouse’s wartime radio broadcasts from Nazi Germany has been raging for more than 60 years. It is re-ignited by Robert McCrum’s admirable new biography of the great writer. Most reviewers have taken the line that ‘Plum’s’ talks were inconsequential. Though sympathetic to his subject, Mr McCrum is a little sterner. ‘His
The Prime Minister has enjoined us to be ‘in complete solidarity with Russia and the Russian people’, and invites us to draw a parallel between the terrorist threat from al-Qa’eda and the threat posed by Chechen lunatics. I am not so sure about that. Is it not possible that if Osama bin Laden had never
With the Athens games out of way, the Boycott Beijing campaign is now in full swing, arguing that China’s lousy human rights record should disqualify it from holding the 2008 Olympics and imploring the West to repeat the snub which marred the Moscow games of 1980. Admittedly China isn’t the sort of country you would
The excesses of Lord Black, former proprietor of the Telegraph Group, which owns this magazine, are mind-boggling. Of course they have not yet been proven in a court of law, and Lord Black continues to deny the allegations in his characteristically orotund language. But the author of the 500-page report condemning Lord Black is Richard
The UK Independence Party, according to the manifesto which won it 12 seats in the recent European Parliament elections, ‘is the only party to support free and fair trade for a free country’. The document goes on to assert that the EU is preventing us trading with the rest of the world and that the
If only the assassination attempted 60 years ago last Tuesday had succeeded, we have heard all this week. But what was the conspirators’ idea of success? In particular, what did the awesome man whose sonorous name we have heard this week really believe? Colonel Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg was of his time and his
Whenever a new newspaper launches in any part of the world, a little voice inside one’s head cheers. Naturally that voice is all the louder when the paper is in one’s own country. So I rejoiced when I heard that a new daily title is under consideration in Northern Ireland. My enthusiasm was somewhat tempered,
Ever since he became editor of The Spectator, which must be about five years ago, Boris Johnson has been urging me to write a column about the Financial Times. It is a subject which seems to drive him towards apoplexy. As Boris sees it, the FT is run by leftist énarques whose hearts are very
Unlike British newspapers, the New York Times enjoys beating its breast. It recently published a lengthy ‘editor’s note’ which acknowledged that its coverage in the months before the invasion of Iraq ‘was not as rigorous as it should have been’. The paper conceded that ‘articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent
The government wants to find ways of helping us to lose weight. It could start by ceasing to shower farmers with subsidies to grow sugar. Remarkably, given the public money that is spent on telling us not to eat fattening foods, the EU gave European sugar producers 819 million euros worth of subsidy last year,
Ronald Reagan fascinated me from the moment he became governor of California in 1966. He was a right-winger who had won office. In those days right-wingers never won anything. Every office-holder or potential office-holder in every democracy — Labour, Tory, Democrat, Republican — seemed to be a liberal or a centrist. All the authorities said
At last: France is making a commitment to free trade. Unfortunately, it involves selling arms to China. President Chirac has ordered a review of the ban on arm sales to China imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. This would enable France to grab a share of the £2 billion-a-year market for military equipment
According to the Hollywood film The Day After Tomorrow, the failure of the world to confront global warming is going to result in the royal family being freeze-dried at the breakfast table at Balmoral and our cities drowned in raging tornadoes. Never mind that this scenario — based on the global-warming lobby’s latest hobby-horse, the
The sacking of Piers Morgan as editor of the Daily Mirror has been greeted with ululation from media commentators, former and existing editors and several newspapers. Piers, we are told by no less an authority than the legendary Harry Evans, was a great tabloid editor. My esteemed colleague Professor Roy Greenslade can barely be consoled.
The forthcoming referendum on the proposed EU constitution has led some to suggest that Britain gives up EU membership and returns to the European Free Trade Association (Efta), of which it was a member between 1960 and 1972 and which is still maintained by Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Get out of nannying, protectionist Europe,
Last weekend the Observer media page published a photograph of the Daily Telegraph news conference. It looks to me a pretty standard affair. The camera shows the back of the editor, Martin Newland, who is hunched over his desk and appears energetic and keen. There are eight other senior executives in the room, all of
The European Union’s social chapter has been so successful in suppressing economic growth in Europe that it is no surprise to find the US presidential candidate John Kerry seeking to emulate it. Not that he intends to saddle American businesses with more red tape, mind: he wants to try to strangle the booming Chinese economy
Are the Daily Mirror’s torture pictures fakes? Most of my friends, whether anti-war or pro-war, think that they probably are. Such is my own inclination. But let us for a moment try to see things from the point of view of Piers Morgan, the Mirror’s editor. Whatever fine words Nicholas Soames may declaim in the
Ten new members join the European Union on Saturday and thousands of economic migrants are queueing up at the borders, raring to go. I refer, of course, to Western European property investors hoping to make a killing on property markets in the East. While we have heard a lot of grim warnings in the press