Anyone who has recently bought a house next to a good school — they typically command a £20,000 premium — has good reason to loathe Michael Gove. Anyone who has recently bought a house next to a good school — they typically command a £20,000 premium — has good reason to loathe Michael Gove. The
How the paparazzi must have groaned about Prince William’s low-key stag do, which took place in secret last weekend. Last weekend, a relatively peaceful anti-cuts march through the capital was infiltrated by a small number of criminals armed with crowbars and intent on destruction. Their handiwork defined the march. All it took were a few
Every time George Osborne has been in serious trouble, he has produced a tax cut — and it has worked perfectly. Osborne can go further Every time George Osborne has been in serious trouble, he has produced a tax cut — and it has worked perfectly. He did it again in his budget, and the
The extraordinary images from Japan over the past week evoke not only sympathy but awe. The damage wreaked by the natural disasters, in both human and economic terms, has been colossal. Entire communities have been reduced to little more than shattered glass and driftwood. The death toll is already well into the thousands, with more
Not even a month ago, it looked as though Colonel Gaddafi was going the way of Mubarak and Ben Ali — a bloodier process, certainly, but a seemingly irreversible one. Gaddafi’s revenge Not even a month ago, it looked as though Colonel Gaddafi was going the way of Mubarak and Ben Ali — a bloodier
Fostering liberty If David Cameron were looking for a couple to symbolise the spirit of his Big Society, Eunice and Owen Johns of Derby would be ideal. At an age when many are settling down to retirement, they want nothing more than to carry on fostering, taking in troubled and abandoned children in return for
To turn an army on one’s own people is bad enough. But to call in foreign mercenaries, as Colonel Gaddafi did this week in Libya, is a rare form of savagery, one which offers a chilling glimpse into the real nature of his dictatorship. He should be stopped. We have heard this week the familiar
In Britain, surging grocery prices are painful, but not life-threatening. For much of the rest of the world, by contrast, food prices are a matter of life or death. China, the world’s largest wheat producer, is suffering a severe winter drought which looks likely to devastate this year’s harvest. It is setting aside a billion
It is a curious fact about modern Britain that while we romanticise marriage and stable families as never before, our government still bribes us to split up. There has been much nonsense talked this week of the perils of introducing a ‘marriage bias’ into the tax system. But the truth is that a distinct and
Does it matter if prisoners are allowed to vote or not? Save for in the odd council ward in Brixton or on Dartmoor, some 84,000 prisoners — among an electorate of 46 million — are unlikely to have a material effect on the outcome of British elections. Does it matter if prisoners are allowed to
David Cameron has said he is determined not to lead a cuts-only coalition. He has spoken about promoting entrepreneurship, rightly hailing small businesses as the engine of Britain’s economic recovery. At the last Tory party conference, he paid homage to ‘the doers and the grafters, the inventors and the entrepreneurs’. He was fully behind these
The plot thickens It is as if we are stuck in a hideous loop. The plot thickens It is as if we are stuck in a hideous loop. Every few months, it seems, Tony Blair is once again hauled up to give evidence to the never-ending Iraq inquiry. Each time he is dragged from a
When George Osborne decided to raise VAT, more months ago than he will admit, he did not imagine that he would be compounding the worst inflation in Western Europe. Prices are currently falling in Ireland, flat in Germany and rising only slightly throughout the rest of the Eurozone and America. But in Britain, inflation is
Every day of this new year, some 200,000 people are likely to be lifted out of what the United Nations defines as extreme poverty: living on $1.25 a day or less. Every day of this new year, some 200,000 people are likely to be lifted out of what the United Nations defines as extreme poverty:
So much has happened since the general election that it is hard to press events into a meaningful pattern. The first coalition since the second world war, the deepest cuts since the 1970s, our military’s budget slashed, and the extraordinary (if predictable) crisis in the eurozone. The coalition has begun with remarkable energy and purpose.
For children who have been naughty this year, Simon & Schuster have just produced the perfect punitive Christmas present: a new book from Gordon Brown, Beyond the Crash. It would be a mistake to write off our former prime minister’s musings on the financial crisis as an irrelevance, to be read only by Tories with
We have heard surprisingly little about the climate change jamboree currently underway in Cancun. Before last year’s Copenhagen summit, there was much hullaballoo. Gordon Brown told us that we had ‘fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next 50 years’. Yet he and 100 of his political counterparts could not stop the
If William Beveridge were commissioned to write another report into Britain’s social ills, he would find that two of his ‘giant evils’ — ignorance and idleness — still stalk and shame Britain. If William Beveridge were commissioned to write another report into Britain’s social ills, he would find that two of his ‘giant evils’ —
The royal family has a gift for laying on a wedding just when the nation’s spirits most need lifting. The Queen’s marriage to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1947 helped to rejuvenate a nation exhausted by war and demoralised by rationing. The wedding of Princess Anne to Mark Phillips in 1973 aroused extraordinary excitement in
Various political attempts to institute a national British day have failed, perhaps because Britain already has one. It is Armistice Day, and it is marked not by the waving of flags, or by the recitation of a national creed, but by keeping a silence in memory of those who sacrificed their lives for our country.