Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Spectator and The Times.
People who buy shares in a company just because its share price is already rising are liable to be made fools of. People who puff the future prospects of the United Kingdom Independence party just because those prospects are better now than they were a year ago may be making a similar mistake. I’ve enjoyed
David Aaronovitch writes for the Guardian. He has suggested (‘Why do they hate Blair so much?’, 18 May) that opposition to Tony Blair has driven some of us crazy. I fear Mr Aaronovitch is right, and will try to explain why. His argument is straightforward and, though directed more to Mr Blair’s critics on the
Last Sunday I collected a waistcoat made from my own pet. From the same source came a hat, gloves, scarf, and a teddy bear wearing a little waistcoat of its own, though (saucily) no trousers. A lady called Chan Brown, from Chesterfield, has organised this for me. I keep llamas, and she spins. She belongs
New South Wales The name of the station seemed to ring a bell. An hour or so south of Sydney, and through the window of my double-decker Australian railway carriage, I could read the sign ‘Thirroul’. Wasn’t that the little seaside town where D.H. Lawrence stayed with his wife, Frieda, and where he began his
‘Two quick sprays to your tongue release the natural energy you need to find inner calm again. Restoring your centre and focus, even after you’ve reached the end of your tether. With the natural formula created by Dr Bach, in a bottle sized to fit any handbag, Rescue Remedy is the calming exercise you can
Those awful bombs in Madrid rather overshadowed a less sensational little story unfolding during the Spanish general election just passed. My brother-in-law stood for the office of senator on an anti-bullfighting ticket, and though he stood no chance of winning and never expected to, he did exceptionally well. Here I must pause. I do not
After writing this I shall set out for Iraq. The Times is sending me there, I am enormously lucky to go, and hope to see as much as possible in the ten short days of my trip. The prospect has concentrated my mind on something which has vexed me and others who opposed the US–British
Inside Baghdad there is another Baghdad. It is called the Green Zone and my Times colleague Richard Beeston wrote about it in The Spectator a few weeks ago. I visited the Green Zone last month. This was virtual reality. Outside lies a dirty and dangerous country. Within, you encounter a magic park where newly planted
It may occasionally be necessary to visit Marbella. We may have friends there and friends can be insistent. Nor is there anything wrong with the place if that’s the kind of thing you like. Offered a choice between Marbella and Margate, many of us would opt unhesitatingly for the smell of fried squid, young wine
The obvious can be so obvious that we discount it, supposing that other people must have thought of it already. There is an obvious candidate for chairman of the BBC governors. I have no idea whether he is going for it, but if not then he should be and people should be telling him so.
Very occasionally in the life of a nation comes the need for a short period of dictatorship. Not for major reform: democracy can easily manage historic change. No, it’s the little things which dictators do so well. General Franco, for example, rationalised Spanish spelling. In the sorting out of obstinate silliness, democrats lose heart and
Bradford is to demolish huge swaths of its own centre. Acres of hateful Sixties concrete are to be pulverised in the year ahead, according to a tiny article in the Guardian this week. Much of Broadway, Cheapside and Petergate are to be bulldozed as part of the city’s programme of ‘reinventing’ its core. An architect,
Should liberal internationalists feel irritated when neoconservative hawks piggyback on to the successes of our own approach, and take the credit for themselves? No, we should feel satisfied that they want to, for it is a kind of repentance. Their tantrums past and the damage obvious, we can be pretty confident that they will not
Margaret Thatcher was right and Thabo Mbeki is right. British-led sanctions against a renegade regime in Central Africa — be it Ian Smith’s when the country was called Rhodesia, or Robert Mugabe’s when it had been renamed Zimbabwe — are a counterproductive response to an unacceptable government. My family and I lived in Rhodesia from
How incredible it is,’ wrote Stephen Glover in last week’s Spectator’s Media studies, ‘and how depressing,’ that Richard Desmond might buy the Telegraph. He went on to paint a most unflattering picture of the minor media magnate, his main complaint being that Mr Desmond is a pornographer because he owns publications that print pornography. I
Swimmers, scanning the sea for signs of danger, look beyond what breaks the surface. It is by the slight but unexpected troubling of the waters that hidden peril is often best located. Where something jagged lurks beneath or where two currents collide, a sudden agitated choppiness in a small patch of sea may tell us
Limpopo Province, South Africa Ottoshoek means ‘Otto’s corner’ or perhaps more colloquially ‘Otto’s place’ in Afrikaans. But this cabin in the Soutpansberg mountains is not so much a den as a lookout. Perched on the very edge of a green, rocky ridge, it overlooks the bushveld plain at the range’s feet, stretching grey-brown to the
The view, I thought, appeared much as it would to a young barnacle goose. I was diving out of a blustery, dove-grey sky, my wing tips tipping cloud. Far below I could see the browns and greens, the heather and grass, of a big, low-lying Hebridean island. To the east lay the Scottish mainland. From
It was was pure coincidence that The Spectator should have landed itself with our own space correspondent — me — as chance witness to the launch of Europe’s first trip to the Moon last Sunday morning. I was visiting an old friend who now works in IT support at the European Space Agency’s headquarters in
A charge should be laid at the door of those who urged America onward into Iraq this year, and it should come not from pacifists, United Nations groupies or Uncle Sam-baiters, but from those on the Right who think that a great power does have special responsibilities, including – sometimes – a responsibility to intervene.