Nigel Farage says that nurses working for the NHS should be able to speak English. I agree. What a pity that this is about the most daringly controversial criticism of the NHS we’re likely to hear from almost any politician,
I wonder how many of the thousands of people petitioning for Convicted Rapist Ched Evans not to be signed by Oldham Athletic Football Club are remotely interested in football, let alone the prospects of Oldham Athletic Football Club. My guess
Barely has the year begun and already the battle lines have been drawn with the Enemy plain in view. Either you’re on the side of Katie Hopkins – in which case you’re one of the good guys who, seventy-five years
January Encouraged by its success in banning incandescent lightbulbs, powerful vacuum cleaners, incorrectly shaped fruit, effective pesticides, minty cigarettes etc, the European Commission decides to ban Euthymol toothpaste, metal detectors, heated handlebars on motorcycles, petrol-driven lawnmowers, Meerschaum pipes, cocktail umbrellas,
Quite the stupidest “news” story I saw over Christmas was the one about how Winston Churchill was apparently urged in a letter by one of his future in-laws not to convert to Islam. When I started out in journalism in
The Waffen SS were rubbish soldiers Though generally held to be the most feared and effective fighting troops of the Second World War, the Waffen SS were not averse to making elementary mistakes. In 1945, for example, as the Allied
And up until now now Pope Francis had been doing so well: pious, popular, a scourge of incompetence and corruption, a champion of the poor…. But unfortunately, 2015 looks like the year he’s going to blow it all by casting
Merry Christmas, everybody. I haven’t opened all my presents yet. But here’s what I’m hoping for by the end of the day. (Sorry for the absence of explanatory links. But it’s Christmas and I can’t be arsed). 1. Global warming
Christmas has come a couple of days early for climate sceptics, in what may well prove to be one of the biggest blows to the Global Warming religion since Climategate. This time the pillar of green faith which has been
Billionaire oil-trader-turned-green-evangelist Tom Steyer has made a very expensive discovery: at the cost of $4.5 million from his own pockets, he has learned that the Koch Brothers just aren’t evil enough, even for progressives, any more. Traditionally, the Koch Brothers
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds (RSPB) has scored another triumph in its ongoing mission to eradicate Britain’s avian species. A wind farm in Scotland, which the RSPB was instrumental in easing through the planning process ten years
Almost unquestionably the greatest film ever made – well, definitely a lot funnier than Citizen Kane, Battleship Potemkin or The Seventh Seal – is Team America. I like its can-do all-American spirit. I like the puppet sex scenes. I like
“I regret the anxiety caused to those soldiers by the delay in the same way I regret the anxiety caused to the families of the deceased.” If you want the perfect example of the moral-relativist cancer which is eating away
#illridewithyou is still trending on Twitter. So it would appear that the most important take-home message on social media about yesterday’s siege at the Lindt cafe in Sydney is not the fact that two innocent people – barrister Katrina Dawson
The Peruvian government is seeking criminal charges against the Greenpeace activists who damaged one of the country’s two greatest heritage sites – the Nazca Lines. This is excellent news. Not for the Nazca Lines, obviously: the mysterious ancient desert geoglyphs
We don’t know how the Sydney siege is going to end yet but of one thing we can be pretty sure: the main concern of Australia’s national broadcaster ABC will not be the suffering and fear experienced by those innocent
Whenever I find my faith wavering in Nigel Farage and the UKIP project, all I have to do is open my morning newspaper to be reminded why they are both so very necessary. Yesterday’s Telegraph was a case in point
“I’m not here to defend torture” writes former CIA Director (2006 to 2009) Michael Hayden in today’s Telegraph. And I have no intention of doing so either. But I can’t be the only one who finds something a little disturbing
Claridge’s is one of London’s finest five-star hotels, popular with royals and aristocrats, film stars and rock stars. But if you’d tried taking afternoon tea there over the weekend, you would have had to run the gauntlet of a rather
The new head of the Girl Guides (or ‘Girl Scouts’ as they are known in the US) has boasted of the fact that she’s rubbish at cooking and said that if she were a girl joining the organisation today the
It was the culmination of an intense burst of campaigning by left-wing pressure groups Avaaz, Change.org, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, BugLife and the Environmental Justice Foundation which erupted from nowhere last year. One minute, no one had heard of
Barbra Streisand – or whoever it is that handles her social media – has been tweeting about the (immensely sound) incoming GOP chairman of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, Senator Jim Inhofe. Inhofe had fingered Streisand as a
This is the hottest year ever! It must be true because it says so in the Guardian. Preliminary estimates from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) found global average land and sea surface temperatures for the first 10 months of 2014
Which of these would you say is the more admirable black role model a) Baron (Herman) Ouseley, former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, holder of thirteen honorary degrees from the Universities of Edinburgh, Sheffield Hallam, Bradford, Leicester, Leeds
BBC Radio 4’s spoof game show I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is, by some margin, the funniest thing on the radio – as it has been, reliably, since it was first broadcast in 1972. The start date may offer
