Minaret ban: Switzerland is no more racist than anywhere else
I KNOW where Christoph Blocher lives. The billionaire leader of the Schweizerische Volkspartei owns a substantial property – it would probably be fair to call it a castle – that can clearly be seen from the cable car linking Rhäzüns to Feldis, the alpine village where my mother’s ashes have been reburied next to those [...]
Faith schools: welcome to Hizb ut Tahrir Junior High
WHAT’S to stop a bunch of North London Trot parents scraping two million quid together and sponsoring a secondary school with, as the jargon has it, a distinctive ethos? I have asked this question, semi-seriously, of people with a better understanding of New Labour educational policy than I can personally claim. As far as they [...]
Walker Review: £1m a year is enough for anybody
WELL over 1,000 people in the City being paid more than £1m a year, according to Sir David Walker, the head of the government-commissioned inquiry into the corporate governance of banks. Some 22 directors of FTSE-100 companies get that much in terms of basic salary alone. Throw in bonuses, share options and other perks, and [...]
Let’s hear for the Leninist revival
COMMUNISM is suddenly in danger of becoming fashionable again, with a whole new layer of young people finding themselves attracted to Leninist ideas. That’s the kind of claim I usually discount on sight, after having heard it so often advanced by far left activists desperate to disavow the readily-visible decline in the membership of their [...]
Chilcot Inquiry: shoot first, ask questions later
THE most sensible time to ponder reasons for going to war is surely prior to the commencement of hostilities, and not six years after the fighting finishes. Whatever the outcome of Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the whys are wherefores of the occupation of Iraq, the entire exercise can only ever be about as useful [...]
Jean Charles de Menezes: price of a life
ONE three year old boy strikes another 11 times with a metal bar, leaving the victim toddler covered in blood and in need of stitches. Should the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority pay out? Yes, the Tribunals Service ruled earlier this month, and probably rightly, too. Perhaps I should reconsider the forgiveness I have since freely [...]
Baroness Ashton highlights EU democratic deficit
MY SOLE brush with publicly-funded office was the three terms I spent as external affairs vice president of City of London Polytechnic in 1983-84. But even experience that gives me one more democratic mandate than Baroness Ashton of Upholland has ever enjoyed. Several newspapers this morning make much of the fact that the EU’s new [...]
The break-up of Bosnia
THEY found another mass grave outside Srebrenica this week. But that’s not a particularly unusual event; some 70 such makeshift cemeteries have come to light since the massacre of thousands of Muslim men and boys by Serb irredentists in July 1995. The Balkans is famously a part of the world where history impacts on the [...]
God’s work: Goldman Sachs vs Church of England
WHEN it comes to deciding the will of God, who you gonna call: Goldman Sachs chief exec Lloyd Blankfein, or archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams? I only ask because both of these men have recently offered their verdicts on the forces of Mammon, with the £41m a year Big Swinging Dick getting his retaliation in [...]
Respect: dead end for the serious left
A NUMBER of blogs today carry reports of the Respect conference in Birmingham on Saturday, which seems to mark what even previously unquestioningly loyal supporters of that organisation are describing as a shift to the right. In one apparently bad-tempered debate, those calling for an orientation to the ‘son of No2EU’ general election challenge were [...]
