The phrase “community consultation” has a warm and friendly feel to it. Politicians of all parties agree that local communities represent all that is good, noble and unsung about modern Britain. As for consultation, it is of course an essential...
Read moreFor the first and I very much hope the last time, I share a problem with the celebrity hardman Vinnie Jones. We have both recently laid ourselves open to the charge of what is now known as "ableism". Jones was...
Read moreThis week I spent a day in prison, thanks to the good offices of the writers’ organization, English PEN. I was part of an ongoing programme aimed to get prisoners talking about their own writing and reading with professional authors....
Read moreIn the great establishment vs the people clash which is developing around the fate and future of Jon Venables, there will be only one winner. Ministers will argue the letter of the law, but then that is what they did...
Read moreWhen farmers involved in large-scale developments protest tender concern for animal welfare, it is prudent to assume that they are up to something. When they make promises of bringing money into the community, one should become even more wary. In...
Read moreThere are few professions quite as innately snobbish as publishing. In the world of books, two areas of potential snootiness, the commercial and the literary, combine to create a feudal hierarchy of brutal divisiveness. The system flourishes from generation...
Read moreHere is an idea for one of the country's many courses in creative writing or broadcasting. To illustrate the terrible, corrupting effect of cliquishness and publicity on talent, students would be asked to analyse the careers and cuttings of a...
Read moreOn Radio Two’s Jeremy Vine Show today, there was, according to the Eastern Daily Press online report, a “heated debate” about Tesco, whose plan to bring a store to the centre of Sheringham was being discussed this morning by North...
Read moreA rare moment of prescience. In Friday’s Independent, I released a brief but heartfelt cry of anguish about the narcissistic doings of Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, Anna Ford, Clive James and any other ageing literati who belonged to an informal...
Read moreIt has been a hot, exciting month for those who get a thrill out of sex and punishment – that is, it seems, much of the British public and almost all of its media. There may have been natural disasters,...
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