The best way to control people, as any competent dictator will know, is to get them to police themselves. No citizen is more comprehensively cowed and disempowered than one who believes himself to be at the mercy of other ordinary...
Read moreChilling with the kids at the Latitude Festival this weekend, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Ben Bradshaw, looked extraordinarily relaxed for someone whose ministry had just dealt a hammer blow to musical expression in the UK....
Read moreIf only modern Britain were more like Wootton Bassett. That thought must have passed through many minds since the first press and TV accounts reported, a matter of weeks ago, how a small Wiltshire town has taken upon itself the...
Read moreThe soundtrack to our lives contains certain noises which exist primarily to reassure the more vulnerable citizens of middle Britain that old values and traditions live on. The shipping forecast, eager middle-class voices singing "Jerusalem" on the Last Night of...
Read moreThe Government's pledge to use the London Olympics as a way of encouraging lazy Britons to take exercise grows ever more ambitious. Last week, we heard that frisbee-throwing, baton-twirling and arm-wrestling would be eligible for government grants. Now a more...
Read moreHarry Patch, Henry Allingham: the very names of the last two survivors of the Great War have something square-shouldered, clear-eyed and honourable about them. What has been mourned over the past few days is not just the passing of two...
Read moreIt is time to celebrate a great British success story, exemplifying grace, dignity and humour when such things are in short supply. Politicians may be fleecing the system, BBC executives may be growing plump on public money, the Royal Family...
Read moreThere is a new attraction at Latitude, the London Literature Festival and other hip gatherings this summer. Eminent writers from The School of Life, the social enterprise specialising in thought and ideas set up last year by the popular author...
Read moreIn the glory days of L!ve TV, the red top-inspired television channel, a show called Topless Darts attracted a certain amount of attention. Its concept, half-naked women paying darts, was based on the simple idea that a combination of sport...
Read moreTwo authoritative reports published this week have confirmed, in forensic detail, how one section of the British public is routinely and systematically discriminated against. As a result, thousands are dying prematurely. Those who live are likely to work less, drink...
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