Telegraph Blogs

Supporters of EU membership keep warning that we might end up like Norway. Oslo, they tell us in scary voices, is ‘governed by fax’. Its leaders, apparently, are sitting by their fax machines waiting for the latest directives to flop through from Brussels. As a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), Norway has to… Read more

Justin Webb, one of the presenters of BBC Radio’s Today programme, has tweeted something true, unpalatable and – in the circumstances – rather brave in response to the Connecticut school shootings. “A real effort to reduce gun ownership in America would result in a rural/metro and north/south divide and something like a new civil war,”… Read more

The news coming out of Newtown, Connecticut is sickening. If reports are correct, a young man has killed a family member and 20 children at a school. It’s an act of animal savagery – yet it is also uniquely human. No animal would do this. According to Mother Jones, there have been at least 61… Read more

Barack Obama’s statement in response to the school massacre in Newton, Connecticut, was moving and presidential. I said as much on Twitter: Maybe a bit pious of me, but I’d just watched the video and that was how I felt. Anyway, the tweet provoked this response from the well-known British “libertarian” blogger Old Holborn: The… Read more

From Saturday’s paper – I’m filling in for Damian because he was writing this instead: Here’s a piece of news that got surprisingly little play this week: a multi-billion-dollar international organisation explicitly set up to make predictions got its first set of predictions nearly right. The reason its comparative obscurity is surprising is that the organisation… Read more

Everyone is entitled to their opinion I suppose, but Tim Congdon’s latest diatribe in Standpoint magazine against Sir Mervyn King as “the most disastrous governor in the Bank’s history” is, even for Tim, a trifle over the top. For starters, King certainly has quite a lot of competition. What about Montagu Norman, whose momentous and… Read more

Stephen Hawking and other scientific luminaries have called on David Cameron to formally pardon Alan Turing. The great mathematician was convicted of homosexuality (or “gross indecency”, as the statute books had it) in 1952, and killed himself with poison two years later. A few things are worth noting. First, there’s no doubt that Turing was… Read more

Lord Justice Leveson has been in Australia giving the locals his tuppeny ha’penny’s worth on press regulation. Given how gagmakingly PC they are over there these days, I’m sure they lapped up every word. The bits that most interested me were his views on the differences between the print media (or as Richard North calls… Read more

The kings of the ancient Maya, gorgeously bedecked in multicoloured plumage, were carried on litters along avenues carved out of the Central American jungle towards temples of rare and sinister beauty. Nothing in the ancient Americas can rival the architecture of the Classic Maya, a civilisation that combined baroque delight in colour and design with… Read more

Ed Miliband’s speech on cultural diversity today has been rightly lauded. It was nuanced, intelligent and well crafted. It was also one of the most Right-wing speeches on immigration ever delivered by a Labour leader. Miliband took great care to tick all the appropriate liberal boxes. NHS staff: check. The Olympics: check. Lusty whacks for… Read more

I first got into re-enactment in 2001, when I took my family to see the 350th Anniversary re-enactment of the Battle of Worcester. We had only recently moved to Worcester and I had become interested in the city’s historical importance as the location of the first and last battles of the English Civil War. Against… Read more

It is no surprise that girls in Pakistan have been protesting against the renaming of their schools in honour of Malala Yousafzai, the brave teenager who survived a Taliban assassination attempt. Of course, there is nothing wrong with honouring such a talented and articulate campaigner for girls education. She should be honoured. But there is… Read more

Here’s a good news story that warmed the cockles of my heart as I wolfed down my breakfast of chocolate croissant with extra-large latte – obesity is now more of a problem than starvation. As we report: With the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, eating too much is now a more serious risk to the health… Read more

Two statistics leapt at me from the census, and both of them made me optimistic – not a bad frame of mind in which to approach the year’s end. The first showed the rise in the number of mixed-race Britons. Really, this is a case of data confirming what one’s eyes had already shown: love,… Read more

Joe Root has stolen my childhood. It’s taken 35 years, but English cricket’s newest protégé has taken my boyhood dreams, stuffed them into his kit bag, and made good his escape. Watching Root stride out to the wicket in Nagpur yesterday, a nation’s hopes resting on his slender shoulders, it finally dawned on me. I… Read more

So the drugs don’t work? Tolkien appeared to think they do. As Rosamund Urwin noted in yesterday’s Evening Standard, in the film of the Hobbit the anti-drugs viewpoint is held by the wizard Saruman. At one point, he says of Radagast that “mushrooms have addled his brain”. As those familiar with The Lord Of The… Read more

It is possible both to agree and disagree with this piece by Adam Posen for the Peterson Institute, and accompanying article in Prospect magazine. The former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee – largely silent on the Government’s fiscal policies while doing his time on the MPC, even though I think we… Read more

“Diversity experts” have instructed the BBC to show more gays in its broadcasting – especially in children’s programmes and news. The report, commissioned by the BBC, found that gays were “still relatively invisible” in the media.  The corporation should use children’s programming to help “familiarise audiences through incidental portrayal from an early age” as well as validating… Read more

The Census results show what an uphill struggle Conservatives face in the next fear years, as this ConHome piece points out. Take the decline of marriage and the increasing number of single people – really bad news for the Tory party. During the recent US presidential election there was wall-to-wall coverage on the apparent gender… Read more

This morning, in a certain light, with a following wind, and from a particular angle, you might almost be convinced that Nick Clegg has grown a pair. In a major interview this morning with The Sun, the deputy prime minister has said that the political classes, including David Cameron, have failed to show “courage” on… Read more

  House prices increased by a national average of £7,000 or just over 3pc last year, according to a nationwide chain of estate agents, whose findings tend to confirm this week’s Office for National Statistics Census report that rising numbers are being priced out of home ownership. London continues to decouple from the rest of… Read more

A good guest has to know when to leave the party. Susan Rice wasn’t a good guest. She waited until well after midnight, when everyone was tapping their watches and thinking of bed. Her insistent lingering turned sympathy into contempt – and when she finally decided to go, she did so loudly and rudely. The… Read more