This past weekend, I doubt I could have been more away from it all: I stayed in a holiday cottage in the middle of Cumbria. When I looked out the window, I could see the mountains rising in the distance, with rolling fields below. On Sunday, the landscape was blasted by wind and streaked with […]

It’s very clear that Nick Clegg doesn’t watch “The Thick of It”; in the last episode, the hapless (presumably Tory) minister Peter Mannion (played with expert grumpiness by Roger Allam) is rushed back from a vacuous, cliché laden retreat to address a crisis. En route, he’s offered a selection of ties: he rejects a rainbow […]

Autumn usually sneaks in via the back door. Its shadows lengthen on the staircase, and they take ever longer to be dispersed by the dawn. Summer’s glories fade away: the blooms on the clematis fade and die, the trees begin to change colour, shifting subtly from green to green accentuated with a touch of yellow. […]

A good memory is both a blessing and a curse. I recall 1997 very clearly: I was 25 years old and just getting started. At the time, I lived in my parents’ home in west London. My bedroom was on the top floor of the house and from my window I could see the rooftops […]

There is a path that runs in parallel to the playing fields of St. Clare’s Catholic School in Fagley, Bradford. Along its sides grow thistles and nettles and every type of suburban wild flower. Walk down from the path’s entrance on Moorside Road, avoid the prickles and stinging leaves, and ignore the bark of loud, […]

Yesterday, I said something on Twitter which should have been relatively uncontroversial. I stated that capitalism had evolved to the point where profits had been privatised and risk had been socialised. This isn’t an original insight; it has been stated with more eloquence and at greater length elsewhere. However I was challenged by a radical […]

At long last, the bunting is coming down. As I walked through the darkened Accounts department of my company this morning, I saw that the last vestiges of visible patriotic fervour were to be found in the scant remains of a chocolate bar whose wrapper was emblazoned with a Union Flag. The Queen has retreated […]

I wish Sir Clement Freud were still alive and serving as the Liberal MP for the Isle of Ely or North East Cambridgeshire (for purely stylistic reasons, I prefer the “Isle of Ely” as a constituency name). I’d like also that he was in a position to speak up about the latest expenses scandal which […]

The stretch of the A647 between Bradford and Leeds is a speed camera trap. At first, the signs are clear: the white circle with a thick black line struck through it tell the driver that the national speed limit applies and all’s well. On a late spring day, provided one leaves early enough, this portion […]

We’ve come so far, only to go backwards. In 1964, the British people elected Labour into power, and more specifically, elevated Harold Wilson to be Prime Minister; his origins were modest, he was born in Huddersfield. His father was a works chemist and his mother was a schoolteacher. He rose through hard work, guile and […]