Category: Politics

Great Balls of Fire

Jeremy Paxman wrote favourably in the Weekend FT about the Pepys exhibition in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. I went on Thursday morning.

Special Escort Group

I first came across the Metropolitan Police Special Escort Group (SO14) in Sherard Cowper-Coles’ 2011 account of his time as our ambassador and, later, special representative to Afghanistan: Cables from Kabul.

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Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

  That’s what I think at 1.00 a.m. when my hostess is frantic to get rid of me. It’s also what good-time girl Britannia is thinking about the Euro-bash where she has been partying since 1973.

Black Mischief

Dr Sylvester Nyatsuro, a 45 year old black British GP practicing in Nottingham, has been given a white family’s farm in Zimbabwe by the Zimbabwean government. He has lived in the UK for at least fifteen years but is eligible on two counts: he is, supposedly, an indigenous black African and is a friend of… Continue reading Black Mischief

Number Sixteen

We like to think of the UK being, if not the cradle of democracy, the mother of parliaments. Looked at objectively, how true is this?

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Democratic Principles

  My house has what estate agents call “all the usual offices”; a strange expression as it has everything except an office. This drawing was done by Mike Stiff, of Stiff + Trevillion, in 1984. It’s a late Victorian terraced house with some original features, including a functioning coal hole in the path leading up… Continue reading Democratic Principles

Soft Power

Lord Bates is a Conservative party Life Peer in the House of Lords. He is a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office.