Picture -Berlin 1924 In der Volksküche by Otto Nagel | It’s the 30th of January, 1933, somewhere in a nice suburb of Berlin. I know that the other ladies, sharing tea and cakes with me are voting for Ernst Thalman, the handsome leader of the German communists. I am voting for Hitler. This is because Thalman’s party, which I once … [Read on]

Doctors in America have, either by not reading the small print on the bottles, or ignoring the warnings sent out by their professional colleges, led thousands of their patients into become drug addicts. They think they are doing good by prescribing strong pain killers, but last year there were more deaths from prescription pain killer overdoses than there were deaths … [Read on]

Boris Johnson’s chances of being elected Tory leaded received a dramatic boost with the publication of an opinion poll in the Telegraph showing that under his leadership, the Conservative Party would storm to victory at the next election. The figures are stunning. No-one else comes near Boris in appealing to the wider electorate. Whether they trust him or not, like … [Read on]

One of my earliest memories is watching a TV series with my mother, noting her distaste at seeing young people furtively passing around fat looking cigarettes. She was a smoker herself but told me those were, ‘reefers,’ and not nice. Teenagers, the kind I longed to be, were obviously keen on them. When we weren’t watching trendy drug-taking we were … [Read on]

This talented and versatile man comes in for much undue criticism: currently for maintaining his bid for the Tory leadership after his open, honest and humble admission that he “once” took cocaine. While his huge talents speak for themselves, his marvellous versatility has tended to go unnoticed. Whereas Humpty Dumpty could only manage to believe six impossible things before breakfast, … [Read on]

The banishing of venerated figures from universities is a relentless exercise in correcting past faults by the standards of the present. Busts or portraits are removed, lecture halls are renamed, and classic works are deleted from the curriculum. University College London has launched an independent enquiry on whether it should continue to honour polymath Sir Francis Galton. The retrospective offence … [Read on]

On Sunday I saw a notice on my church door saying: ‘Join us for Iftar. The People’s Festival. Halal food stalls.’ I was not happy; who are ‘The People’ I wondered, and were a lot of white liberal vegetarians going along to tuck into halal food? I didn’t join them, but lots did, filling Trafalgar Square, Canterbury Cathedral, Wembley Stadium … [Read on]