Articles by Peter Mullen

That’s it then. It’s all over, folks. We are going to leave the EU, but “leave” will effectually mean “stay.” Theresa May has already amply earned from me the epithets “spectacularly incompetent” and “sublimely inept.” To these we can now add “traitorous .” In her last Friday’s Florence Speech, the prime minister gave away the household silver – £20million worth – when she promised … [Read on]

I sympathise with the writers and performers of W1A, the BBC comedy drama which has just begun its third series. W1A is advertised as a satire on the BBC itself This is an impossibility, for the BBC is beyond satire. How would you go about satirising a Corporation… Whose economics and political presenters constantly bash the bankers and other fat cats but then … [Read on]

Someone must have bought Paul Dacre a new alarm clock – one that works. For this morning the Daily Mail is reporting the deputy Labour leader John McDonnell’s call for an insurrection. The word “insurrection” means a violent uprising. But, sometime during Mr Dacre’s protracted sleep, McDonnell had called for the insurrection a long time ago: in fact he issued his bloodcurdling cry … [Read on]

“I’ve never known of a single murder at the Glastonbury Festival,” said Commander David Musker, the man in charge of policing this year’s Notting Hill Carnival. He was replying to an accusation by a “rapper” known to his fans as Stormzy who had claimed that the police precautions against looting and violence at the Carnival targeted only “black events.” (Wasn’t it … [Read on]

“A creeping sense of hostility to business” has taken hold in the Conservative party, says George Freeman, former head of Downing Street’s policy unit. This hostility is not “creeping,” George; under Mrs May it is galloping. Last Saturday the prime minister denounced “the unacceptable face of capitalism.” I suppose her statement was a follow-up to her disastrous election manifesto which … [Read on]

All shall run and all shall win prizes, and even those who don’t run shall receive prizes. That’s how it is in the UK’s state education system. You think I’m just a nasty elitist being sarcastic? Well, don’t listen to me. Listen to Sally Collier, chief regulator of examinations at OFQUAL: “All our kids are brilliant.” That is a remark of outstanding idiocy … [Read on]