Telegraph Blogs

What’s the best way to reduce the harm caused by drugs? Because, let’s not pretend otherwise, drugs are extremely harmful for some people. What’s the most effective way to achieve our goals with drug policy? In fact, what are our goals? Do we want a) to reduce drug use no matter what, or b) to… Read more

“There is a dearth of feeling” in the West, wrote Anne Applebaum, “that what happened in Eastern Europe was evil in some fundamental way.” The author of Gulag: A History, winner of the 2004 Pulitizer Prize, pointed out that Nazis are everywhere in popular culture and intellectual life as a symbol of evil while communists… Read more

There is considerable excitement north of the border, as David Cameron and Alex Salmond get ready to sign the agreement which will mean a referendum in 2014 on the future of the UK. A friend in Edinburgh tells me that he is so stirred by these developments that this morning he has taken his kilt to… Read more

  Here’s a cartoon that was unpublished (see previous blog here as to why) and is today topical – at least visually.

When the Internet was invented, one of the great benefits was that now, for the first time, the silent majority could at last have a voice. That in countries where freedom of speech had been a luxury for the few, there was a place where we were ALL connected. Where ideas could be broached, debates… Read more

Legalising “soft” drugs is once again on the agenda, thanks to the latest report by the UK Drug Policy Commission. It calls for decriminalising light drug users, pointing out that evidence shows the present system of penalisation doesn’t do any good. I’ve seen enough young people taking drugs to know that the “illegal” label acts… Read more

In the wake of Mitt Romney’s game-changing triumph/hollow victory in the first presidential debate, I spotted a strange quote from the exotically named Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee. According to Priebus, “In Ohio alone, 1,500 new volunteers signed up in the 24 hours following the debate. Our Orlando office has reported overflow… Read more

It has been decreed that all three parties had good conferences. Nick Clegg survived his. Ed Miliband did much better than that, reframing the way his leadership is viewed in the political/media bubble with a supremely confident address. Then David Cameron gave his party heart with a great speech, one which I think should be… Read more

Scottish independence voting proposals to be announced today should remind savers and other financially-aware Scots to be careful what you wish for; history’s lessons are not encouraging. Most recently, the British Government’s rescue of Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland during the global credit crisis was largely funded by taxpayers in the south… Read more

He is arguably the world’s greenest businessman and last week he launched a new way of measuring precisely how much damage his company’s products do to the planet. My Telegraph column this week describes how Jochen Zeitz, the chairman of Puma, which sponsors Usain Bolt, is testing it first on a range of compostable and… Read more

  What does this cartoon mean..?

With the party conference season now over there seems to be a consensus that the three main parties at Westminster all came out of it rather well. In fact, UKIP had a succesful gathering too but, led by the Guardian/BBC lobby, most of the media all but ignored that event. Certainly the Conservative Conference went pretty well, and as… Read more

Almost every reform since the MPs’ expenses revelations has made matters worse. A quango has been elevated above our elected tribunes. A culture of compliance has replaced a culture of conscience. MPs have been further alienated from the communities they represent. Good people have been deterred from standing for election. All this was predictable from… Read more

From Saturday’s Daily Telegraph The strangest thing happened last week, though few people noticed it. America officially ceased to be a Protestant country. According to the Pew Forum, the percentage of Protestants has dropped to 48 per cent, down from 53 per cent in 2007. That’s a huge shift. But, before Catholics start punching the… Read more

The EU’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize has occasioned much scornful laughter, some of it deserved. But it is worth reflecting for a moment on the underlying logic of this prize. Tony Judt’s brilliant history of the continent, Postwar, quotes Hegel’s wistful aphorism that “world history is not the soil in which happiness grows.… Read more

No one’s denying that Joe Biden delivered the more energetic performance in Thursday’s vice presidential debate. He interrupted Paul Ryan 82 times in 90 minutes. Yet some polls say that Ryan won and many pundits are calling it a draw. How come? Two reasons. First, deconstruct the Biden bluster and some of what he said… Read more

  A Martian landing in Regent’s Park this weekend would be jolly confused. There are two Frieze art shows on. One – Frieze Masters – has works of great beauty by Cranach, Brueghel, Zurbaran and Degas. The other – the contemporary Frieze show – has various bits of distended metal, mutilated pornography and a few… Read more

This is seriously weird. A photo that’s apparently been doing the rounds for three years: Jimmy Savile and Frank Bruno, visiting Broadmoor secure hospital to meet Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, in 1991. Apparently Savile had his own keys to the place. I don’t know what to say about this at all. Savile, according to… Read more

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, including 28 Britons and 88 Australians. Many of the victims were young or youngish holidaymakers, drawn to Bali for its famously fun nightlife. The bombs, detonated inside a bar called Paddy’s Pub and directly outside a thumping nightclub called the Sari Club,… Read more

You couldn’t make it up. News that the European Union has won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning comes as we learn that Europe’s attempt to break the power of nation states through currency union has pushed Greek unemployment to a record 25.1pc – just ahead of Spain – with far worse yet to come.… Read more

If I were to argue that the real enemy of the Arab world is not Israel, but the Arab world itself, what would people say? If I suggested it is the Arab states’ own endemic corruption, poor healthcare, inadequate education system, lack of respect for human rights, and disregard for human life and freedom of… Read more

The phrase “hate to say I told you so” is one of the most disingenuous constructions in the English language. We don’t hate to say it, we revel in it. So it is that I turn to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s annual letter to shareholders. To sum up, he says Microsoft is experiencing a “fundamental… Read more