Porngate and ashes for Gordon

YESTERDAY'S blog on pornography certainly seems to have sets the pulses racing. Whether the use of certain words flashed up on Google alerts were enough to generate more hits I don't know, but in any case it was good to be responsible for bringing...

Define pornography

JUST why the Home Secretary's husband Richard Timney found it necessary to pay to watch "adult entertainment" on his television is probably best left to others to speculate. It is unlikely to have been Debbie Does Dallas but we are left to wonder...

Boris slays the anti-St George dragons

IT'S not quite time to have my annual rant at the indifference of England and the English to St George's Day. Faithful readers will know that my birthday is April 23, which is why I have more than a passing interest in celebrating our patron saint. ...

William wounds the niece of the Countess of Longford - akaHattie Harman

NO doubt that William Hague and Vince Cable had the best of the exchanges with Harriett Harman when the three took centre stage in Prime Minister's Questions. Gordon Brown was strutting around New York as Saviour of the World, which meant that David...

Clarke exposes Cameron's tax dilemma

TOTAL disarray in the Tory ranks. Ken Clarke, the politically incorrect but totally Big Beast, brought back to challenge Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, has set the cat among the canaries by claiming the Tory pledge on inheritance tax was no such...

Paying for mum and dad's house from parliamentary expenses

TONY McNulty is one of the more competent of Gordon Brown's ministers, but his taxpayer funded claim for a second home just a few miles from his other London property simply beggars belief. The employment minister has taken £60,000 in parliamentary allowances...

UKIP is alive, well and raring to go

JUST returned from Chelmsford where I chatted for more than an hour to Jeffrey Titford, former leader of the UK Independence Party and who is Euro MP for th East of England. As the only journalist to predict that UKIP would win a seat in the region in...

Tories will junk these plans

MUCH excitement in municipal circles - the Boundary Committee has issued yet more guidance on how it sees the future of local government in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Devon. Does the public care one jot? Absolutely not.  Besides, even if Hazel Blears...

End your personal misery Gordon and call an election

NOT exactly sorry, just a matter "of personal regret." Thus Gordon Brown tells MPs that rising unemployment as a result of the recession is having a toll on the Government and himself. He pledged he would not "walk on the other side" It won't satisfy...

Tory skulduggery is disgraceful

JUST what game do the Tories think they're playing? According to the Liberal Democrats, they are setting up shadow ministers of fictious departments and claiming parliamentary expenses for it. Matthew Taylor (MP for Truro and St Austell) said successive...

Don't just freeze it Dave, axe the licence fee

DAVID Cameron wants the BBC licence fee to be frozen for one year. Sorry Dave, that's nowhere radical enough. It's about time the Corporation lived in the real world, and the best way to do that would be to remove the poll tax on us all which is...

Twitter's just grand - and don't forget del.icio.us

IT usually takes me ages to understanmd anything on the web, so I regard it as quite a triumph to become a Twitterer. Facebook's ok, but for people of my generation, it is not particularly useful - do I really want to know the favourite films of my colleagues...

How unusual in a politican: Nigel Farage is talking sense!

CALL me a protectionist if you will, but at least I've found a soul mate when it comes to the insane suggestion of Chancellor Alistair Darling that British taxpayers should become responsible for the debts piled up by governments around the...

Geldof's preaching and ranting turns me off

IF there was a poll for the most annoying person on the planet, my vote would go to Sir Bob Geldof. No doubt he is very sincere about talking global poverty and third world debt, but during a depression listening to a person who must be worth a mint lambasting...

Dandy Mandy covered in green slime

WHAT an indignity! Lord Mandelson, dressed up to the nines in immaculate clothing, arrives at a climate change summit in central London and is splattered by green gunge by a Plane Stupid protester Leila Deen objecting to Government backing for...

Another tax on the English

HERE we go again. Another battering for the English. Charges for NHS prescriptions and dental treatment in England will increase next month. The price of a single prescription will rise by 10p to £7.20 and the cost of a dental check-up on the NHS...

The year Boudica took on the miners

WE'RE coming up to the 25th anniversray of the great clash between Boudica and Arthur Scargill - Margaret Thatcher and the miners. It was a struggle Thatcher couldn't afford to lose, politically and economically. Win she did but the cost to civil order...