The most racist nation on Earth?
Last week I read a vicious attack on my adopted homeland in the letters page of this newspaper. Mario Santorelli's claim was that this country was rude, unfriendly and most upsetting of all, racist. No one of course could justifiably argue that this country has no racial problems whatsoever. The stop and search of John Sentamu, the black bishop of Stepney for the eighth time in eight years in March 2000 is for me the most telling of many examples of a problem that continues to damage our society....
Features: Letter from America
September is the cruellest month --no matter what some geezer said about spring lilacs -- what with the hectic rush to do everything you intended to do during that oh-so-long summer vacation, work, moving back to school, social engagements, the County Fair and Rodeo, etc, etc. Not to mention a small matter of my university's nasty case of ignorant insolence. Tremble, O Oxford students! Your coursework matters not to the admissions office of my alma mater! Odd, since mine is an institute of higher learning that accepts students solely on the basis of their ability to sign cheques....
Features: Tories, your cab is waiting...
People often ask me what the point of being a moderate in the Tory party is. You get patronised from all sides, they say (with, it has to be said, more than one grain of truth) and your party forgot about One Nation a long time ago. It has to be said that there have been times when I agreed, as the Tory party aimed for an image that was tougher than Maggie's hairspray and plummeted towards defeat at the hands of a government whose idea of helping the three educations was to cut back on the spending increases of John Major and scrap places at good schools for talented children. It was certainly not a heartening sight but as the Tory party returns to its roots, the One Nation philosophy, and the Tory Reform Group which kept it alive while the party drifted, have once again a pivotal role to play in modern politics. ...
Features: Think about it, Mr Straw
I don't want to be rude about a lot of people who I actually like and respect, or those newly arrived people who I don't yet know, but this time of year really gets on my nerves. Every year a whole new crop of freshers arrive and a whole host of causes,clubs and cliques compete for the attention of an ever-diminishing supply of politically engaged new students....
Features: Uncommon sense
If the evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction is dodgy, the arguments against war seem equally unconvincing.
Features: Arses and Ages
Toileting habits are discussed here as if they were hot gossip. We share techniques and bitch about people's approaches with total seriousness. One gentleman persists in sticking his finger up his arse and then saying "Look at that!" (It's always black as coal - iron tablets). There are whole sections of files devoted to bowel movements. It's all very much an open secret....
Features: The Persian Princess
Most people's first question is, "Do you have to wear a veil in Iran?" Almost apologeticly, I have to answer yes.
Features: Seven years later
Having elected to visit Prague in the year when monstrous floods threatened its most treasured buildings, I was surprised at the level of everyday normality to be found in even the worst hit areas only a week or so after the waters had been at their height. Clear-up operation, yes; interruption of consumption of rightly famous beer, no. Preparation perhaps for my journey around the former Yugoslav countries of Croatia and Bosnia, even seven years after their crisis had ended? 'Normality' here is not quite the word, however. It was inevitably the contrasts that provided the clearest comparisons. The tourist-ridden buildings of Croatia, the bullet-ridden buildings of Bosnia. The magnificent walls of Dubrovnik, the crumbling walls of Mostar. Of course it was never as simple as this. Croatia had its fair share of dilapidated buildings that could not just have been the result of neglect, so illustrating again the speed with which the Czechs were able to recuperate compared to a former war-torn region. But Bosnia was where recent history was most sharply brought home. ...