Telegraph Blogs

English satanic practices always make me smile. They conjure up images of very white, fat people dancing around clumsily in a wood. So when I read our story today that a vicar in the Forest of Dean is seeing signs of “dark forces”, I’m afraid I was reminded more of Ghostbusters than of The Omen. But… Read more

Here’s an interesting way of looking at the threatened Dubai default, which is that this is an early example of an “exit strategy” which we’ll see nations across the globe adopting over the next year or two as governments seek to limit the damage to their own balance sheets of underwriting their economies through the… Read more

Foreign Policy, a clever journal for clever people, annually compiles a list of the 100 very cleverest people on earth. Ben Bernanke came first, followed By Barack Obama. Gordon Brown has made the list this year, ranked 74. Whether he’ll be too pleased about that is debateable. His citation is hardly glowing. For… Read more

Carol Vorderman deserves sympathy for the way she’s been stitched up in today’s Express. The front page screams “Carol Vorderman: My secret fight against booze”. Turn to page three to read that’s a bit of an exaggeration. The former Countdown presenter used to drink twice the weekly units of alcohol recommended for a woman, apparently… Read more

Via’s Harry’s Place, an interesting story of cross-cultural pollination in Britain’s second city. Gun-toting members of a new Birmingham teenage gang are boasting about becoming suicide bombers, it was claimed last night. The chillingly named Bang Bang Taliban have told community workers they want to dominate the city’s gangland – and that they would gladly be “martyred”… Read more

Israel is currently in the middle of talks with Hamas over a possible prisoner swap, but it has held fast to its pledge not to sit down with the organisation, as presently constituted, for what are called “final status” negotiations. Some pundits huff that this shows a reluctance towards finding a “two state solution.” … Read more

There’s very little to add to my colleague Philip Johnston’s excellent post on David Cameron’s invocation of the Good Samaritan. I would just say that people don’t always do justice to the story of the Good Samaritan. And, as a consequence, they miss the point. Margaret Thatcher famously said that the Good Samaritan needed money for… Read more

Should you live in the fair county of Herefordshire you would have many things to be thankful for – but the standard of cancer care is not one of them. Our lead story this morning shows that someone with lung cancer living in Herefordshire is three times more likely to die within a year than… Read more

One of the key lessons of the US Counterinsurgency doctrine published under General Petreaus in 2006 is that success in counterinsurgency operations requires much more than military success. There are plenty of cases in the history of insurgencies in which the side that won the military victory still lost the war. This was a lesson… Read more

It’s easy to see why Alexandra Palace might tick so many of Boris Johnson’s boxes. A fortress on high ground, able to control and dominate North London’s most rebellious Guardianista strongholds; a large, grandiose pile, neo-classical in parts; a very long history of engagement with the media (the BBC’s first TV studio was here); and,… Read more

A few weeks ago, Lionel Shriver (author of We Need to Talk About Kevin) filed a piece for Standpoint magazine in which she wrote, with some reluctance, that her brother was “eating himself to death” and weighed 24 stone. (He was 5ft 7in tall.) Shriver wrote that she could not accept “fat rights” nor could she… Read more

The way to grow your portfolio is by focusing on dividends. Drax operates the largest (and cleanest) coal-fired power station in the UK. Next year’s dividend is approaching 8pc and, despite environmentsl concerns, coal looks set to be around for some years to come. Plus, HSBC Infrastructure fund is a great play for long-term income seekers. Find out… Read more

ConservativeHome has launched a new site, LeftWatch, to monitor the nefarious activities of the socialised state, in particular the behaviour of taxpayer-funded groups that appear in taxpayer-funded media defending the taxpayer-funded “third sector” and quangocracy. And they start with this piece: At 0853 am this morning the Today programme interviewed Katherine Rake of the Family and Parenting… Read more

Crisis over? Having initially feared the worst, western stock markets are already putting the threatened act of default in Dubai behind them and resuming the rally regardless. The view seems to have taken hold that this is just a little spot of local difficulty, which though admittedly likely to involve substantial new write-offs for British… Read more

Prior to American President Barack Obama’s long-awaited announcement on his new strategy for Afghanistan later today, the American newspapers this morning are full of details of what his speech is likely to contain – so much for the president’s dislike of leaks! The main thrust of the reports is that Mr Obama is going to back… Read more

This week, the World Trade Organization is holding its first major ministerial meeting since Hong Kong in 2005 as it seeks to find some way to get the Doha Round back on track. Now, I know those two words are likely to strike fear (or perhaps merely boredom) into many of your hearts. We’ve written… Read more

The revelation that agents received more than £70m from Premier League clubs in a year will provoke familiar howls about “money going out of the game”, but to blame the middle-men for making a living, albeit a generous one, is to miss at least two thirds of the picture. Agents flourish only because clubs and players… Read more

We woke up in a different country today. Alright, it doesn’t look very different. The trees still seem black against the winter sun; the motorways continue to jam inexplicably; commuters carry on avoiding eye contact. But Britain is no longer a sovereign nation. At midnight last night, we ceased to be an independent state, bound… Read more

There is general confidence that when FIFA announce their seedings for the World Cup 2010 draw tomorrow morning, England will be among them. The truth is, though, that no one outside the FIFA elite actually knows. The plans for Friday night’s ceremony have been decided – David Beckham and Charlize Theron were confirmed as taking part… Read more

Cameron is going on the offensive over the compensation culture, and he couldn’t have picked a better target. I can’t think of anyone – from the Left or Right – who would be alienated by a clampdown on those bespectacled, mock-sympathetic “lawyers” who intone “Have you been hurt in an accident that wasn’t your fault?”… Read more