Free Republic

My life beyond the paleTwenty years ago Roger Scruton established the Salisbury Review — and almost at once he became a pariah. It is 20 years since the Salisbury Group (a small gathering of old-fashioned Tories, informally chaired by the Marquess of Salisbury, and dedicated to the political vision of his ancestor, the great prime minister) entrusted me with the task of establishing and editing a review, having raised £5,000 among themselves for this purpose. I had just published The Meaning of Conservatism, a somewhat Hegelian defence of Tory values in the face of their betrayal by the free marketeers....

‘I am 25, a graduate who has travelled extensively after university and a Labour voter. To people of my type, across Europe and the English-speaking world, Americans are a laughing-stock, known mainly for their vacuous culture and profound ignorance. We all have a “dumb Yank” story on our travels. This is why Americans are so hated by us on the Left, however much we condemn the outrages.’ Such were the thoughts of Thomas Smith of Bristol, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph not long after the events of 11 September. I am 35 — ten years older than Smith....

His wife kills foxes, he kills Caribbeans. Rachel Johnson meets a British practitioner of the death penalty. The country boils over with grief and rage over the murder of two sunny-faced young girls. The Daily Mail’s Mary Kenny calls for the restoration of the death penalty for child-killers. As the debate bubbles away, it seems the perfect moment to draw to public attention the starring role that the British legal profession still plays in sending convicted criminals to their deaths in hotter climes — even though the last person to hang on these shores was, of course, in 1964. In...

A job for nanny Fat people aren’t victims, says Tania Kindersley. They’re just fat, and it’s time they were urged to shape up We are all vast now. Columnists, doctors, cross-bench committees and government ministers desperately inveigh against the epidemic of obesity, the rising tide of fat that will swamp us all. We may have put a man on the moon, but we can’t get off the sofa to change the television channel. There is nothing simple about obesity except the statistics, which are stark: annually, 30,000 deaths in Britain; cost to NHS £500,000; cost to general economy £2 billion....