London Letter
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Rochdale’s town hall is considered one of the paragons of Victorian municipal architecture, emblematic of an age when an increasingly prosperous Britain took immense pride in its local communities. Today the town is known for child poverty, 'Asian' grooming gangs the police ignored, and an MP whose return to the Commons owes much to unassimilated Muslim enclavesApril 13, 2024
15 mins
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The National Trust earned a place in British life but decisions made by its management in recent decades have dampened public enthusiasm for the body. Its extensive portfolio, for example, is reported to have lost several million pounds in value, in part owing to investment in underperforming funds recommended by eco-friendly wealth managersMarch 16, 2024
10 mins
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In the UK, as now revealed in excruciating detail, ministers and COVID 'experts' revelling in their 15 minutes created a monstrous fear in the general public. That hysteria might have been -- should have been -- reined in with explanation and information, but that wouldn't have been good politics. Thus, when the Chief Medical Officer advised loosening restrictions, it was the PM’s media advisers who vetoed the move for being 'too far ahead of public opinion'April 11, 2023
11 mins
The latest
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Lords-phobia is most easily understood by two tendencies. One is a simple hatred for all things old and traditional, which must be uprooted and destroyed. The other is a lack of understanding of how the House of Lords works and what role it plays in the exercise of political power in the United KingdomFebruary 16, 2023
8 mins
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It was the inevitable event we all knew would happen—for […]September 28, 2022
9 mins
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'I’m afraid I have some very sad news,' a parish priest told the soup-kitchen mendicants and volunteers after being alerted by text message of the Queen's passing. We bowed our heads to pray for the repose of the Queen’s soul and 'for the King'. It was then, at those words and at that instant, the news from Balmoral really hit homeSeptember 12, 2022
9 mins
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In securing Brexit, Boris Johnson made more history in six months than did some prime ministers in their entire terms. But the very day Brexit became reality, the BBC reported that two Chinese nationals staying at a York hotel had tested positive for a scary new virus. With hindsight, that was when the gods of happenstance and politics ordained the PM's fateSeptember 2, 2022
12 mins
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The anti-COVID measures and edicts have turned the possible demise of thousands of enterprises into certainties -- pubs, butcher shops, newsagents, cinemas, grocery stores, they're all folding. All this has happened as the government announces, reverses and re-introduces more lockdowns, testing regimes and quarantinesOctober 8, 2020
11 mins
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The British media has tended to shy away from any discussion of why frightening respiratory diseases seem to emerge in China more often than elsewhere, and specifically how and why Covid-19 crossed from the animal world into the human populationApril 5, 2020
10 mins
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It feels strange to write these words, but in a […]
November 28, 2019
8 mins
