On the one side were those people – most of them employed – who hailed the move unhesitatingly as a very good thing: people on jobless benefits, they argued, should not just sit there; they, and society, stood to benefit if they bestirred themselves....

She may have been partial to conservative politicians – Anthony Eden was her pin-up – but she couldn't stomach a man who cried. If she'd voted for Boehner, I reflected, she would have been demanding her ballot paper back. Granny Fleming is long dead,...

In the event, circumstances have conspired to push the human rights situation further up the agenda than Mr Cameron and his advisers might have hoped. His visit not only follows the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the imprisoned dissident, Liu Xiao...

He was right, but it's also true that the tasks confronting Labour are what we came into politics for – to defend the vulnerable and allow everyone the chance to work and realise their potential. Because for Labour, effective opposition will never be...

But such success leaves a dilemma: what are 11 million people to do with 90 spare minutes on a Sunday night? Nor was it just the storyline; confirmed modernisers discovered a passion for the finer points of manners and titles; spotting anachronisms b...

Assuming the report is accurate, there is one thing about which Thompson is right: she doesn't get it. A woman who is called a cougar seems "predatory" for a reason, but it is not because she is dating younger men: it is because she has been given th...

It is true there are more afternoon accidents than morning, but reliance on statistics from 3pm–7pm makes no sense. At 3pm it is still light everywhere in the UK, year round, under BST or GMT, and by 6pm it would be dark in winter everywhere under ei...

There is more to that thought than whimsy. We had several good examples last week of how the news reshapes reality. First, Dr David Nutt, the Government's former chief adviser on drugs, who was sacked last year for being too political, produced a new...

* News from the United States that The National Enquirer may not be that much longer for this world – the firm that owns it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection – has prompted a flurry of nostalgic stories about some of its more lurid headl...

When I saw it on the news, I felt sick and jealous by turns at the thought of how much fun my (slightly skanky) peers were having and how much they all loved each other. Patting strangers on the back and telling them they're beautiful; watching cheap...

But the Queen hasn't joined Facebook, not really. Despite the image of her hunched over a laptop to "add Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands as a friend" being rather compelling, the truth is more prosaic; the Palace has simply established a new way of ...

Married or not, Kate Moss hasn't lost any of her allure. Her latest conquest is the social dynamo and arbiter of all things common, Nicky Haslam, whose face she was spotted chewing off at the launch of Bryan Ferry's new album at the Dean Street to...