The Lords, of course, have a job to do, and it is to their credit that so many of them take that job so seriously. In its debates on the Welfare Bill, the Upper House has shown a laudable concern for the plight of those who rely, for whatever reason,...

This is substituting the scapegoating of an easy target for grown-up politics. The former chief executive of RBS is the most visible and least contrite exemplar of irresponsible banking that contributed to the financial crisis. For Mr Cameron this di...

A quarter of a century later, all this seems to have changed. Rather than acting as a high-class travel agent, the Council's antennae are finely tuned to the aspirations of its international audience. Just now its literature department is rolling out...

As I was reading my zillionth magazine this week, I came upon two promotions that made me rage. The first was for Proskins Slim Leggings: "Fancy giving your legs a workout – without any actual legwork? Say hello to Proskins Slim Leggings". Quite apar...

For example, aircraft, ships and most buildings have a design life of 40 to 70 years, but for the design software used, the software developers have a business model that sees them rewrite their offering every 10 years. If it were not bad enough that...

With total costs estimated at around £100m, a lot of British lawyers have a lot of  spasibos  to say, and there are many more giant pay days to come. Boris Berezovsky has already begun a second, $3bn (£1.9bn) case against the family of his deceased f...

But just think how much attention the museum would get had trustees appointed Evelyn Welch to the top job: she is the mother of chart-topping singer Florence Welch, of Florence and the Machine. For I can reveal that Professor Welch was one of three c...

After a moment feeling miffed, I realised it was entirely a blessing that nobody else had felt my arrival as significantly as I did. This was, at long last, the return to normality that I had craved from the moment my leg snapped in three places six ...

Under Margaret Thatcher, values that helped to define Scotland's sense of national identity – those of community and of social justice – came under sustained attack, and the autonomy of Scotland's own civic institutions, from our schools and universi...