News isn't just what happens. It's what a fairly small group of people decide is news.
— Peter Hitchens
The giant fraud that is Britain's education system strides ever onwards, messing up many more lives than it improves.
It's interesting how thrillers reflect the times we live in.
Freedom of speech is freedom above all for those whose views you dislike most.
Average male pay is higher than average female pay for a simple reason. Despite decades of enforced equality, women still have babies, and men still don't. So women who wish to spend any substantial time at all with their own offspring will fall behind in their careers, and their earnings will be less.
A world without a proper day of rest is like a landscape without hedgerows, trees, or landmarks: a howling, featureless wilderness in which we incessantly seek pleasure because we cannot find happiness.
I still don't understand why we need a gigantic airport sprawled across South East England. What does it gain us, compared with the misery of noise, pollution and congestion it causes in our cramped country? Would it really be so bad if we had to take a train to Paris or Amsterdam to fly to the U.S.A.?
The safest period of my lifetime was the Cold War, when Europe was more sharply divided than ever.
People's fates in life are decided largely by their schools.
Skimmed milk was what they used to give to prisoners and workhouse inmates to go with their porridge and gruel. It's a punishment, not a drink.
You know you are old when what you still think of as recent films are remade.
Fear is good and useful when it's deployed on the side of common sense.
A referendum is almost always a device by which governments get the voters to endorse what they wanted to do all along.
The self-righteous supporters of mass immigration think the rest of us are stupid and evil.
The Channel is an international waterway through which the Russians are quite free to pass - and over which we have no exclusive right.
When I rather guiltily read the books on which the TV series 'Game Of Thrones' is based, I was struck by one thing. The whole point of this saga is that ruthlessness pays, that evil generally wins, that justice is non-existent, and utter cynicism the only wisdom. It is the Middle Ages without the saving grace of Christianity.
The BBC TV programme 'Back In Time For Dinner' doesn't just have one of the cleverest titles ever. It is a more-than-usually-serious attempt to recreate the recent past, the day before yesterday.
All serious elite institutions, from the great London clubs to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, have always made sure that most people can't get into them. That's the point.
Nowhere in the Beatitudes did Jesus say, 'Blessed are the queue-jumpers,' trying to gain an advantage at the expense of others. This is what the people at Calais are.
A serious dose of unemployment and a spate of bank failures can make the unelectable electable quite quickly.
Freedom of speech, for those who don't accept multiculturalism or the sexual revolution, is increasingly limited, mainly by threats to the jobs of those who speak out of turn.
Rigid, state-enforced sex equality is a Marxist policy, pursued to the outer limits in the old East Germany and now being adopted here.
If you want a day free of work, you must expect others to have the same privilege.
When I lived in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I was rather proud that my landlord was almost the only African-American in my unofficially segregated neighbourhood (the other one was the adopted child of our admirable next-door neighbours).
As far as our rulers in Brussels are concerned, Her Majesty can stand for the European Parliament and vote in the elections for it. She doesn't, but she could.
As I am actually partly Cornish, I am frequently tempted to start some sort of Cornish liberation front in the Home Counties, where our language rights are badly neglected.
Thanks to centuries of island freedom, when we were able to decide who came in and who didn't, it is far easier to disappear in Britain than in almost any other country in the world.
Our pious horror at the intolerant and repressive behaviour of Islamic State is bitterly funny, given that it is really not that different from the policies of our close ally, Saudi Arabia.
What is the point of the police if wrongdoers aren't afraid of them?
The picture of Prince Charles meeting Gerry Adams is inexpressibly sad.
Anyone who seriously wants to keep Scotland in the U.K. must seek to stop the rise of the SNP, not to fuel and encourage it.
The sad truth is that mass migration, whatever the colour of the skins of those involved, upsets and worries indigenous people, especially the poorest.
If you really want to conceal something, leave it lying about where everyone can see it.
At every future election, there should be a slot, at the top of each ballot paper, in which we can put a cross against 'None of the below.'
If it's for everyone, it's not exclusive.
I'm always a bit suspicious of the sort of person who argues by saying 'What would Jesus have said?' They usually mean that they are quite sure Jesus would have agreed with them.
If you are foolish enough to defend your own home against burglary, expect to be arrested, fingerprinted, DNA-swabbed, and probably charged.
Instead of trying to bring freedom to the Arab world, couldn't we just concentrate on trying to fend off the European Union and defending our own porous borders?
The Left have always preferred the state to the family.
Work, especially if you're lucky in what you do, is one of the great pleasures of life, but - like all pleasures - it can become selfish.
Without doubt, the Queen's personal acceptance of her role as a loyal E.U. servant was one of the great symbolic moments of our history. A bit like Magna Carta, but backwards.
I'm surprised that more people don't emulate Rachel Dolezal and pretend to be black or members of some other minority. Our gullible society rushes to reward such status, often with jobs and money.
Fat does not make you fat.
The world's poor have discovered that the E.U. (that's the country we live in, no point pretending there's anywhere called Britain any more) has absolutely no clue how to stop determined immigrants.
If tough old Lefty Helen Mirren can warm towards the Crown after impersonating Her Majesty, who's next? Since reigning and acting have so much in common, it's surprising all actors aren't fervent royalists.
Actually, I never wanted an E.U. referendum, and I think those who called for it will one day wish they hadn't.
What many of us object to is the politicians who, for whatever reason, forget that societies cannot easily absorb huge numbers of new citizens. I resent the suggestion that this perfectly reasonable view is motivated by racial hatred or personal spite.
There is no such thing as a 'right to buy.' Proper conservatives don't believe in invented, taxpayer-subsidised rights, a creation of liberals. They believe in freedom. And the break-up of council estates was one of the most unconservative things that ever happened, making life harder for young families and destroying settled communities.
Gleeful, unembarrassed ruthlessness, once rightly kept in check, has become normal among us, and 'Game Of Thrones' is a success because this change is now more or less complete.
Successful state schools work because charismatic heads or teachers are terrific bluffers, giving the impression that they are to be feared while knowing in their hearts that they have no real power.
