Comment

WHICH genius dreamed up the idea of sending Gordon Brown off to Afghanistan to meet puppet president Hamid Karzai and to mimic Tony Blair's previous media stunt of posing in brilliant white shirt surrounded by British soldiers?

THE Competition Commission's recommendation that the British Airports Authority should be forced to sell off two of its London airports and either Edinburgh or Glasgow confirms the failure of airport privatisation.

HOW can the Scottish Executive stand to one side and claim to be neutral in the pay claim lodged by local authority workers in Scotland?

WHEN an occupying military power knows that it has the backing of the most powerful global information outlets, it can indulge itself in the most laughable rhetoric.

NICE, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, has been on the back foot for some time.

POLISH Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski says that the timing of his government's agreement to allow the US to site its defence shield missiles on Polish soil is entirely coincidental.

AS if older people did not have enough problems to contend with, University of York researchers now wish to label them as contributing the most in Britain to global warming.

WHAT a revelation of government priorities is its refusal to countenance the abolition of NHS prescription charges in England.

THE record leap in the official rate of inflation illustrates the bankruptcy of the government's economic policy and should put an end to Gordon Brown's arrogant bluster about no return to the days of boom and bust.

IF capitalism has anything to recommend it, it must be its sheer effrontery or, at any rate, the brass neck of those who manage it.