The first-time visitor to Manchester cannot fail to be struck by the grandeur of its Victorian civic buildings. The Town Hall, pictured above, is a mighty declaration of municipal pride and confidence. It is proudly provincial but there is nothing pejoratively provincial about it. Nor is Manchester alone: Newcastle and Leeds and the other great English cities built their own sandstone monuments to themselves.
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In hard hat, hi-vis vest and wielding a trowel, the prime minister turned brickie today on a building site in Chorley - the same Lancashire town Ed Miliband visited on Monday. He insisted that this was not the first time he'd laid b... Read Post
Listening to David Cameron talk about Afghanistan these days, I’m struck by two things. Firstly, how optimistic and upbeat he is about progress there, and how confident he seems that most British troops will have left by the next ge... Read Post
Look: I understand that information given strictly off the record cannot be used. I am a stickler for that myself and there's stuff I know that I cannot tell Dish readers because of those rules. But at the same time,... Read Post