This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday Column: How dare the Labour Party try to gain political advantage by complaining about the horrible explosion of crime in this country? Last week they produced official figures showing that three murders or sex attacks are carried out every week by criminals on probation. And of course this is quite true, and absolutely intolerable. So is the spread of ‘anti-social behaviour’ which ruins the lives of millions in our poorer areas; and the general increase in drug abuse and the carrying of knives, so that schoolchildren are now being robbed at knifepoint o ..read more

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column  This is not the Winter of Discontent. Mick Lynch is not Arthur Scargill. Rishi Sunak is not Margaret Thatcher. And, I might add, the nurses’ leader Pat Cullen is definitely not Florence Nightingale. I can tell you most of this because I spent seven gripping years, from 1977 to 1984, writing about strikes, and unions, and pay deals, often in the middle of the night. I can say this about Pat Cullen because my beloved aunt Ena, the best human being I ever knew, was a dedicated, selfless nurse, who spent a lot of her tiny income on charity to ot ..read more

The inflated grandees of Parliament’s Privileges Committee are currently pondering the vast issue of whether Al ‘Boris’ Johnson misled the Commons about some office parties.   I care little for Mr Johnson, but one has to ask why these persons do not investigate themselves for their utter failure to prevent a gross abuse of power by the government during Covid. They failed to challenge policies which smashed the economy to pieces, launched an uncontrollable storm of inflation, wrecked the NHS, maimed schools and universities and destroyed personal freedom, in a misconceived belief tha ..read more

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column Why do people think that, the more of us who have the vote, the more democratic and free a country will be?  In Cuba, you can vote at 16, but only for the grisly Castro regime. You can vote at 16 in Scotland, too, and look where that has got them. Highly-democratic Taiwan, by contrast, does not let you vote till you are 20. I favour 40.   I was one of the very first to vote at 18, in the 1970 general election, and I thought then – as I think now – that I was far too young and inexperienced to have a say in how the country was g ..read more

This article was published in the Daily Mail of Thursday 29th June How much longer can we rely on the 999 system for emergency calls? Is it in fact so overloaded that it is nowadays very nearly fictional? Last Sunday much of the emergency phone service broke down, with uncounted 999 calls failing to connect and one local council actually advising people to go their nearest fire station if they wanted to alert the fire brigade. This suggestion met a chorus of jeers on social media.  One resident responded sarcastically: ‘Ah yes! Excellent advice here from Norfolk County Council. None of th ..read more

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday Column A huge part of the misery and crime which plague our country is linked to the abuse of illegal drugs. Marijuana users, especially, are common among the culprits of horrible, violent crimes and terrorist acts. The families and neighbours of heroin users know in grim detail that these selfish people are capable of robbing those closest to them. Even official statistics are beginning to note that the dangerous drivers who kill and injure so many are, in growing numbers of cases, under the influence of such drugs. But the police and the courts do noth ..read more

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column Not since Gerald Ratner destroyed his own jewellery business in 1991 by saying openly that its products were ‘c***’, has anyone so completely upset his own industry as Sir Michael Wilshaw did last week. But we now know for sure that the rulings of England’s mighty, dreaded Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) are in fact so much piffle. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the former chief inspector of schools, has described OFSTED's judgment that almost nine out of ten state schools in England are ‘good’ as ‘complete nonsense’. OFSTED’s most recent figures ..read more

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column So what has happened to the great Ukrainian offensive, which we were led to believe would dislodge Vladimir Putin’s invading armies? I suppose a surprise is still possible, but it looks as if it has stalled, just as similar big pushes did in the First World War.    In fact the whole thing looks more and more like World War One, with its years of muddy, bloody stalemate, trenches, artillery bombardments - and the mass slaughter, disfigurement and maiming of thousands of young men. And in the USA, those who were once keen on this war ..read more