en-uk Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:37:29 GMT Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. custserv@timesonline.co.uk http://www.timesonline.co.uk Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:42:01 GMT Newspapers 144 21 http://www.timesonline.co.uk http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,116979,00.gif Matthew Parris Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT 2009-07-03T11:28:57Z It’s important not to understand. It’s important not to learn. In the total buggeration into which the world’s help for Afghanistan has now descended, it’s important not to know too much. Accept that somebody some day may understand, but it isn’t going to be you. Somebody some day may grab the Gordian knot and cut it, but it isn’t going to be us. Know only that. To know more is to know less. Matthew Parris Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT 2009-07-01T09:40:12Z Do you wonder at the attitude of people who put “no turning” signs by the roadside at their gateways? Dogs in mangers, or what? A sad variant is emerging in the Peak District this summer as small herds of exhausted, exhilarated or lost Duke of Edinburgh’s Award participants straggle across the hills in rain and shine. They may congregate on the road verge, awaiting pick-ups, resting, map-reading or conferring. But at some landowners’ gates are appearing scrawled “NO D of E” boards. How mean. What an introduction for urban kids to rural England. Matthew Parris Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT 2009-07-02T03:05:44Z There’s a rude word that won’t appear in this column. As a child your columnist was taught to avoid it. The word begins with l, and the three-letter version means untruth. The four-letter version describes someone who habitually tells untruths. These terms should hang in the air, on the tip of my argument’s tongue, tantalisingly unarticulated. They should hang unvoiced, too, above the figure of our present Prime Minister. Matthew Parris Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:41 GMT 2009-07-02T03:05:50Z A new poll published on Monday raises eyebrows. Just when Belfast is in the news for those disgraceful attacks on Romanians, this poll claims it's the friendliest city in the United Kingdom. Almost a third of respondents there said they were likely to talk daily to their neighbours, compared with a tenth in Edinburgh. Nearly a fifth thought their neighbours friends (one in a hundred thought so in London). How, commentators have asked, do you square this with violence against the Romanians? Matthew Parris Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT 2009-06-19T07:20:42Z This latest turn in the tale of our MPs’ expenses is intolerable. What blithering, blethering idiots. Have the Commons authorities and their black ink contrived deliberately to twist the knife into these pathetic parliamentarians? Now the MPs mumble something about being warned by the authorities that if they had stuck their necks out and published their uncensored expenses independently they’d be infringing the Data Protection Act.