Ed West

Two thousand years after St Paul’s birth Syria is still home to a thriving Christian centre where Christ’s language is spoken, finds Ed West
From The Catholic Herald 
10 July 2009
Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision: “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the [...]

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Daily Telegraph blogs
 
As my colleague Damian Thompson has reported, the taxpayer-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission has spent your money putting together a Muslim Women Power List 2009.
If the exercise was to show how much enterprise and initiative Muslim women have brought to new Britain, how come the list is full of public-sector quangocrats and academics? Look [...]

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Daily Telegraph blogs
I never saw the point of lap-dancing clubs. Why not just go to a brothel? I wouldn’t go to a pub where I could only look at the beer, nor a restaurant where I sat there salivating over food before being kicked out by some Russian bouncers. I hate to compare women with [...]

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Daily Telegraph blogs
 
One of my favourite expressions of all time is “the silly led by the sinister”, coined by Julie Burchill to describe the February 15, 2003 London marchagainst the Iraq War. Alongside the usual loopy commie throwbacks, Islamist grievance-mongers and Quakers were the much larger “not in my name” crowd, consisting of hundreds of thousands of [...]

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Catholic Herald
March 20
Waiting for the Etonians
By Nick Cohen
4th Estate, £12.99
Something big happened in British politics in this last decade, a shift of a large but still unknown magnitude that may result in the end of the modern Left and a new world of strange alliances. 
The European Left may have endured the absolute failure of [...]

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Daily Telegraph blogs
 
Proof that Catholicism really is a masochist’s religion with this week’s Total Politics survey of religious affiliation and politics. Whereas Anglicans still favour the Tory Party over Labour, by 32 per cent to 23, Catholics stand by the son of the manse, with 29 per cent of those surveyed still supporting the party, and [...]

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Telegraph blogs
 
I think most of you will agree with the Local Government Association that the English language can do without “best practice”, “core value”, “dialogue” (as a verb), “outcomes”, “synergies” and 200 other jargon words they have asked councils not to use.
This style of language is usually called business-speak or management-speak, and it began with the [...]

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On Telegraph blogs
 
I know that the St Patrick’s Day celebrations in the United States are a lot of blarney, or as they call it over there, bull***t. It’s a chance for a lot of Americans to get drunk and sentimental about their Irish roots and try a pint of Guinness, before spitting it out and [...]

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On Telegraph blogs
 
If Sharon Shoesmith really feels “suicidal” about her status as public enemy number two (Laughing Freddie Goodwin will need to do something quite spectacular before he loses the number one slot), then she has a funny way of going about making herself more popular - suing for sexual discrimination and claiming up to £1 [...]

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I’m now writing a blog for the Daily Telegraph.
 
 
 
Who would have thought it? A Government scheme to reduce obesity has been a spectacular failure. Darn it, I was sure this one would work.

The Sure Start scheme was launched in 1998 and has cost £3 billion, enough to buy two months’ gym membership for everyone in [...]

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