Alexander's blog

If Classical and Romantic music revolves around the tonic-dominant polarity, one gets the distinct impression that whoever writes on such subjects in The Times favours the gin-dominant polarity instead.

In general, the effrontery of our journalists in passing bold judgment on subjects with which they’re barely familiar is most refreshing. But whenever they display this tendency to enlarge on topics dear to one’s heart, alarm bells begin to chime loudly and discordantly.

A brave, courageous, gallant, valiant, freedom-loving, democracy-supporting [insert your own modifier] Syrian rebel Khalid al-Hamad has had to resort to desperate measures.

Driven to distraction by Assad’s stubbornness and the West’s meanness, he has decided to emphasise the plight of Syrian democracy-fighters by using every advantage of modern technology.

The Washington Post has published a survey by two Swedish economists bent on finding out which countries are more racist than others.

The survey asked respondents in more than 80 countries to identify kinds of people they wouldn’t want as neighbours. The Swedes then calculated the percentage of those choosing ‘people of a different race’ and drew earth-shattering conclusions.

More than half of his backbenchers have effectively told Dave his EU policy is rubbish, some in as many words. Add to this the growing threat of UKIP, now polling 50 percent higher than Dave’s coalition partners, and Dave must feel some drastic move is called for.

Call me a lowbrow ignoramus, but I like a good spy yarn – especially since the best purveyors of this genre can write rings around the pretentious stuff knocked off by our lionised literati like Hilary Mantel.

At their best John Le Carré or his American near-namesake Charles McCarry can match any contemporary novelist in verve, style, characterisation, psychological insight. They can also devise a complex yet utterly believable plot with the best of them (Mr Conan Doyle, ring your office).

Before running out onto the track, an athlete always stretches and warms up. Before going to his cello in the morning, Pablo Casals always played two preludes and fugues from Bach’s 48.

Devoid of either athletic or musical talent, I warm up for my daily exertions at the computer by playing a few mindless mind games. Polygons, codewords, crosswords, that sort of thing. This seldom shifts my mind into sixth gear, but at least it gets it out of first.

Tory backbenchers are swarming around Dave like sharks smelling blood. Dave was badly wounded by the burgeoning support for UKIP, and he has made the bleeding worse by his typical shilly-shallying.

Class war rages on: Lord Adonis, the former Labour schools minister, thinks it’s ‘seriously disabling for pupils attending fee-paying schools that they see so little of society.’

It’s not only the poor rich tots who suffer. For this ‘segmentation of the professional classes, systematically, from the rest of society by means of education’ has been ‘debilitating for social cohesion and national, social and economic success’.

Not only does Nadine Dorries have the Tories over the barrel, but she also lights up the path many will probably tread.

Since UKIP’s success in the local elections, the Tories, especially those of a 'so-called' variety, see it as a serious threat. The threat would be upgraded from serious to deadly if UKIP could become a parliamentary party, and Dave is quaking in his trainers.

According to my Dutch friends, debates about medical services aren’t unique to Britain. Their system is different from ours, as the Dutch are still resisting the forward-looking, progressive idea of wholesale nationalisation. Obviously they, with their Germanic good sense, know what’s good for them, and it isn’t progress.

Yet the giant smelter otherwise known as the EU breeds uniformity. Hence the odd scandal in Amsterdam that looks as if it could just as easily have happened in Leeds.