Commentariat

Telegraph Opinion

Craig Brown anticipates the headlines for 2009 - and it’s going to be an all-singing, all-dancing time.

Justin Marozzi finds time to salsa amid the sirens and window-rattling helicopters of Baghdad.

The sale of a 63-volume Bible for £55,000 was a thumping great clue in a detective trail to a scandal over which church people are still fuming, writes Christopher Howse.

Alex Salmond has given Labour notice of the issue with which he intends to bash them in the 2011 Holyrood election, notes Alan Cochrane.

“I am very happy with the decision”, enthused Lance Bombardier Kerry Fletcher last Wednesday when an Employment Tribunal ruled that she had been sexually harassed and then victimised by the army. The Tribunal ordered the Ministry of Defence to pay £186,896 in compensation

The fall in uptake of the MMR vaccine has led to a rise in measles, writes Cassandra Jardine

About 400,000 trips a year are made by Britons of Pakistani origin to their ancestral homeland, notes Philip Johnston. There is no way of preventing Islamists using this route.

Mary Riddell says Her Majesty plans to be a figurehead for the nation during the impending recession.

George Pitcher argues there is little point to victim impact statements, no matter how harrowing.

Bryony Gordon is becoming quite used to being robbed of her possessions, given that it seems to happen about once a year.

Adam Edwards says we are in the last-chance saloon for the traditional local.

Is “Scotland’s Oil” still playing, given the huge fluctuations in oil prices this year, out there with the voters? Alan Cochrane doubts it.

Conditions in India have created an ideal breeding ground for Islamist terrorism, writes Peter Foster.

The Queen has called on her family to avoid all public displays of affluence during the recession, acutely aware that subjects who can’t sleep for fear of losing their jobs could do without pictures of carefree young princes falling out of Mayfair night clubs.

In today’s emergency Commons debate on the Budget, the Conservative party must do what the country wants and dwell not on how we got into this hole - but on how they intend to get us out of it.

Instead of driving us further into penury, the Chancellor should announce he is scrapping the ID scheme because he cannot justify the estimated expense of £5.8bn over 10 years.

There has never been such an opportunity to win the hearts and minds of British voters since Mrs Thatcher’s great campaign in 1979, says Simon Heffer.

A new generation is in danger of being swamped by Gordon Brown’s soaring taxes, says Peter Hoskin.

However, Conservative proposals to cut government spending are likely to have better long-term consequences, argues Irwin Stelzer.

There’s something drastically awry in the world when social workers are dismissed for forwarding tasteless emails but keep their jobs when a child in their care dies, says Rowan Pelling.

Why, asks Liz Hunt, did Gordon Ramsey pose for pictures outside his house looking chastened with wife Tana looking like she wants to castrate him following allegations of his seven-year affair?

The UN is caught in such a thicket of regulations and constraints - and such a snake-pit of mistrust - that it cannot possibly be effective, says David Blair in Goma.

Monday’s pre-Budget report dealt the New Labour project a fatal blow. Andrew Pierce catalogues its final days

Monday’s pre-Budget report dealt the New Labour project a fatal blow. Andrew Pierce catalogues its final days

The retirement this week of two of the Metropolitan Police force’s most senior officers goes to the heart of much that is wrong with the public sector today..