Kent points to reforms to peel back the welfare state in 1994 as to why the country will lead the continent out of its sovereign debt crisis

Just popped inside, wifey’s watching a cooking show (not feeling well) and I heard the presenter asking a chef: “Why would I peel a fig?” My assumption is for the same reason we peel cows really.

Political problems lurking behind confused messages could endanger the survival of Merkel's coalition, writes Quentin Peel

Focusing like a laser on the key issue, as ever, liberals have decided that the real problem with law and order breaking down is that it encourages ordinary people to defend their communities. Oh sure, they're all for it when the defenders are exotically ethnic, but when the white trash get involved, why, that could ruin the riot for everybody. Liberals claim to be terrified by the prospect of peo...

Contagion in sovereign debt that is spreading from Greece to Italy could scarcely have come at a more perilous moment for Germany, says Quentin Peel

There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics. - Robert Peel...

Some time ago a TV ad reported the bemusement amongst Martians at human behaviour with mashed potato. They fell over themselves laughing at how we humans grow potatoes in the ground, collect them, peel them, boil them in water, cut them up and then smash them to pieces before eating them. Very bizarre behaviour! Martians

"But his [Peel's] chosen remedy for widespread poverty was already apparent. It did not lie in changing the Poor Law, or reducing factory hours through a Ten Hour Bill, or in accepting the irrelevant political demands of the Chartists. Still less did it consist in commissioning that engine of public welfare and State guidance of the economy to which we became accustomed in the twentieth centu...

PCS fringe meeting at Labour conference will be in the Peel room (floor G) in the Radisson hotel at 6pm on Monday - discussion will be the alternative to public spending cuts, based on PCS’s economic strategy www.pcs.org.uk/altdoc

By Kevin Peel Another day, another Liberal Democrat defection. As a result of the coalition agreement, hundreds of Lib-Dems have torn up their membership cards and joined the Labour Party. This is in large part due to Nick Clegg’s decision to help the Conservatives steer their ideologically-driven juggernaut through the heart of the public sector under