What the Papers Say

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Telegraph:

Britain has been turned into a banana republic

Simon Heffer

Did you, like me, listen in increasing amazement to a pair of interviews on the Today programme on Thursday? They were with Paul Hayes, the chief executive of the National Treatment Agency - an absurdly named body that seeks (and, in 94 per cent of cases, fails) to rehabilitate the nation's growing army of junkies - and his boss, the health minister Dawn Primarolo. full article >>

Times:

Jonathan Sacks

Multiculturalism has run its course, and it is time to move on. It was a fine, even noble idea in its time. It was designed to make ethnic and religious minorities feel more at home, more appreciated and respected, and therefore better able to mesh with the larger society. It affirmed their culture. It gave dignity to difference. And in many ways it achieved its aims. Britain is a more open, diverse, energising, cosmopolitan environment than it was when I was growing up

full article >>

Science is no stranger to controversy. The pursuit of discovery, of knowledge, is often uncomfortable and disconcerting. I have never been one to shy away from stating what I believe to be the truth, however difficult it might prove to be. This has, at times, got me in hot water.

full article >>

Times:

Matthew Parris

The mistake was promising a referendum in the first place. There never was a sound case, properly rooted in the way we conduct our politics in Britain, for any referendum, ever, on anything to do with the EU ? including joining it. In the UK we elect governments to make these decisions; we expect party election manifestos to warn us in advance of the really big ones. We ask Parliament to decide.

guardian:

EU deal will last a decade, says Brown
· PM promises debate but not referendum · Relief as leaders reach agreement after six years.
Patrick Wintour and 

Ian Traynor in Lisbon
Saturday October 20, 2007
Gordon Brown yesterday moved to quell the backlash against his refusal to hold a referendum on the new European Union treaty by declaring that the deal struck in Lisbon would rule out any further EU reform for at least a decade.

"I will not support further institutional change," he said at the end of the Lisbon summit, which concluded more than six years of wrangling and finally agreed a new treaty reforming the way the union is run so that it is fit to function with 27 member states.

full item >>

Telegraph:

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