Melanie Phillips

The Gambling Bill is rapidly turning into a train wreck. There is widespread concern and disgust among religious and charitable organisations, and overwhelming opposition from the public.

Published in: Daily Mail

The question 'When did you stop beating your wife?' is a well known rhetorical device to illustrate the impossible situation in which whatever answer someone gives traps them into an admission of guilt.

Now the government appears to have updated this for the modern era with the question: 'When did you stop getting beat

Published in: Daily Mail

The Home Secretary let it be known this week that he intends to abolish the law of blasphemy, at the same time as introducing a new crime of incitement to religious hatred.

Abolishing blasphemy is long overdue.

Published in: Jewish Chronicle

Today's Tomlinson report on education for 14-19 year-olds is supposed to conjure up a solution to the problems enmeshing GCSE and A-level. But in truth, it is more likely to presage the destruction of the very concept of examinations and of education itself.

Published in: Daily Mail

You really don't know whether to laugh or cry. Tristram Jones-Parry is headmaster of Westminster, one of this country's most formidable independent schools and where Euan and Nicky Blair received private coaching.

Published in: Daily Mail

What a commentary on our political culture.

Published in: Daily Mail

Three years ago, a handful of gypsy families moved onto land they bought in Chichester, West Sussex, in open defiance of the planning laws.

Published in: Daily Mail

This week, Tony Blair will try to counter the impression that the British Prime Minister has somehow become mislaid in Iraq. It's a daunting task.

Day after day, bad news from Iraq dominates the newspaper front pages and TV bulletins.

Published in: Daily Mail

Panel contribution at debate held at the Imperial War Museum among contributors to 'Authors Take Sides on Iraq and the Gulf War', published byCecil Woolf Publishers.

When the war in Iraq started, I believed that it was legally justified and morally imperative. Saddam posed a threat to the world.

Published in: Miscellaneous

The Turkish government recently announced that it intended to make adultery a criminal offence. This was not altogether surprising, since the Turkish government adheres to the principles of Islam, under whose laws adultery is a crime punishable by flogging or execution.

Published in: Melanie's Blog

One of the hallmarks of a free society is that deciding whether or not to have children is a private matter, of interest solely to the prospective parents. It should be of no concern whatsoever to the government.

Published in: Daily Mail

The Prime Minister's difficulties appear to deepen by the day. Far from dying down, the Hunting Bill furore threatens to escalate into a sustained campaign of civil disobedience.

Published in: Daily Mail

Having just spent some time in America, I'm afraid I've come back with stars and stripes in my eyes. For the short period I was there I felt as if I could breathe again, a relief that evaporated as soon as I touched down at Heathrow.

It wasn't just that New York, where I was for part of the time, is such a Jewish city.

Published in: Jewish Chronicle

We British are, in so many ways, the most fortunate of people. We live in unprecedented prosperity, during the most developed age for mankind and in one of the most advanced and free societies on the planet. Yet the evidence suggests that our children are experiencing an unprecedented degree of misery and distress.

Published in: Daily Mail

The government's priorities are clear.

Published in: Daily Mail

Suddenly, a far-away country about which most of us know little has shot to the very forefront of our minds and consciences. In a new century already steeped in horror, what happened at the Russian school in Beslan plumbs new depths of barbarity.

Published in: Daily Mail

We journalists spend much of our lives highlighting the iniquities and other intolerable acts visited by our fellow human beings upon each other. So much is, sadly, all too necessary. What we are much less good at, however, is showing the good that people do.

Published in: Jewish Chronicle

The complete archive of articles is now live on this site. Use the archive menu on the left-hand side to browse.

Published in: Miscellaneous

After all the trouble with the MMR vaccine, you would think that the government would bend over backwards to prevent another crisis of confidence the next time it decided to introduce a new vaccine for children.

Published in: Daily Mail

Only a woman at the very pinnacle of her profession could dare say this.

According to Professor Carol Black, president of the prestigious Royal College of Physicians, the medical profession is in danger of losing power and influence because it is becoming dominated by too many women.

Published in: Daily Mail