Before last Autumn few people had heard of Res Non Dom tax status. Essentially what it means is that people legitimately working in the UK who were born overseas and whose principal place of residence for most of their lives is beyond these shores, ensure that their non-UK earnings are not taxed in the UK as well as in their overseas home. If you worked abroad you would hope to be treated so

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The Football Association announced this week that it is considering taking bids from major global cities for English Premiership football matches to be held overseas.

There is something deeply unpleasant about this. Most of us have a deep affinity for a football team; I've been an Aston Villa supporter all my life, as were my father and grandfather. Villa Park is just two miles from where for more

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Tonight the Conservative Party held the National Excellence Awards. This is the one occasion during the year when the Party Leader is able to thank in a nationally recognised way all those hard working volunteers who give their time to the service of their Party and the Nation.

The brainchild of Party vice-chairman Don Porter, and organised by my fellow vice-president Emma Pidding, this was a

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Politics is a pretty unpleasant business.

The British media and political establishment have been beating themselves up about supposed corruption in finances surrounding politics for years. Fifteen years ago Neil Hamilton, never quite the sharpest tool in the box and perhaps a fool, was made to resign for failing to declare £667. It was a grubby episode, and was perhaps the start of the demise of

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Michael Gove is absolutely right to draw attention to the misleading spin weaved by Gordon Brown on language teaching. The Prime Minister has arrived in Beijing calling for Mandarin to be taught in all British schools. Yet last year only two British university students graduated in Mandarin Chinese. So how is he going to deliver on that one? Shei shei ni, Gordon.

Yet Britain does have an

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The US presidential election starts in earnest today. Its the world's most complex and testing democratic process, and almost uniquely this year a sitting president or vice-president will not be a candidate. Which leaves the election wide open. My undergraduate degree was in American Studies, and I focused particularly on the presidential election process. I find this fascinating.

I had expected

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What a contrast between a hero and a coward.

This morning on the BBC's Andrew Marr show the splendid Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, cut up his dog collar in protest at Robert Mugabe's destruction of the identity of the people and civil society in Zimbabwe. Sentamu, a former Bishop of Birmingham, was born in Uganda. His principalled stand contrasts strongly with the abject cowardice of the

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Along with four colleagues, the Bishop of Birmingham, and about 200 others, I spent last night sleeping rough on the streets of Birmingham to raise awareness of and some funds for St Basils.

And it was cold, and wet. The pavement was hard and cardboard turns to mush in rain. As so many less well constructed boxes blew away leaving occupants with no home for the night, I was once again, relieved

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This morning I visited HMP Acklington in Northumberland as part of the annual British-American Project conference. I'd never been to a prison before, and was somewhat concerned by how I would react on being inside a Category C prison, and how it would feel to meet men who are imprisoned there.

We were warned before we went to remember that we were going inside inside these inmates' home, and we

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This government has an appalling track record on pensions. Clearly it does not understand how removing tax credits on dividends undermined the pensions of tens of thousands of people.

And now it is at it again.

The PPF Levy is designed to protect pensioners of Defined Benefit Schemes for companies that have weak balance sheets. But the reality is that it is another tax that puts yet more pressure

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