In so far as New Labour has a fairy godmother, Polly is the girl. She incarnates all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess of Blai… - Polly Toynbee

No-one is suggesting banning gambling or casinos, any more than I would ban pornography, or drugs or all manner of things that might do people harm. But there is an important social difference between freedom to do what adults please if they deliberately seek out those things from regulated places - and aggressively thrusting them at everyone in everyday life.

We might let Auberon Waugh rest in peace were it not for the mighty damage his clan has done to British political life, journalism and discourse in the postwar years. They have perpetuated the myth of the superior cultured English gent as an archetype. Although Waugh's loathing of American culture made him uniquely amongst this bunch a pro-European, (he loved to be a "maverick"), this coterie has lead the spirit of anti-Europeanism that pervades Tory party and country. Christopher Booker, Richard Ingrams and the rest posit a brave little England of crusty country-living upper-class eccentrics versus the dread (another of their words) bureaucracy of Brussels. It's the old world charm of Whisky Galore mischief-making and John Buchan plucky patriots against the humourless foreign swine. They have contributed to a nation afraid of change or modernity, peddling false, sentimental tradition and an upper-class yesterday unavailable to virtually everyone else.

He came from a public school, was the son of an old student of the dean ... [and] the only one with a distinctly sour school report.
He was a big shambling clumsy looking young man. When asked, he said he had already been guaranteed an unconditional place at his father's hospital "Well, they could hardly turn you down. Could they?" said the Dean drily. ... Picking up the report, which indicated laziness... [d]id he really want to be a doctor? "Yes, I'm dead serious." What sort of doctor? "A country GP working on my own. I couldn't stick the routine of hospital life" ... [After the candidate left, the Dean and Consultant surgeon conducting the interviews discussed him] "What do you think?" the Dean asked the surgeon. "I knew his father, and he was just the same, but he's a very good doctor now." The surgeon laughed. "I would say that under no circumstances whatever would I admit him if it wasn't that you knew his father and you say he was the same." The Dean said, "Well, I'm happy to have him." I was surprised at the decision.