The best place to live in, according to International Living’s Quality of Life index this year, is apparently France, and the United Kingdom has dropped to 25th place.
France is the best place to live in for the fifth year running. The magazine says that the country’s “tiresome bureaucracy and high taxes are outweighed by an unsurpassable quality of life, including the world’s best health care”.
Second place to live in is Australia,famous …

The United Kingdom is 12th in this year’s Prosperity Index, measured by wealth and happiness, dragged down by low scores for education, health, domestic security and levels of personal freedom.
The Legatum Prosperity Index ranks 104 countries, covering 90 per cent of the world’s population. The table is based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth with detailed measures of happiness and quality of life.
The UK came second in the world for entrepreneurship and innovation …

Apparently Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond is getting desperate over the non-existent support for Scottish independence, so now he has promised that Scots would be allowed to keep British citizenship if Scotland became independent.
The left-wing Scottish National Party (SNP) administration at Holyrood has for the first time raised the concept of people holding “dual citizenship” following Scottish independence, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Opposition parties said the promise was Salmond’s most desperate attempt yet to convince a …

The Union Flag has been banned from Britain’s new identity card in case it offends the nationalist community in Northern Ireland, the Daily Mail reports.
The cards will feature the royal coat of arms, alongside discreet images of a rose, thistle shamrock and daffodil representing the four countries of the UK.
A Government impact assessment states that the ID cards must respect the “identity rights” of Irish nationalists in Ulster, meaning that the designers “sought to avoid …

The number of antisemitic hate crimes against the Jewish community in the UK reached an unprecedented high in the first half of 2009, the Jerusalem Post reports.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity which monitors antisemitism and provides security for the Jewish community in Britain, recorded 609 antisemitic incidents across the UK from January to June this year, over double the 276 incidents recorded for the same period last year.
The charity said that this is …

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos will tbe the first Spanish minister to visit the UK dependancy of Gibraltar since 1704 when the territory became British under the Treaty of Utrecht.
Moratinos is going to meet his British counterpart David Miliband and Gibraltar’s chief minister Peter Caruana tomorrow, Reuters reports.
Spain ceded Gibraltar to Britain under a treaty signed in 1704, but has long maintained the rocky peninsula should be returned to Spanish sovereignty. Gibraltar’s government wants …

Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, has warned that the fear of terrorism is being exploited by the Government to erode civil liberties and risks creating a police state.
Dame Stella accused ministers of interfering with people’s privacy and playing straight into the hands of terrorists.
“Since I have retired I feel more at liberty to be against certain decisions of the Government, especially the attempt to pass laws which interfere with people’s privacy,” Dame …

Dutch Parliament member Geert Wilders who was deported yesterday from Britain for no real reason is considering suing British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith:
The legal action would have the backing of the Dutch Government, in a move which could aggravate the diplomatic row over the ban between London and Amsterdam.
Mr Wilders said he was looking to take legal action against the Home Secretary for “blatant discrimination” in …