Wednesday 27 August 2014

If the Catholic blogosphere is to survive then our bloggers must become more Catholic



If the Catholic blogosphere is to survive then our bloggers must become more Catholic

If Catholic blogging is limited to Vatican politics and the personality of the Pope then it will run out of steam.

By on Tuesday, 26 August 2014

'Pope Francis beatified 124 Korean Catholic martyrs but it was not given adequate attention in the blogosphere'  (CNS)
'Pope Francis beatified 124 Korean Catholic martyrs but it was not given adequate attention in the blogosphere' (CNS)


Nearly five years ago, I started a Catholic blog that has been modestly successful. The high-point was when I was invited to the Vatican Blogmeet in May 2011. During those exhilarating days of Benedict’s pontificate, bloggers raised their voices in support of the German Pope.
Now the voices are going quiet. Talking to my fellow bloggers, they say that their minds are occupied with spiteful thoughts on Church politics. Some have taken an unfair personal dislike to Pope Francis, and this aversion has coloured their blogging to such an extent that they fall into two categories: blogging to critique the Pope or not blogging at all. If Catholic blogging is limited to Vatican politics and the personality of the Pope, then it will always run out of steam.
In response to the “there’s nothing to blog about” grumble, why are some grand occasions being ignored outright by the Catholic blogosphere? For instance, just over a week has passed since August 16 when Pope Francis beatified 124 Korean Catholic martyrs. Their beatification was not given adequate attention on the blogosphere.
Martyrs will make a difficult subject if you don’t like writing about blood-spilling. There’s always the alternative of blogging about saints who were not put to death because of their faith. Even in modern time, saints like St Therese of Lisieux have a remarkable popularity. Showcasing the good works done by Catholic saints also helps improve our image and grabs the attention of non-Catholics who, for example, might urgently need prayer for an illness.
My most successful blog posts have not been about papal politics but about Padre Pio. There are times when I find it hard on my nerves to write about Padre Pio because had he met me, I don’t think he would think well of me. But readers continually say they are “very grateful” because they find that reading about Padre Pio helps them cope with their personal hardships.
As regards bloggers who are “low on inspiration”, perhaps they could devote their energy to myth busting? This takes patience and fortitude, but surely there is little excuse to be idle when by and large our society has such bewildered ideas about our faith. We have a missionary faith, and the Church exists for the aim of saving souls. Being Catholic means doing what we can – including using our blogs to bring back the lapsed and attract converts.

Ironically enough, Catholic blogging will have to become more richly Catholic to survive.


Tuesday 26 August 2014

“No Complaints”: An Interview with Pete Best, the Original Drummer of the Beatles


“No Complaints”: An Interview with Pete Best, the Original Drummer of the Beatles

By Zachary Stockill
Randolph Peter Best cuts an unassuming figure onstage. Wearing a white moustache, a frizzled taft of white hair, a boyish grin and drooping eyes, today he looks more like a retired auto mechanic than a former Beatle. Still, watching him perform at a tiny music club in a suburb of Santiago, Chile, one couldn’t help being moved by his affection for live music, the apparent zeal with which he plays the drums, and his almost-embarrassed response to the crowd’s adulation. His humility makes it clear that he is no rock star, which is a big reason why Pete Best is so easy to like.

Best has experienced both incredible highs, and devastating lows over his 72 years on this planet, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it by speaking with him today. Offstage he is soft spoken, friendly and just a little bit guarded; he describes himself, above all else, as a simple “family man”. When he opened his mouth to answer my questions, revealing an unmistakeable Liverpool accent, I couldn’t help but think: “He really sounds like a Beatle.” But at the same time Pete Best is obviously not a Beatle – lacking the swagger, ego, and commanding presence common to each of his famous former bandmates.

Between 1960 and 1962 Pete was the drummer of a well-travelled, but so far mostly unsuccessful British rock and roll act called variously Johnny and the Moondogs, The Silver Beetles, and, finally, The Beatles. For over two years he held the beat for John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison in dank clubs in the red light district of Hamburg, Germany, playing marathon sets to audiences consisting mostly of strippers and sailors. After honing their craft in Germany, the band returned home to Liverpool where they soon became the city’s top-drawing act, acquiring a ravenous local fan base in the process. And then, one August afternoon, on the cusp of the band’s ascendancy to national stardom, John, Paul, and George instructed Beatles manager Brian Epstein to fire Pete and replace him with a different Liverpool drummer named Ringo Starr. And just like that, Pete was no longer a Beatle, in the process becoming forever confined to the footnotes of rock ‘n’ roll history.

The reasons for the Beatles’ dismissal of Best have always been unclear. Some suggest that Pete had fallen out of favour with the rest of the band on account of his introversion; others claim that Ringo was simply a better drummer; some even claim that John and Paul were insecure about Pete’s good looks and popularity with the fans outshining their own. Whatever the reason, on the eve of Beatlemania, Best suddenly found himself to be out of work, missing out on perhaps the greatest party of all time in the process.

In the months and years that followed, John, Paul, George, and Ringo would ascend to previously-unimagined levels of global fame, wealth, and commercial and critical success. Shortly after they sacked Pete, the Beatles achieved the impossible: they became even bigger than Elvis, an insane pipe-dream for the youngsters while sweating it out in Hamburg just a couple of years before.

Following his dismissal from the Beatles, Best tried to make a name for himself in music, but found limited success. Eventually, he returned to Liverpool and settled into a career as a civil servant; he wasn’t playing on the Ed Sullivan Show or rubbing shoulders with the Queen, but at least he could pay the bills. And then, after shying away from the spotlight for 20 years, in the late 1980s Pete began to play various Beatles-related engagements. Rediscovering his passion for live performance in the process, the drummer soon founded his own Pete Best Band, and has toured all over the world for the past three decades.

Backstage in Santiago, I was curious to get to know Pete the human being, as opposed to Pete the ex-Beatle. How does a man cope with such unimaginable disappointment? How does a musician come to terms with losing one of the most coveted gigs of all time? How does someone deal with what I assumed to be a lifetime of incredulous “What if’s?”

I found many of the answers I’d been looking for when I sat down with Pete following his performance. As songs from his old friend Lennon emanated from nearby speakers—“(Just Like) Starting Over,” “Imagine” and others—I discovered a man not defeated by bitterness and disappointment, but hopeful about the future, and genuinely content with a life devoted to family, and the music he loves.

* * *

Some of the songs you played tonight you played in Germany with the Beatles over 50 years ago. What’s it like playing those songs again?

You still get a buzz from them, because at the end of the day they were great rock ‘n’ roll songs. Some of them I haven’t played for 50 years; you get a buzz off it simply because of the fact that it’s part of your heritage. People expect it from you. And you enjoy playing it… Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Ray Charles... I could go on and on. They were our heroes, so to keep them still alive even though it’s under the pseudonym of “The Beatles,” it’s still the old rockers from way back. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be here.

So [those old songs] still feel fresh?

Oh, very much so. It’s a little bit like the audience makes it fresh. You may have played the song 50 times, but you still enjoy playing it when the enjoyment comes from the audience, and the adrenaline keeps flowing. It’s a good night… very simple.

You didn’t play very much for a while in the ‘60s and ‘70s. What made you want to start playing for people again?

I’d been asked for many years to get up and play so people could see what I could do, and see who this guy was… “This mysterious guy who used to play with the Beatles.” [laughs] And I kept turning them down. Then, in 1988, I got asked by the people running a Beatles convention in Liverpool, and I couldn’t get out of it… So I said “OK, let’s get it over and done with.” I picked some friends from the old days, and my younger brother [to play with], and said “Let’s have some fun. It’s going to be a one-off [performance]. Let’s just go out and show ‘em what we could do.” And we did, and the audience went wild. Absolutely wild.

My mother was there that particular night because it was the first time that she’d seen her younger son and her elder son playing onstage at the same time. And when I finished she turned around and said “Pete, you don’t know it but you’re going to be going back into show business.” To which I laughed, and said “No, it’s only a one-off.” And here I am, 30 years afterward! [laughs]

So she was right.

Yeah, she was right.

When I was watching you play tonight, you looked like you were having a lot of fun. I found it inspiring.

If you can’t have fun, then don’t go back on the stage. It’s as simple as that. Simple rule in music: people feel what you’re presenting onstage. And if you’re not enjoying yourself, it comes out in the music. No matter [if] you try to disguise it.

At the end of the day you wouldn’t be where you are without that audience, and you have to thank them for it. The only way you can thank them is [by] making sure your performance is 100%. Simple rules.

What do you see your future looking like? Do you have plans?

When you reach my age… [laughs] you still have plans, but they’re not long-term. I still want to continue playing music, and bringing enjoyment to crowds. I have no ambitions to get a record in the charts or anything like that. My mission is to bring enjoyment to fans, and I enjoy playing music to them, and I’ll continue doing that.

Away from the public, I’m a great family man. And as much as I tour, I love going back home again. I have a wife who I idolize, been married to her for 50 years. I have grandchildren who I idolize as well, two beautiful daughters. It’s nice for me to go back home, and spend time with them.

Have you let go of any disappointment you had about the original disagreement with [the Beatles] in 1962? Is there any lingering bitterness there?

There never was any [bitterness]. Bitterness is a word the media picked up. There was anger and there was resentment because of what happened and the way it happened, because of the way I contributed to the band, but bitterness, no.

It’s like anything else, if you carry it with you, you’re going to end up a bitter and twisted old git. And there’s no need for that. I’ve enjoyed life. There came a time when I was like “Fine. It’s not about thinking about what happened yesterday, it’s about today and tomorrow.” And I think once you come to terms about yourself, then you realize that there’s so much more that your future holds for you, as opposed to your past, that you’re striving for.

My life since then had ups and downs; it hasn’t been a perfect life. But when I look back on it now, I wouldn’t change it. I’m happy, I’m healthy, I have a great band which tours the world. I’m a great family man, I love meeting people, I love laughing and joking with them. I’m still in show business, which I didn’t expect to be.

But maybe my karma; it’s a word we use, being born out east [Author’s note: Best was born in British India, and lived there until the age of 5]. Karma’s a word we use an awful lot. Maybe my karma turned ‘round and said “Your time will come some time in the future.”

I have no complaints, I’ve enjoyed life. Wouldn’t change anything.

Monday 25 August 2014

Why are so many priests alcoholics?

The downfall of many clerics  (PA)
The downfall of many clerics (PA)


By on Monday, 25 August 2014


Why are so many priests alcoholics?


The story about the continuing misfortunes of Paul Gascoigne are more than the usual article about a “troubled” celebrity, or a star fallen on hard times, with which our culture is so obsessed. Rather it is a reminder of the grief caused by alcoholism. Mr Gascoigne is an alcoholic, and his addiction is clearly ruining him, just as it once ruined George Best. Moreover, Mr Gascoigne’s alcoholism must cause distress to his family and his friends, many of whom, no doubt, have tried repeatedly to help him.
Everyone who has lived inside the institutional church, in a presbytery or a religious house, or a convent, will know about alcoholism, for alcoholism is, historically speaking, often regarded as the curse of the Catholic clergy. I doubt that figures are published or much serious research done into the problem any more, but Catholic priests are more likely to be alcoholic than other men, or so it seem to me. Any attempt to provide scientific backing to such a claim would be bedevilled by the question of just how you measure the incidence of alcoholism. But consider the facts: there are special drying out facilities just for the clergy, or there used to be; the figure of the alcoholic priest is a staple in literature – consider the “whiskey priest” in Graham Green’s The Power and the Glory”, or even Father Jack in the television series Father Ted; and think of all the priests you may have known who drank too much. And count up the times you heard someone, somewhere, utter the line: “Father X is not an alcoholic, he just likes a drink” or one of the variants thereof.
Why are so many priests alcoholic? That is a fairly easy question to answer. There are the pressures of the job, being on call, sometimes for 24 hours a day. There is the simple difficulty of finding it hard to relax without a drink in your hand. There is the culture of drinking that is so common in Catholic milieux: the world of the Catholic social club, or the people always offering you a drink. There is the challenge of loneliness, and the challenge of boredom. And there is the possible genetic predisposition to alcoholism that some of us bear.
Alcoholic priests do enormous damage to the Church. I think that goes without saying. But what does even worse damage is the way the phalanx of people who surround, protect and enable each alcoholic priest (and these people are never absent), who all deny there is a problem. One can see that Fr X is an alcoholic, but he is surrounded by people who refuse to admit that his is true, which introduces into ecclesial discourse the dangerous disconnect with reality which is the source of so many of our problems. If we cannot face the truth of Fr X’s alcoholism, what truths can we face? If we cannot tackle this problem, how will we ever tackle anything?
To tell someone they are an alcoholic is cruel, for it shames them profoundly: it is always shameful to have to acknowledge that you are not free, but rather a slave to your lower impulses. But to leave someone in a state of slavery is much more cruel, and, in the end, will greatly increase the sum of human misery. When a priest drinks too much, that has to be confronted, and the sooner the better. There can be no solution to this or to anything else without acknowledgement of the truth.
Why am I writing this, and why now? Partly it is touched off by the pictures of Paul Gascoigne, but it is also because of a concern which we should all have for the welfare of the clergy. The spotlight on the safeguarding of minors and vulnerable adults, which has taken up much attention in the last two decades, should not deflect us from keeping ourselves alert to other areas of concern as well. As with child welfare, burying our hears in the sand is never a useful way forward. Alcoholism among the clergy was always a problem in the past; and it has not gone away. Denying we have a problem has not helped us in the past, and will only compound this, and other difficulties, we face.

Thursday 21 August 2014

Dawkins has done us a favour by highlighting how dangerous our culture of ‘choice’ really is









Dawkins has done us a favour by highlighting how dangerous our culture of ‘choice’ really is


Richard Dawkins (AP)
Richard Dawkins


If a world cleansed of imperfections is what we wish for then Dawkins, with his Down’s Syndrome outburst, has shown us the way.
By on Thursday, 21 August 2014




Richard Dawkins is not ‘pro-choice’. I know, it surprised me too. Turns out that atheism’s high priest thinks abortion isn’t just a ‘right’ or an ‘option’ – he thinks it’s an obligation. “Abort it. And try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world,” the professor told one of his Twitter cultists when asked what the right thing to do would be should they discover their unborn child has Down’s Syndrome. Charming, eh?
I am not going to spend the rest of this blog espousing my views on abortion. There are many, many others with more wit, sense, style and understanding – I’ll let them continue to slog it out. But what is interesting about Dawkins’ outburst is how neatly it illustrates the imbalance in how we talk about questions of the body and morality in society.
Those who seek to liberalise almost always frame their arguments in the context of ‘choice’. We must be allowed to ‘choose’ whether to carry a child, to ‘choose’ when and where to die – and so on. This is the argument that has won women abortion rights and which will probably win the right to an assisted suicide. And it is a difficult case to contend with for those of us with deep misgivings – it taps directly into humanity’s vanity about itself. It paints us as free, rugged and self-actualising. Not for us the petty constraints of nature. No, we can ‘choose’.
That’s a pretty attractive offer. And it also, helpfully, has an inbuilt defence mechanism against opposition. Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one. Don’t believe in assisted suicide? Don’t do it then. Disapprove of gay marriage? Don’t marry a man. Because we’re all free floating, autonomous Ayn Rand characters our decisions don’t affect anyone else – you see? Of course, some of us know that this isn’t true. Society is an ecosystem that is as finely balanced, precarious and complex as the most imperiled coral reef. And what we choose to do does have an impact – on institutions, on our community, on the society that has nurtured us into existence. That doesn’t mean that change is always wrong, that we must preserve all that our parents left us in aspic. But it does mean that progress should be made in conversation with our traditions and with respect for the wisdom of those who weaved the fabric of our civilisation. All that being the case, though, the relentless logic of choice is a tricky thing to stand up against. It is clever, it is seductive and it is popular. And telling people that you’re against them choosing things goes down particularly poorly in 21st Century Britain.
So Professor Dawkins has done us a huge service in his honesty. Because he has pointed out – in the grimmest possible way – that people like him don’t believe in the sanctity of choice anymore than I do. They too believe in obligation and tradition – all that autonomy guff was merely shiny wrapping paper, a canny PR exercise. What starts out as a ‘right’ swiftly becomes a tacit expectation. One day the norm is that you can, if you want, choose to end the life of your unborn, disabled child. The next you are selfish or immoral if you choose not to. And what happens tomorrow? Well tomorrow you are instructed to end its life because the state has determined that it is cruel to let it live. Dawkins has shown us what he and a great many others really believe – that our tradition of the sanctity of life must be replaced with a new tradition of utilitarian eugenics.
This is helpful for two reasons. One, because it frees us of a false and circular argument about choice. It helps us to tell the story of our fears and it helps us to explain that freedom has consequences too. You are not just being gifted new rights, you are being asked to fundamentally change the way society views humanity. You may still be fine with that, but you can’t pretend it is not the case.
Two, it shines a light on the truth about assisted suicide. The people urging this new right upon us do not do so out of hatred for the disabled, the infirm and the old aged. They do so, mostly, with good but misguided intentions. But they cannot be allowed to look away from the impact this seemingly small, apparently harmless, change will have. Today the terminally ill will be allowed to ask for death. Tomorrow they will be expected to. Richard Dawkins will be instructing his followers that they are selfish for clinging to life, that it is immoral to refuse the pill, that they are silly and cruel for not embracing death.
If a world cleansed of imperfections is what we wish for then Dawkins has shown us the way. We can be free of people with Down’s Syndrome. We can shed the burden of the sick, the tired, the sad and the old. All of this is possible. But if, like me, you thought Logan’s Run a dystopian warning rather than a template for the future we should look upon the Professor’s words with a chill down our spine and a new resolve to carry on fighting

Thursday 7 August 2014

Chris Patten keeps failing upwards – now he’s advising the Pope. Poor Pope.



Chris Patten keeps failing upwards – now he’s advising the Pope. Poor Pope.



Chris Patten attends a mass with newly appointed cardinals held by Pope Francis at St Peter's Basilica on February 23, 2014 in Vatican City. Image: Getty
Chris Patten attends a mass with newly appointed cardinals held by Pope Francis at St Peter's Basilica on February 23, 2014 in Vatican City. Image: Getty



There is a wearying inevitability to the announcement that Pope Francis’s reforms of the Vatican media will be overseen by Lord Patten of Barnes. Of course it was going to be him. It always is.
The man defies the laws of political gravity. As Margaret Thatcher’s environment secretary he was responsible for the poll tax. He walked away from the disaster unscathed, explaining that it was nothing to do with him, guv, it was Thatch. As Tory chairman he presided over Major’s 1992 victory but lost his own seat. He was made governor of Hong Kong, where he stood up to China. But he went native with a vengeance as an EU commissioner: according to Denis MacShane, former Europe minister, Patten was so Europhile that he might have been France’s candidate for Commission president in 2004 if only he spoke French.
In 2003 he was elected Chancellor of Oxford University (he read history at Balliol though I can find no reference to his class of degree: if he got a First he has been uncharacteristically modest about it). In 2010 he became chairman of the BBC Trust, in which troubled role he drew heavily on his blame-shifting skills. As Peter Oborne wrote in the Telegraph, ‘the hallmarks of Chris Patten’s chairmanship have been a lack of grip and repeated evasion of responsibility. The grotesque pay-offs made to executives; the incompetence of management; the mishandling of the Jimmy Savile scandal: none of this apparently has anything to do with Lord Patten.’

A risky choice to reinvent the Vatican media, you might think, but you need to remember that Chris Patten is – to use a phrase that even he could translate – impeccably bien pensant. He belongs to a group of well-upholstered ‘progressive’ Catholics, including high-ranking soldiers and diplomats, who would whisper in the ear of the convivial Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor as they passed him the port. Cardinal Cormac, now retired, is still a virtuoso buttonholer of Vatican officials and friendly with the Pope. I’d be amazed if this appointment had nothing to do with him. Cardinal Vincent Nichols will have supported it, too. He owes Chris Patten, big time, after the latter was parachuted in to sort out the incredible balls-up Nichols’s officials made of preparations for Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain.
As president of the committee on Vatican media, however, Patten will report to a cardinal in a very different mould: George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, an Australian ass-kicker who is not only a mate of Tony Abbott but also a climate sceptic who admires the work of our own James Delingpole. Unsurprisingly, Pell is no fan of The Tablet, a magazine for geriatric Catholic lefties whose trustees have included Edward Stourton, Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws QC, the Rt Hon Baroness Williams of Crosby and, it goes without saying, the Rt Hon Lord Patten of Barnes CH. Although Cardinal Pell welcomed Patten’s appointment this week, I suspect he has his doubts. After all, Lord Patten has been close to the heart of the English Catholic Church for decades and has never, to my knowledge, criticised its stupid and wasteful media department or the hijacking of Catholic charities by public-sector lobbyists.
How the Pell-Patten dynamic will work in practice is hard to predict; his lordship is good at forging unlikely alliances. But, whatever happens, we can be sure of one thing: he will walk away from this post, as he has from all the others, sporting his cold and chubby smile and looking for his next sinecure.

Now that Richard Dawkins is attacking Muslims and feminists, the atheist Left suddenly discover he’s a bigot

Now that Richard Dawkins is attacking Muslims and feminists, the atheist Left suddenly discover he’s a bigot

     
Villiers
‘Richard Dawkins, what on earth happened to you?’ asks Eleanor Robertson in the Guardian today. Ms Robertson is a ‘feminist and writer living in Sydney’. She follows to the letter the Guardian’s revised style guide for writing about Prof Dawkins: wring your hands until your fingers are raw, while muttering ‘Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown’.
For some time now Dawkins has been saying rude things about Muslims and feminists. This makes him a bigot in the eyes of the Left — and especially the Guardian, which is extraordinarily and mysteriously protective of Islam. As Robertson puts it:
Sure, he wrote some pop science books back in the day, but why do we keep having him on TV and in the newspapers? If it’s a biologist you’re after, or a science communicator, why not pick from the hundreds out there who don’t tweet five or six Islamophobic sentiments before getting off the toilet in the morning?
Note how The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker — masterpieces of lucid thinking that advanced humanity’s understanding of evolution — have become mere ‘pop science’ now that their author is upsetting the wrong people.
As it happens, I can well believe that the former Oxford Professor for the Public Understanding of Science tweets while sitting on the loo: his outbursts have an incontinent feel to them. ‘Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think,’ he tweeted yesterday. He used the same logic to compare ‘mild’ and ‘violent’ paedophilia.
As for Islam, Dawkins marked the end of Ramadan last year with the observation: ‘All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.’ This tweet was ‘as rational as the rants of an extremist Muslim cleric,’ protested the Guardian.
It’s hard to deny that Dawkins’s ‘secular fundamentalism’ — as liberal commentators now describe it — makes for an embarrassing spectacle. When enraged pensioners pick fights with total strangers, one’s natural reaction is to go and sit somewhere else on the bus.
But Dawkins was just as offensive when his target was Christianity; it’s just that the Left didn’t have a problem with his description of Pope Benedict XVI as a ‘leering old villain in the frock’ who ran ‘a profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution … amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.’
As I said at the time, that article — in the Washington Post, no less — ‘conjures up the image of a nasty old man who’s losing his marbles. It’s not very nice about the Pope, either.’ But Dawkins has not become any crazier in the intervening four years; he’s simply widened his attack on blind faith, as he sees it, to include Muslims and feminists.
In the process, he’s exposed a rich vein of hypocrisy in the Left — and, more significantly, an intellectual rift between hard-line and multiculturalist atheists. That rift is growing fast: non-believers, having exhausted their anti-Christian rhetoric, are turning on each other with the ferocity of religious zealots. Enjoy.

Wednesday 6 August 2014

Will Boris Johnson stand as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?

Will Boris Johnson stand as MP for Uxbridge?






There has been renewed speculation that London mayor Boris Johnson will now that he intends to return to Westminster stand as MP for Uxbridge.


The Conservative MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Sir John Randall, has confirmed he will be stepping down ahead of the general election next year.


Boris Johnson has ended months of speculation today by saying he will "in all probability" seek to become an MP again at next year's general election.


The Conservative said he would also serve out the remainder of his term as London mayor, due to end in 2016.


Prime Minister David Cameron, who has previously said he would welcome a return to the Commons by Mr Johnson, called his decision "great news".


Labour accused Mr Johnson of breaking his promise to Londoners not to stand.


The mayor has been linked with a number of seats, including Uxbridge and South Ruislip, in London, but he said he did not have a particular target in mind at the moment.
'Give it a crack'
There has long been speculation that Mr Johnson will seek a return to Parliament so that he can mount a bid for the Conservative leadership when David Cameron stands down.


The mayor was giving speech on his EU policy when he confirmed his intentions, in response to a question from a journalist.


He told an audience at the Bloomberg headquarters that he had "danced around" the issue "for an awfully long time", adding: "I can't endlessly go on dodging these questions."


line break


The road back to Westminster


Boris Johnson in 2001


To run to become an MP, Boris Johnson would first need to win the nomination of a local Conservative association.


Constituencies where there are possible vacancies include: Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Kensington and Chelsea, Banbury, Henley, South Cambridgeshire, Richmond Park, Bromley, Chislehurst, Beckenham, Louth


line break


"So let me put it this way. I haven't got any particular seat lined up but I do think in all probability I will try to find somewhere to stand in 2015.


"It may all go wrong but I think the likelihood is I am going to have to give it a crack."


Asked if his target seat would be within the M25 or in the north of England, he said: "This is a matter for the (local Conservative) association. I am not going to presume to talk about which seat I might go for."
'Surprised'
His announcement came at the end of a speech in which he said the UK should not be "afraid" of leaving the European Union if Mr Cameron fails to win a substantial renegotiation of the relationship with Brussels.


In March, the prime minister told the Sun newspaper he wanted Mr Johnson back in Parliament by 2015, comparing him to a "great striker you want on the pitch".


Following Mr Johnson's announcement, the prime minister, who is on holiday in Portugal, tweeted: "Great news that Boris plans to stand at next year's general election - I've always said I want my star players on the pitch."


For Labour, shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan said: "Boris Johnson's announcement reveals how weak David Cameron is and how out of touch the Tories remain."


He added: "Today has also shown Londoners that, when they need a mayor prepared to address the big challenges facing their city, Boris Johnson's priority is succeeding David Cameron rather than serving their interests.


"What Britain needs is a change of direction - for all their squabbles over who leads them, all the Tories offer is more of the same failed policies."


There is nothing to stop Mr Johnson serving out his term as mayor, which ends in May 2016, while also being an MP. His predecessor, Labour's Ken Livingstone, combined both roles for a year.


Mr Johnson, who served as MP for Henley from 2001 to 2008, was a Conservative education and culture spokesman before running for the mayoralty.


John Howell, who replaced Mr Johnson as MP for Henley, told BBC Radio Berkshire: "I'm just glad he's made up his mind. It did nobody any good when he was just sitting on the fence.


"I'm quite surprised. I thought he would see out a third time as London Mayor. He's done a very good job as mayor. T there's no taking away from that and I was expecting him to stay on."