Essays

The tide turned

21 April 2012
Ian Thomson

A couple of years ago, a rescue operation was recorded at a lifeboat station in Poole, Dorset. ‘The boat was launched at 13.35p.m. following a call that a man and two children were stranded on rocks in the vicinity of Lulworth Cove. The wind was south-south-west force three. Visibility good. We reached the scene at 13.45p.m. The man and two children — one boy, one girl, both under five — were taken off the rocks and landed at an adjacent cove into the care of a local coastguard mobile unit.’ The report concluded: ‘The man’s name and address were not...

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Portrait of the week

14 April 2012

Home

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain would not violate human rights by extraditing to the United States five terrorist suspects: Abu Hamza, Babar Ahmad, Adel Abdul Bary, Talha Ahsan and Khaled al-Fawwaz; the case of Haroon Aswat, who suffers from schizophrenia, was adjourned. A car bomb was found at Newry, Co. Down. The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigated ten incidents of alleged racism involving 18 officers. Football clubs should pay for policing further away from stadiums, Assistant Chief Constable Andy Holt said on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers. A fire in a goods...

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Politics: Which party will win the anti-politics vote?

14 April 2012
James Forsyth

One might think that the Cameroons would be desperate about a poll showing their leader’s personal approval rating to be the lowest it has ever been. But the Prime Minister’s negative rating, minus 27, looks positively healthy when compared to those of the other two party leaders: the same poll showed Ed Miliband at minus 41 and Nick Clegg at minus 53. We are now in an era when the public are dissatisfied with all political parties and their leaders. Ask them which of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband would make the best prime minister and 46 per cent of them...

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Another country

14 April 2012
Neil O'Brien

London has always been different from the rest of the country. But in recent decades the differences have widened to the point that, economically and socially, the capital now has little in common with the rest of Britain. The city may be hosting the Olympics in July, but none of those attending should kid themselves that they have visited Britain. London has effectively left the UK; it belongs instead to a loose international federation of global cities united by their economic dynamism and cosmopolitanism and the people who flit between them.

This leads to a big problem: Londonitis. The...

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Buried in China

14 April 2012
Jonathan Fenby

Dealing with China is never easy, as everybody from Margaret Thatcher (over Hong Kong) to Barack Obama (over everything from currency issues to who is going to be top dog in the Pacific) has discovered. Now David Cameron and William Hague find themselves embroiled in the biggest political earthquake in the People’s Republic since the protests that led to the killings in Beijing in 1989.

At first, the death of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, in a hotel room in the city of Chongqing in western China last November did not seem to be an event of political importance. Heywood...

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Barometer

14 April 2012

Local heroes

The BBC spent £2 million on fares to allow London-based staff to commute to its new studios in Manchester. There are some well-known people who live in Salford:
— Harold Riley, artist
— Mike Sweeney, DJ
— Andy Whyment, actor
And some Salford-born people who moved away:
— Alistair Cooke, broadcaster
— Ben Kingsley, actor
— Albert Finney, actor
— Robert Powell, actor
— Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, composer

Old boy network

Robert Mugabe is reported to be on the point of death aged 88. Africa has produced long-lived leaders...

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