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Thursday 8 January 2009

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The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Peter Hoskin

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CoffeeHouse

VAT to be cut to 15 percent

It looks like Brown will cut VAT from 17.5% to 15% - the lowest the EU will allow. This would be the crux of Monday’s recession budget. The move costs £12.5bn and the idea would be to get retail sales moving, then jack up VAT later. The threat of the increase, of course, being the point of the stimulatory push.

An escalation

A dangerous escalation of the Middle Eastern conflict this morning, as rockets are fired into northern Israel from Lebanon. As...

The idiocy of the ECB

So, it has all ended in tears. Kevin Pietersen’s resignation came even sooner than his worst enemies would have predicted...

Ed Balls debuts the apprenticeships Brownie

Ed Balls never gets enough credit for the Brownies that he cooks up. One was served today, when he spent...

Labour, the do nothing until after the holidays party

The vacation habits of the shadow cabinet are under discussion today principally because everyone thinks that one holidaying member will...

Arts

A pair of aces

William Cook talks to the creators of some of TV’s funniest and best-loved comedy programmes

Quality treat

The Diary of Anne Frank (BBC1, Monday to Friday); Oz and James Drink to Britain (BBC2, Tuesday)

Books

Getting the detail right

Evelyn Waugh told Nancy Mitford he was ‘surprised to find’ that Proust ‘was a mental defective. He has absolutely no sense of time.’

Was the Abdication necessary?

The Eagle & the Crown, by Frank Prochaska

Style & Travel

Not just for Christmas

Matthew Dennison extols the virtues of a rare but distinguished breed

A man for Four Seasons

Bear Grylls is in the lap of luxury at the George V Hotel in Paris

The natural order of things

Matt Ridley says that Darwinian selection explains the appearance of seemingly ‘designed’ complexity throughout the world — not just in biology but in the economy, technology and the arts

Matt Ridley