90 years of the RAF
The Red Arrows and four Typhoons fly over London today, to mark the 90th Anniversary of the Royal Air Force.
Society
Tuesday
Mugabe to step down?
Many fear that the delay in Zimbabwe’s presidential election results getting released is a sign that Mugabe is working out how he can rig it. But Centre Right flag up a New York Times article which says differently: “Advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe are in talks with the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, amid signs that Mr. Mugabe may be preparing to resign, a Western diplomatic source and a prominent Zimbabwe political analyst said Tuesday. The negotiations about a possible transfer of power away from Mr. Mugabe come after he apparently concluded that a runoff election would be demeaning, a diplomat said.” Mugabe to step down? I’ll believe
Terminal Five, five days of chaos and counting
It is quite incredible that the problems at Terminal Five have still not been resolved. It is expected that 50 flights will be cancelled today, bringing the total since Thursday to over 400, while 28,000 bags are somewhere in this mess. This is nothing short of a national disgrace and aside from the inconvenience being caused to passengers, huge damage is being done to the attractiveness of Britain as a place to do business. But no one at British Airways seems to think they should resign. At time like this, one really does wish that they had carried on with their rebranded tail fins and dropped the British bit of
Boys will be boys
Reading this novel I couldn’t help but think of the opening lines of Miroslav Holub’s poem, ‘A Boy’s Head’ — ‘In it there is a space ship/ and a project/ for doing away with piano lessons.’ Not that Robbie Coyle, the hero of Crumey’s novel and the son of a socialist/communist father growing up in a small Scottish mining town in the Seventies, has to endure piano lessons, but he is consumed by a passion to become an astronaut, practising in his kitchen cupboard capsule and tuning in to the stars on the ‘flight control panel’ of the radiogram. Sputnik Caledonia is Andrew Crumey’s sixth novel for which he was
Monday
Carmen May Seriously Damage Your Health…
Anthony Holden in The Observer: Carmen is back at Covent Garden for the first time since last summer’s Orwellian smoking ban and I’m delighted to report that the Royal Opera has taken not the slightest notice. If there’s any opera in which onstage smoking should be mandatory, this is it. Cigarette girls and soldiers alike all puff their heads off during the first act, to the point where the fumes drift gratifyingly into mid-stalls. And, even better, there are none of those ludicrous health-and-safety signs out front, as, for instance, at the Old Vic, to warn us of the perils of entering a smoke-stained auditorium. Of course in plucky Scotland
Department of Charming Understatement
James Forsyth looks at Northern Rock’s annual report and finds that its opening line is: “2007 was a difficult and challenging year for Northern Rock” Indeed so. I do hope that these words were chosen deliberately however. It rather ruins the fun if they weren’t.
Aye Been? Up to a point…
From today’s edition of The Scotsman: AS A town steeped in its common riding* traditions, the Royal and Ancient Burgh of Selkirk has tended to concentrate on reliving its past. It proudly proclaims itself as being the venue where William Wallace was declared Guardian of Scotland and on the second Friday** of June the streets reverberate with the sound of 500 horses inspecting the boundaries as part of the annual festival celebrations. Change is not something readily accepted by the 6,000 inhabitants of the Borders town. But as from today, Selkirk traders are looking to the future and creating their own piece of history by becoming Scotland’s first plastic bag-free
Obama’s web site is more popular in Britain than those of Britain’s political parties
If anyone doubted that British political parties are doing a poor job of both using the internet to drive their message and exciting voters, then just consider this from Tom Watson’s blog: “Barackobama.com was the 11th most visited site for UK Internet users in February. In September last year it was 172nd. During the week of super Tuesday his website had more visits than any of the major UK political party websites. Obama was the most searched for political figure in the UK, receiving three times as many searches as Hilary Clinton. That’s reach.” To be fair, there are some British politicians who understand the potential impact of the internet—notably, George
McCain on Basra
Talking about the situation in Basra today, John McCain makes the point that the problems in the city reflect not on the current strategy in Iraq but on the mistaken initial strategy: “This goes back to when we didn’t have enough boots on the ground, after the initial military success,’’ he said. “Iranian clerics moved into the region, Iranian influence moved into southern Iraq, and we basically, and the British, did not do a great deal to prevent them. These are the penalties we continue to pay for the very bad mishandling of the war for nearly four years while they became solidly entrenched.” It is hard not to think
End of a circus?
So there we have it. According to Lord Justice Scott Baker, there is not a “shred of evidence” that Diana was assassinated by the Royal Family or by anyone else. A line can finally be drawn through the conspiracy theories of Mohamed Al Fayed. (Although will his supporters be placated? I doubt it. To paraphrase Karl Popper: a Diana conspiracy theorist cannot open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for their view of history.) But it’s taken some £6 million of taxpayers’ money to reach this sensible conclusion. And that’s before we consider the distress caused to Princes William and Harry, as their mother’s name has been dragged through the mud. In
Has Mugabe actually come third?
The Institute for War and Peace Reporting latest update on the Zimbabwe election quotes source with knowledge of the results saying that Mugabe actually came third. He is, however, set to claim victory. The key thing to watch for is how South Africa reacts to his announcement.
You don’t say
The opening line of Northern Rock’s annual report, out today, deserves to win an award for understatement: “2007 was a difficult and challenging year for Northern Rock”
Law, Actually
It all depends who says it, doesn’t it? I hold unfashionably robust views on the proposed extension of pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects (the arguments are familiar now: see my article here). I have traded blows on air with opponents of the change and I respect most of their anxieties. David Davis is one of the politicians I admire most, and he and I happen to disagree on this issue – which is fine. Likewise, the Government should certainly take seriously the challenge to its plan by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (chaired by the admirable Trevor Phillips). These, like Liberty’s Shami Chakrabarti, are serious people with serious reservations about
Unhappy to pay more tax
Do check out Janet Daley’s comment piece in the Telegraph today. On her account, we’ve reached a political landmark: “Something has snapped. I feel it in the air just as surely as I did in 1979 when the population of Britain decided, quite suddenly, that it had had enough. There is now – as there was then – an almost palpable anger, a shift of concrete significance in some very fundamental assumptions about how the Government operates, and even what people want from government generally… …Whatever happened to all those people who used to say that they would be Happy To Pay More Tax? Remember them? They were a notable
Sunday
Edrich’s XI
So here we are again. After Armstrong, Benaud, Constantine and Dexter we come to John Edrich’s XI. 1. John Edrich (ENG) (Capt)2. Matthew Elliott (AUS)3. Bill Edrich (ENG)4. George Emmett (ENG)5. Russell Endean (SA)6. Farokh Engineer (IND) 7. Godfrey Evans (ENG) (Wkt)8. Steve Elworthy (SA)9. Richard Ellison (ENG) 10. Phil Edmonds (ENG)11. Tom Emmett(ENG) Poor Godfrey Evans. What has he done to deserve this? Evans, arguably the greatest wicket-keeper (note, I do not say wicketkeeper-batsman) to play the game, finds himself in shabby, mortal company. Well, that’s what happens when you’re unlucky enough to have a surname starting with E. Suffice it to say that selecting this XI was neither an
Department of self-promotion
You want to know more about the state of the sports memorabilia market? Of course you do. From my piece in this week’s Spectator: As was so often the case, P.G. Wodehouse reached deep into the heart of the matter: collecting sporting memorabilia requires dedication, a willingness to speculate, a tolerance of risk and, too often, a certain amount of the ‘iron in the soul’ that equips a man to survive uxorial disapproval. Readers will recall the sorry tale, related in ‘High Stakes’, of how the American millionaires Bradbury Fisher and Gladstone Bott risked butlers, railroads and their wives’ wrath to secure ownership of ‘the authentic baffy used by Bobby
An issue for debate
A quick post to recommend ConservativeHome’s list of which political debates the left and right are winning in the UK. Among the right’s triumphs are crime, welfare and schools reform. And among the left’s are tax & spend, the NHS and climate change. Do CoffeeHousers agree?
Saturday
Letters | 29 March 2008
Not black and white Sir: Marian L. Tupy deserves thanks for his excellent article (‘Mugabe is the Mobutu of our time’, 22 March), despite one seeming inaccuracy and an omission. Tupy says, ‘It was 1980 and Zimbabwe had just gained independence from Britain… the first ever multiracial election gave Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union a majority.’ To the contrary, a universal franchise election in 1978 brought a coalition of Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front and Bishop Muzorewa’s Democrats into office. Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo had been invited to take part but refused. Some 70 per cent plus of the electorate participated, with a significant majority voting for a dual system of
Costly charges
While J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons, I prefer to chart mine with the daily passing of one hundred pounds. Hence, and though there must be many ways to evaluate one’s existence, I feel my days are best quantified as follows: Monday: Scented candle, £16; bottle of moisturiser, £30; horse physiotherapy, £50. Tuesday: Train ticket, £3.80; food shopping, £40; petrol, £55. Wednesday: Congestion charge, £8; lunch with a friend, £35; dinner with a friend, £60. Thursday: Car MOT and service, £119. Friday: Horse x-rays, £110. And so on. I grow old …I grow old …I shall go into overdraft and then fold. But I know what
Rental block
Dartmoor, said the box ad. One-bedroom cottage. Five hundred pounds a month. I called the number and an elderly woman answered. I’m interested in renting the cottage, I said. Is it still available? Are you single? she said. I am, I said. You don’t have a girlfriend? Sadly not, I said. This was good, she said, because the house is suitable for one person only. She didn’t want partners living there as well. If I found myself a partner during my tenancy, they could stay overnight, but only occasionally. Are you certain you don’t have a girlfriend? she said. You’re not gay, are you? No, I’m not gay, I said. I’m