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The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes | 23 June 2007

Tyranny is most successful when most extreme. Because we all know that North Korea is absolutely foul, we do remarkably little about it. The new report into mass killings, torture and arbitrary imprisonment there by Christian Solidarity Worldwide (North Korea: A Case to Answer) is amazing not only for the horror of what it reveals,

Any other business

It’s wrong to punish private equity

It will come as little consolation to Guy Hands, the financier who complained this week that he must be the last person in Britain still prepared to defend the private equity industry’s generous tax breaks. But I have a confession to make: I, too, am opposed to clobbering private equity funds — and if that

The scourge of Hong Kong

Every city needs a David Webb. Hong Kong, a heaving, sweating shrine to capitalism, cronyism and cartels, is lucky it has the real thing. Shareholder rights and corporate governance remain largely alien concepts in this former British colony, which is about to mark the tenth anniversary of its return to China. It sometimes feels that

The man who took a PhD in Happiness Science

Lady Diana Cooper used to relate that, at a dinner she gave in the British embassy in Paris, not long after the war, Madame de Gaulle was asked what she was looking forward to now her husband had left office. To the consternation of the table she replied, ‘A penis.’ Whereupon the General spoke: ‘No,