The Week

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the Week – 24 August 2002

Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, on being asked about British support for American action against Iraq, said: ‘There is no serious division inside the Cabinet and there are debates inside the Cabinet.’ A school caretaker, Ian Huntley, aged 28, was charged with the murder of two ten-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman,

Diary

Diary – 24 August 2002

Despite feeling ghoulish, my wife and I found ourselves drawn to the television set whenever an important development took place during the grim vigil at Soham. By the very nature of the event much of the footage and commentary was banal and, like the press, unavoidably intrusive. Sky was sharper, the BBC’s much-mocked News 24

Ancient and modern

Ancient and Modern – 1 January 1970

‘ANGER-management consultants’ have been appearing all over the papers in the past few weeks discussing how the footballer Roy Keane might learn to control his foul temper. The papers could have saved the cost of their predictable services by reprinting selected chunks from Seneca (4 bc-ad 65) De Ira, ‘On Anger’, and Plutarch (ad 46-

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A VILE PRESS

Hard cases make bad law, and cases do not come much harder than that of the two young girls recently abducted and murdered. The temptation must be considerable for the government to respond by doing something rather than nothing, to demonstrate that it is responsive to the will of the people and that it marches