Recently while travelling on the London Underground, the opening words of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ran through my mind like a refrain: ‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic events and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’ Why,
Does Medvedev really believe in the rule of law? The fate of TNK-BP is the test Is President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia — who looks and sounds like a liberal-leaning modern technocrat — really his own man, or is he merely the stooge of his predecessor, the sinister, warmongering Vladimir Putin? The mad situation engulfing
One of the great paradoxes, for most of us, is the hatred of work, and the need for it to fill what Dr Johnson called ‘the great vacancies of life’. We sigh for leisure, then don’t know how to handle it when it comes in abundance. Occupation is wearisome, but essential, and retirement is longed-for
After years of financial struggle, say Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid, the Paris theme park has finally found a path to profit — just as the European economy hits a downturn Disney and happy endings go hand in hand. But after 16 years, shareholders in Disney’s theme park near Paris are still waiting for their
Splendours and miseries of the Queen’s English in the 21st century The wonderful thing about language, and especially English, with its enormous vocabulary, is the existence of groups of words with broadly similar meanings but each of which conveys something slightly different. Such subtle distinctions add to the richness of meaning, in speech and writing,
Paul Theroux, in The Great Railway Bazaar, paints a louche portrait of the capital of Laos. ‘The brothels are cleaner than the hostels, marijuana is cheaper than pipe tobacco and opium is easier to find than a cold glass of beer,’ he wrote in 1975. When Theroux finally got his beer, the waitress told him
David Crow says the record industry’s attempt to clamp down on illegal downloads is belated and befuddled — but the good news is that live music is thriving again Back in the late 1990s when the music download revolution was gathering pace, sentimentalists predicted the death of music. Those who spent their youth in rented
‘We can cause laughing by tickling the skin,’ wrote Darwin in Emotions (1872). We all know that. Difficulties arise when we probe a little deeper, where tickling hovers uncertainly on the borderline between eroticism, buffoonery and the slow, pleasurable but perhaps innocent process of having the flesh gently disturbed by the tips of another person’s
Matthew Lynn says coffee is the pure brew of capitalism — as the credit crunch bites, no wonder the world’s most ubiquitous coffee-house chain is heading for trouble In Christopher Guest’s witty canine mockumentary Best In Show, there is a line of dialogue that tells you everything you need to know about the world’s biggest
For anyone interested in fine painting, as distinct from ‘great art’, there is a treat at the Tate for them: a display of works by British artists, from the 17th to the 20th centuries, who depicted the Orient and those who liked to dress up in Eastern style. Many of the pictures are from private
It’s becoming harder and harder to believe that anyone is really in charge of the world’s largest economy. Each day brings a new catalogue of woes, miscues and missteps, each of which should have been foreseen long ago. And at the centre of each fresh foul-up stands one man: Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, ‘Hammerin’ Hank’,
The other evening I went to a ‘pig roast’ in our Somerset village. It was a tremendous turnout from far and wide. There is something about the idea which stirs up deep guzzling instincts, and certainly this pig on his spit looked, and smelt, gastronomically alluring, despite the fact that six of his live colleagues
Tim Parker, the bubble-haired venture capitalist hired to cut costs at City Hall and make Mayor Boris’s vision a reality, strolls down the curved walkway to greet me smiling widely, just like his photographs. Tall and rangy, this socialist-turned-capitalist, who is to be paid just £1 a year, is all charm and apologies for failing
Martin Vander Weyer’s thoughts on the world of business Shell and Barclays were the two highest-profile British companies in South Africa during the apartheid era. Both pursued non- racial business practices as far as they could, but both endured years of disrupted shareholder meetings and flak from the student Left. Shell stuck it out —
School fees: a luxury you can’t afford The credit crunch is taking a terrible toll on the middle classes. They’ve started to give up their organic boxes (sales are down 10 per cent at some companies), their foreign holidays (can the new fad for camping really be a choice thing?), their Chelsea tractors, and even
One of the most moving stories in the history of animal life is the racing career of Red Rum. This little horse won the Grand National in 1973 and 1974, came second the next two years and then, amazingly, won it again in 1977. This third victory, the only such in the history of the
So Britain is talking itself into recession. Keep chattering. If people want a recession, let them have one, so that the rest of us can benefit from it. This is not a suggestion that cold showers do us good or that a spell of reality in the housing market is overdue; it is a reminder
Somebody asked: ‘How do you express your love of country in this leaden age? How do you sweep aside the multicultural poison and simply assert — “I am an English patriot?”’ I answer: ‘Create a garden, or help those who do so.’ There is no more English activity than gardening, and it has been so
Richard Orange says the Indian tea industry is enjoying a revival — but that the traditional tea-planters’ way of life, established by the British, is passing into history There is not much to distinguish Dhanesheva Kurmi from the rest of the crowd at the Hautely Tea Estate, a remote garden an hour and a half’s
Oh, dear, what a setback. The usual suspects have slipped through the net. They will have to be locked up in the Financial Services Authority’s waterside fortress for 42 days, while the investigators try again to find some evidence. These suspects are the short sellers: everyone’s favourite scapegoat. They are accused of rocking the banks’