Few Tory MPs set off for the summer recess in a confident mood. There is unease about the opinion polls, and the leader. There is also grumbling about IDS’s failure to sharpen up the shadow Cabinet, though it would have been hard for him to do that. The obvious candidates for the sack are Quentin
If you are looking for some fun, and have a research grant to spend, try this. Visit an American university, bump into random students in the corridor and loudly call each one ‘asshole’. Then measure their reactions. This is what a team of psychologists did in a controlled experiment at the University of Michigan. The
There are no cloud-capped towers, but it is a gorgeous palace – or, rather, ranch. King Hamad of Bahrain, a short, stocky but powerfully built man in his early 50s, strides out of his marble hall to shake my hand on his distinctly palatial doorstep. It is about 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade in
If you exclude the hypothesis that most British official statistics have been manipulated for one political purpose or another, the latest crime figures appear strange and mysterious: while crimes of violence against the person have risen by 20 per cent in a single year, other forms of crime have fallen somewhat. Since most serious crimes
The lightening of Tony Blair’s mood on Sunday afternoon was palpable. For two days, ever since news of David Kelly’s suicide broke during his Far-East tour, the Prime Minister had looked haggard and broken. His voice went miserable and panicky. But the BBC announcement that Dr Kelly was the source for reporter Andrew Gilligan brought
There was a strange sort of hiatus between Andrew Gilligan’s report on the Today programme that Alastair Campbell had ‘sexed up’ some of the evidence about Iraq’s threat to the West, and Mr Campbell’s rage at being so accused. It lasted for nearly four weeks. Immediately after Gilligan made his report, there was a brief
Alasdair Palmer says the charges against Railtrack’s Gerald Corbett are the cynical prelude to a law on corporate killing The families of the four people who were killed in the Hatfield rail crash are reported to be ‘jubilant’ that a total of six managers from Railtrack and Balfour Beatty are to be charged with manslaughter.
It was those trips to the Balkans that started it. As we hard-core Europhobes know, one of the main joys of leaving EU Europe is that the food tastes incomparably better wherever the writ of Brussels does not extend. Although the hard-skinned, white-membraned Dutch tomato has already started to colonise the humble Skopje salad in
Paris During the past ten years, 34 out of the 128 Cabinet ministers to have served in the French government have been indicted, mostly for financial crimes. President Chirac himself has had to rig up an immunity law to protect him from charges that he treated his previous job, as mayor of Paris, as a
Peter Kellner analyses the first systematic opinion poll of Iraq, and finds a population full of anxiety — but also convinced that war has made their future brighter Baghdad is on a knife edge. Three in four of its residents say the city is now more dangerous than when Saddam Hussein was in power. Two
Oscar’s play (I was there on Saturday) strikes me as a mixture that will run…though infantine to my sense…There is so much drollery – that is, ‘cheeky’ paradoxical wit of dialogue, and the pit and the gallery are so pleased at finding themselves clever enough to ‘catch on’ to four or five of the ingenious
Whether we like it or not, says Leo McKinstry, regional government is already here – and it is expensive, absurd and undemocratic Expanding bureaucracy is the hallmark of the government. Since the 1997 election, there has been a deluge of expensive new bodies, from the Scottish Parliament to the General Teaching Council. Thanks to Labour,
For a moment in early May, American neoconservatives thought they had died and gone to heaven, so much did Bahgdad seem to them to resemble paradise. Their vision of an America that would shed its paper-tiger hesitation and boldly use its overwhelming military power to crush tyrannical regimes and reshape the world for decades to
Kimberly Fortier talks to Robin Cook about war and peace – and that day at Heathrow Don’t you just love the two Robin Cooks? There’s the philandering habitué of the turf, the one who runs off with his secretary; and then there’s the conscientious objector to war, the one who sacrifices power for principle. These
I spent last weekend trying to become a revolutionary. In early July the sunny avenues of Bloomsbury fill up with Marxists at their annual conference. The jamboree lasts a week (it’s still going on right now) and there are lectures on a range of subjects from ‘The Roots of Gay Oppression’ to ‘Luk•cs and Class
There is a joke in the Jewish community about a typical Jewish mother who travels to a remote Buddhist temple in Nepal. Eventually granted an audience with the revered guru there, she says just three words: ‘Sheldon, come home.’ The first trickle of Jews began to convert to Buddhism about 50 years ago. The beat
The government would like to outlaw pyramid selling. Why? Rachel Royce has joined Hearts, the girls-only investment scheme, and finds it good, clean – and profitable – fun I have a confession to make – but please don’t tell my boyfriend. I’ve made a somewhat high-risk investment. It will cost me £375, but for that
Those nations and cultural groups lobbying Western museums for the restitution of cultural property acquired during the colonial period are accustomed to having their requests denied on the grounds that modern museums should not be required to atone for historical contingencies. A recent declaration by a group of leading international museum directors phrased it like
Cape Town Anyone who wants to understand the inner workings of South Africa should pay careful attention to a speech made by President Mbeki at an official funeral in the Eastern Cape on 22 June. Surrounded by powerful black leaders of the new, liberated South Africa, Mbeki gave a eulogy for the departed man and
My new book, Thinly Disguised Autobiography, is not just good. It’s absolutely bloody amazing. The drug scenes make Irvine Welsh look like Mary Poppins; the sex scenes are more realistic than the real thing; it’s the finest dissection of the English class system since Evelyn Waugh; the dialogue rocks; it’s funny and moving, pacy, and