Tough times on the Emerald Isle: Dell is closing it’s largest non-US manufacturing plant. This is not good news. Established in Ireland in 1990, Dell employed more than 4,500 staff in Ireland at its height and is the country’s biggest exporter and second largest company. It accounts for approximately 5 per cent of Irish GDP
Further proof that the British economy remains better placed than any other to weather this turbulent, tempest-ridden economic sea: the Bank of England cuts interest rates to 1.5%, the lowest rate in more than 300 years. Obviously that’s a tribute to the government. Meanwhile, the government prepares to print some more money. This too demonstrates
At a recent debate, every single one of the candidates hoping to be the nest chairman of the Republican National Committee named Ronald Reagan as their favourite Republican president. In one sense this is hardly surprising, given the extent to which the Cult of Reagan – or more precisely, the Cult of the Idea of
Many, many, many. If the GOP increasingly suffers from a suffocating orthodoxy, the libertarian movement (if that’s not an oxymoron) is amusingly/alarmingly/pedictably/irrelevently heterodox. As Brian Doherty explains: Joining the former, and previous more or less useful classifications such as anarchist and minarchist, paleo and cosmo, utilitarian and natural rightsers, is the division between “policy libertarians”
English cricket in shambolic farce. It’s like Scottish football, except more important.
Yeah, even by writers’ standards, John O’Hara could be touchy. Here’s Alan Jacobs: Anyway, when Pal Joey was a big hit on Broadway in 1940 a couple of friends ran into O’Hara at a restaurant and told him, “John, we just saw Pal Joey again and it was even better than the first time!” O’Hara
Rod Dreher asks: Why are the New Atheists so preachy Well that’s easy: because, on the subject of religion they are crashing bores. More so, in fact, than their religious counterparts. After all, the latter generally confine themselves to arguing that you are wrong (and, of course, damned) whereas Dawkins et al also demand that
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were defenders. What’s this, you ask? Just a map of the pair’s wanderings on the moon, superimposed onto a football (soccer) pitch. As best one can tell the Moon XI liked to attack down the right-wing, forcing the intrepid astronauts to play a rugged, hoofing, defensive game. Aldrin never made
Lost amidst my Christmas hiatus was the annual brain-hurting attempt at the King William’s College (Isle of Man) end of year quiz, thoughtfully published, as always, by those nice people at the Guardian. It is almost certainly the hardest quiz you’ll attempt this year. Find the entire list of questions (all 180 of them!) here.
Coming to a Christmas cinema screen near you next year. It is a dream that has been shared by lovers across the centuries – the chance to elope to exotic lands. But few would have been as bold and spontaneous as six-year-old Mika and his five-year-old sweetheart Anna-Bell who, after mulling over their options in
There’s something rather charming about the way the United States Senate names its bills. Granted, there’s something laughable about it too, but let’s focus on the entertainment for now. Here, for instance, are some of the first ten pieces of legislation Harry Reid plans upon bringing to the Senate floor in the new Session: American
Someone needs to tell Tom Harris MP that the “Unionist” in the “Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party” referred to the Union with Ireland, not that between Scotland and England. Equally, the fact that the Conservatives (in London) and the SNP (in Edinburgh) sometimes seem to be reciting similar talking points should scarcely come as any
Mr Eugenides keeps up with the latest news from the ghastliness so you don’t have to.
Sure as eggs is eggs, the arrival of a new American president heralds fresh fretting in the British press over the precise state of the so-called “Special Relationship”. Today’s text comes courtesy of Rachel Sylvester, writing in the Times. It’s worth considering in some detail: The inauguration of a president who is adored by the
In a post that otherwise makes good points, Matt Yglesias writes: The absence of giant blow-ups between the United States and our main NATO allies ought to count as a real accomplishment of the Clinton years. Riiight. Apart, that is, from the major disagreements in the Balkans – ie, a pretty important foreign policy issue
The National Gallery of Scotland needs to raise £50m to prevent the sale of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon from being sold. The painting, part of the Bridgewater Collection, has been loaned to the gallery for decades but is now being sold by its owner, the Duke of Sutherland. Well, £50m is quite a lot of
And so it continues. Not content with discovering “passive” smoking, the health boffins have now discovered something called “third-hand smoking” – all the better, presumably, to drive the last remaining smokers into the mountains (be they the Rockies or the Western Highlands) where, armed with only our wits, a lighter and a dwindling supply of
The conventional wisdom seems to be that Caroline Kennedy is, as Nick Confessore puts it, “too big to fail” in her quest to succeed Hillary Clinton as the junior Senator from New York. Perhaps so. There is, of course, one person who could decide that it’s not in the public interest to bail-out the Kennedys.
Since coming to power in 1997 Labour has created 3,605 new ways for you to break the law. That’s an average of 320 new offences a year or, to put it another way, more than one new offence is created every day Parliament is in session. Time to dust off an old and favourite proposal:
When he finally gets off his bike (again), does Armstrong see a future in politics? Looks like it. Interviewed by the Daily Beast he puts it like this: If you feel like you can do the job better than people who are doing it now, and you can really make a difference, then that’s a