Spectator articles from April 2005

Spectator archives from April 2005

Portrait of the week.
April 2, 2005... Mr Howard Flight who, many were surprised to learn, was deputy chairman of the Conservative party, had the whip withdrawn and was told by Mr Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, that he could not stand for Parliament as a Conservative...

Unfair but right.
April 2, 2005... TO the minds of many reasonable people the punishment meted out to Howard Flight, MP for Arundel and the South Downs, has been of unwarranted severity. No one--not even the genial Mr Flight--denies that his words were ill chosen. But his...

Diary.(Marrakesh)(Column)
April 2, 2005... My husband and I have a week's holiday, and we have told everyone who asks that we are going to Marrakesh. We haven't bothered booking, of course, because we are disorganised and thus choose to believe the oft-repeated lie that there are these...

Mr Flight is a throwback to the age of representative democracy.(Politics)
April 2, 2005... Jim Callaghan, who died last Saturday, was the last British prime minister in the commonly accepted sense of the word. After him several factors--the degradation of the Gladstonian idea of a disinterested Civil Service, the collapse of...

>The attempt by the Pope to pronounce his Easter blessing on Sunday and his failure in that attempt were so moving.(THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES)(Pope John Paul II)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2005... The attempt by the Pope to pronounce his Easter blessing on Sunday and his failure in that attempt were so moving. On the day which, of all days, affirms life, John Paul II must particularly have longed to speak. As he struggled to do so, he...

'The greatest conservative Prime Minister has died,' a friend rang to say, and I knew that he did not mean Margaret Thatcher.(THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES)(James Callaghan)(Obituary)
April 2, 2005... 'The greatest conservative Prime Minister has died,' a friend rang to say, and I knew that he did not mean Margaret Thatcher. Every detail of Jim Callaghan's life was conservative: his long, happy marriage to Audrey (there's a conservative...

At last, as I have been urging, more attention is focusing on Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, the man who is, through no fault of his own, the only obstacle to a full church wedding for the Prince of Wales.(THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES)(Prince Charles; Camilla Parker Bowles)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2005... At last, as I have been urging, more attention is focusing on Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, the man who is, through no fault of his own, the only obstacle to a full church wedding for the Prince of Wales. The Bishop of Salisbury, Dr David...

The Tory injustice this week is not against Howard Flight but against Adrian Hilton, the Conservative now ex-candidate for Slough.(THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2005... The Tory injustice this week is not against Howard Flight but against Adrian Hilton, the Conservative now ex-candidate for Slough. Since this column's mention of the case last week, Mr Hilton was interviewed again at Conservative headquarters...

Gerry Adams says that the men who murdered Robert McCartney are 'cowards' and should 'face up to their responsibilities', but he knows perfectly well that the chief suspect at present walks round the Short Strand area in the company of one of the IRA's leaders, a man who is close to Adams.(THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2005... Gerry Adams says that the men who murdered Robert McCartney are 'cowards' and should 'face up to their responsibilities', but he knows perfectly well that the chief suspect at present walks round the Short Strand area in the company of one of...

'Home stays' are great things for school-children.(THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2005... 'Home stays' are great things for school-children. They are the arrangements which allow pupils to be billeted on local families when they go abroad on school trips--a week's language improvement in France, a botanical expedition, a choir tour,...

To my wife's displeasure, I have picked five snake's-head fritillaries from our garden.(THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2005... To my wife's displeasure, I have picked five snake's-head fritillaries from our garden. There are hundreds, so I think it is all right, but she says that every single one should stay so that they can continue to spread. Because of their almost...

Honi soit qui mal y pense: Simon Heffer condemns the spiteful attacks on Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles and says that she will make a perfect Queen for the future King Charles.(Cover Story)
April 2, 2005... Ours would be a grim age if we were to deny millions of people cheap and satisfying entertainment, and so, therefore, perhaps we should be especially grateful to the Prince of Wales and Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles as they approach their wedding...

The good news about terrorism: the defence establishment has convinced us to live in fear, says Paul Robinson, but in fact there are fewer wars and fewer terrorists than ever before.
April 2, 2005... 'We are facing the gravest threat that this, nation has ever faced. Elizabeth I, speaking of the Spanish Armada? Winston Churchill, in the aftermath of Dunkirk? No. Home Office minister Baroness Scotland on Newsnight, justifying the new...

Al-Qa'eda is a conspiracy of alienated middle-class kids.
April 2, 2005... When Sajid Badat, formerly of Gloucester, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to conspiring to blow up an aeroplane with a crude shoe-bomb device (before bottling it), there was an audible intake of breath among New Labour politicians and Muslim...

A customer on the line: Jane Kelly watched a drunk fall in the path of a Tube train, apparently in a half-hearted attempt at suicide. Everybody got a bit hysterical.
April 2, 2005... It was a good Saturday in London. I spent the day at a lecture on Caravaggio, exploring the artist's use of intense light and dark which evokes so much about the brilliant but pitiless society he moved through. After that I went to the theatre...

Russia in the dock: Rachel Polonsky says Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is a prisoner of conscience, and his show trial stands as an indictment of the country's criminal justice system.
April 2, 2005... Moscow In an iron cage in Hall 56 of the Meshchansky Court, the former chief executive of Yukos sits on his woollen hat, an anorak stuffed into the bars beside him. As his trial enters its 11th month, it is winter still in Moscow. The...

Mind your language.
April 2, 2005... 'Nigel Planer's beaming scoutmaster of a Wilberforce becomes absurdly jejeune when he talks of Heaven,' wrote Benedict Nightingale in the Times last September, reviewing Darwin in Malibu at Hampstead Theatre. As a drama critic, he might have...

The iniquities of fair trade: Leo McKinstry says that the campaign against free trade is heaping misery on the Third World.
April 2, 2005... Free trade used to be seen as a progressive, liberalising force. By spreading economic freedom across the world, it enhanced prosperity, raised living standards and improved international relations. Yet in recent decades it has been transmuted...

Ancient & modern.
April 2, 2005... A Lithuanian girl arrived in England looking for work and was promptly sold for 4,000 [pounds sterling] to an Albanian. He raped her and put her in a brothel. She escaped, was recaptured, sent to another brothel, then sold for 3,000 [pounds...

Persecution of Christians.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: Regarding Anthony Browne's 'Church of martyrs' (26 March): one of the foremost examples of Christian persecution which was not mentioned in his otherwise excellent article relates to the current situation in the Nato-occupied Serbian...

Abortion risks.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: I too share Stuart Reid's absolute position against all abortion ('Abortion humbug', 26 March). I am not, however, happy with his dismissal of attempts to lower the upper limit for abortion, on the basis that it will make termination more...

Where's my copy?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: I note with interest the minister for Europe's suggestion (Letters, 26 March) that The Spectator should produce 'a 28-page, tabloid-style version of the main parts of the [EU] treaty'. On Channel 4 News on 8 June and on a December...

Redesdale recanted.(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: What Paul Levy originally said about Lord Redesdale, in his explanatory notes to Lytton Strachey's letters, was: 'He was seriously unhinged and, when a series of bad investments in the 1920s crippled him financially, he joined a number of...

On being Jewish.(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: I immediately recognise the experience and background of Miriam Gross because it is almost exactly the same as mine ('What it means to be Jewish', 26 March). What I do not recognise is the purported 'resurgence' of anti-Semitism. On the...

Catholic support for Mosley.(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: Congratulations to Charles Moore for defending Conservative candidate Adrian Hilton against the obnoxious attack from the Catholic Herald and the spinelessness of Michael Howard, who has dismissed Hilton as a Conservative candidate (The...

No asylum crisis.(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: The piece by Rod Liddle contains the erroneous use of the terms 'illegal' and 'bogus' for asylum-seekers ('The seeds of hate', 19 March). Asylum-seekers are individuals exercising their legal right to claim asylum and may have fled acts...

Smacks of confusion.(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: In his review of Maria Full of Grace (Arts, 26 March) Mark Steyn mentions Colombia and its capital Bogota six times and yet he makes the mistake of saying that the film is about heroin-smuggling. Colombia has no opium harvest and therefore...

A mean obit.(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: Terence Monaghan (Letters, 26 March) is cross that I accused the left-wing Catholic magazine the Tablet of printing a sour article marking the death of Alice Thomas Ellis. He argues that, on the contrary, the Tablet ran a generous tribute...

Local knowledge.(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: To create a warm, local atmosphere in telesales from far-flung parts (Paul Johnson, And another thing, 26 March), operatives are schooled in UK current affairs and sporting matters. I have found that unwanted promotion of broadband,...

Essential error.(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2005... Sir: It is a sound convention that authors do not take issue with reviewers. But part of the same convention is that reviewers refrain from inaccurate or misleading accounts of what the author has written. Tim Congdon, in his review of my book...

Ce que je redis au peuple francais--votez Non, votez souvent, encore.(CITY AND SUBURBAN)(Referendum over Europe)
April 2, 2005... The trouble with a referendum, as Kenneth Clarke noted, is that people do not always answer the question you ask them. You want to know if they favour a bimetallistic approach to the currency, and they say 'Throw the rascals out.' Something of...

Why the Church of England is our best defence against religious enthusiasm.(ANOTHER VOICE)
April 2, 2005... It couldn't happen here, they say. We are unlike the Americans. The English are viscerally sceptical of religious enthusiasm--always have been. Waves of evangelism in our history--the Nonconformist movement for example--have been comparatively...

Going down to Kew in daffodil time.(AND ANOTHER THING)
April 2, 2005... When spring finally reached London after those Arctic weeks with the bitter wind from the east, I hurried out to Kew to see what was happening to Nature. And there it all was: millions of daffodils in massed marching ranks, spreading golden...

Swimming the in rain: Iain Murray on tropical storms in the Caribbean.(TRAVEL)
April 2, 2005... For all I know, there may be those who go to the Caribbean to broaden their minds, to absorb the local culture and to stretch their limbs in exploratory walks. But most of us who visit the islands are there with but a single purpose--to do...

Carpet bagging.(MARRAKESH)
April 2, 2005... Sara could see it in her mind's eye: the carpet of her dreams--understated, restrained even, with just a hint of a wild, bohemian past. Ibrahim, so he told us, was just the man to deliver it. We had spent the afternoon being seduced by...

One for the road.(COACH TRIPS)
April 2, 2005... For Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the trek to the South Pole was 'the worst journey in the world'. If Captain Scott's associate had ever travelled on a Eurolines coach from London to Budapest, he might well have had second thoughts. Attracted by the...

A tale of two horses.(MINEHEAD)
April 2, 2005... Between the tawny wilds of Exmoor Forest and the grey band of the Bristol Channel sits the town of Minehead in Somerset. It's not a pretty town, and when I visited in May it was bitterly cold. However, I hadn't come to see the sights; I'd come...

An ancient kulturkampf.(SLOVAKIA)
April 2, 2005... Among the greatest cultural glories of East-central Europe are the region's German cities. From Tallinn ('Reval' in German) on the Baltic to Brasov ('Kronstadt') in the Carpathians, much urban culture east of Berlin and Budapest was essentially...

Fumbling with the raw materials.(Early Poems and Juvenilia)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... EARLY POEMS AND JUVENILIA Philip Larkin Faber, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 382, ISBN 0571223060 * 23 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Most great artists begin as mimics. They do not, as Clara Schumann claimed...

The unease of the distant East.(The India House)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... THE INDIA HOUSE by William Palmer Cape, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 249, ISBN 0224072978 * 14.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Defying the geographical promise of its title, The India House turns out to...

Defending the Marxist citadel.(The Soviet Century)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... THE SOVIET CENTURY by Moshe Lewin Verso, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 416, ISBN 1844670163 In the last several years, English-speaking readers have been treated to a plethora of Soviet history books unlike others before them. The opening of...

Where different means wrong.(The Blue Eye-Eyed Salaryman)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... THE BLUE-EYED SALARYMAN by Niall Murtagh Profile, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 216, ISBN 1861977247 * 14.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 I was sitting in a Japanese children's home discussing a rock...

Emergency exits and entrances.(Children of War Out of Harm's Way)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... CHILDREN OF WAR by Susan Goodman John Murray, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 330, ISBN 0719561221 * 18 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 OUT OF HARM'S WAY by Jessica Mann Headline, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 342,...

White-water trip towards wisdom.(Rapids)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... RAPIDS by Tim Parks Secker, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 246, ISBN 0436205599 * 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 In his 12th novel, Tim Parks revisits a subject that has been dominating his writing of...

England's greatest export.(Shakespeare Goes to Paris: How the Bard Conquered France)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... SHAKESPEARE GOES TO PARIS: How THE BARD CONQUERED FRANCE by John Pemble Hambleden & London, 19.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 240, ISBN 1852854529 Shakespeare was the great glory of England. So wrote Victor Hugo. But he added that if you went...

The inside story.(Early Georgian Interiors)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... EARLY GEORGIAN INTERIORS by John Cornforth Yale, 60 [pounds sterling], pp. 400, ISBN 0300103301 This posthumous book is the summation of a lifetime's research into aspects of the 18th-century interior in the British Isles by the leading...

Tom Tiddler's ground.(The Middle East in International Relations)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... THE MIDDLE EAST IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS by Fred Halliday CUP, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 392, ISBN 0521597412 For many people in the West, the Middle East is a source of perplexity and foreboding. Home to morose despotisms, political...

Small-town screwballs and surprises.(Pieces for the Left Hand)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... PIECES FOR THE LEFT HAND by J. Robert Lennon Granta, 10 [pounds sterling], pp. 213 In a 1925 essay, Freud unearthed an important linguistic truth about the concept of the uncanny (unheimlich). He noticed that it had drifted very close to...

A selection of recent paperbacks.(Bibliography)
April 2, 2005... Fiction: The Master by Colm Toibin (Picador, 7.99 [pounds sterling]) The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier (Virago, 7.99 [pounds sterling]) The Dream by Emile Zola, translated by Michael Glencross, Peter Owen, 8.95 [pounds...

Designed for living: Andrew Lambirth finds plenty to enjoy at the V&A's Arts and Crafts show, despite the gloom.(ARTS)
April 2, 2005... International Arts and Crafts is the third of the V&A's major 19th/20th century 'lifestyle' themed exhibitions, following on from the successes of Art Nouveau (2000) and An Deco (2003). Both those shows were ingenious and loving tributes to...

Parallel dreams.(Music)(Column)
April 2, 2005... I often find myself day-dreaming about how the Tallis Scholars might resemble other and more glamorous artistic outfits. As we uncurl on to the stage, I imagine us heading on to the pitch to play football (there are 11 of us, after all); or,...

Mocking Wagner.(Opera)(Parsival)(Opera Review)
April 2, 2005... Parsifal Staatsoper unter den Linden, Berlin The latest vogue in Wagner production in Germany is to have the works directed by people who have had little or preferably no experience of opera before. I have no idea what the rationale for...

Grateful to the Dead.(Olden but golden)
April 2, 2005... 'You're not going to write about them, are you?' said my wife contemptuously, when I announced that I was going to devote this month's column to the Grateful Dead. 'They're one of the worst.' As regular readers will know, my wife hates all...

Seduced by Hedda.(Theatre 1)(Theater Review)
April 2, 2005... Hedda Gabler Almeida Medeamaterial (etc.) Theatro Technis The Girl with Red Hair Hampstead To make boredom exciting is one of the riskiest theatrical effects. The danger is that the play will become slack and self-defeating. But,...

Kill off the oldies.(Theatre 2)(Sir Thomas More)(A New Way to Please You)(Theater Review)
April 2, 2005... Sir Thomas More; A New Way to Please You Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon The RSC celebrates the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot with four little-known Jacobean and Elizabethan political plays and a new one by Frank McGuinness...

Spirit of Ashton.(Dance)(Enigma Variations)(Dance Review)
April 2, 2005... Royal Ballet Triple Bill Royal Opera House Enigma Variations is, arguably, one of Frederick Ashton's most complex works. Created in 1968, the ballet derives its title from the celebrated set of variations by Edward Elgar, and aims to bring...

Transatlantic relations.(Radio)
April 2, 2005... When I spotted that the conservative American writer and wit P.J. O'Rourke was giving two 20-minute talks on Radio Four, the first on Easter Sunday, I rubbed my eyes thinking there must have been some mistake. Or maybe a printing error. How did...

Perfect set-up.(Television)(Television Program Review)
April 2, 2005... Two very popular drama series came back this week. Hustle (BBC1, Tuesday) is entirely formulaic, and none the worse for that. In each episode the villains are the heroes, and their victims are the villains. Just in case we might have sympathy...

Feminine wiles.(The turf)
April 2, 2005... As departure hour for a reception or a dinner party approaches, the Oakley residence comes to resemble the opening scene of Four Weddings and a Funeral. Years of foot-tapping in the hall with the car keys ready and Mrs Oakley busying herself...

Untold suffering.(High life)(World War II)
April 2, 2005... Nemmersdorf is a village in East Prussia that was overrun by the Soviets in the autumn of 1944. After seizing the village, the Russkies raped all the women, regardless of age, and then crucified them. All of them. Men and children were clubbed...

Heaving with hooligans.(Low life)(Top Boys)(Book Review)
April 2, 2005... To a book launch on Tuesday, hoping and praying there would be a fight. 'O Lord!' I prayed, 'please let it all kick off big style.' The book was Top Boys by Cass Pennant, who used to lead what connoisseurs would agree was the best English...

Don't Worrie be happy.(Wild life)
April 2, 2005... Swat, Pakistan The Swat valley's apple orchards are in blossom even as the snow still lies thick on the mountains. It's been the harshest winter in memory. I came here on the trail of my late friend Carlos Mavroleon, an extraordinary man...

Be positive.(Bridge)
April 2, 2005... FEW things are more irritating than when you're walking down the street, feeling gloomy, and someone shouts, 'Cheer up, it might never happen!' Huh. Bad things do sometimes happen, and looking cheerful won't change that. As Woody Allen tells...

Restaurants.
April 2, 2005... It is half-term and so our pre-teen son must be kept amused because, on the whole, boys of this age are like Labradors: unless you give them some kind of run every day they will eat the furniture. In fact, come to think of it, they are actually...

Goodbye Garry.(CHESS)
April 2, 2005... In reaction to his loss of the World Championship title in London 2000, Kasparov embarked on a massive series of tournament victories, in many cases dwarfing the opposition, but he could not persuade the new champion Kramnik to offer him a...

A tricky hand.(COMPETITION)
April 2, 2005... In Competition No. 2385 you were invited to incorporate 13 given words into a plausible piece of prose, using them in a non-card sense. Searching for Tolstoy's 'happy families' quotation in my Bartlett's, what did I find bang next to it? This...

1708: circling.(CROSSWORD)
April 2, 2005... Radial lights read from edge to centre or vice versa, twenty of each. Seven items (one hyphened) reading clockwise (five in the circuit next to the outer one, and two in the circuit next to the innermost) are of a kind. RADIALS (6) 1...

Dream on!(SPECTATOR SPORT)
April 2, 2005... Until the 1980s, England vs Northern Ireland was, a calendar annual. Then the Home championship was brutally abandoned. So to those of a certain generation last week's soccer fixture seemed surreal. As surreal, I daresay, as the play which...

Dear Mary.(YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED)
April 2, 2005... Q. As a single person I invite many people over for dinner. Invariably the numbers are not equal, but I go to immense pains to get a mixture of guests who will find each other interesting, and also try to cook something special and delicious....

Portrait of the week.
April 9, 2005... The wedding of the Prince of Wales and Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles was suddenly postponed for a day because it clashed with the funeral in Rome of Pope John Paul II on 8 April. The Prince of Wales was to represent the Queen at the funeral, and...

Shades of Zimbabwe.(electoral fraud)
April 9, 2005... When Richard Mawrey QC, who presided over the inquiry into electoral fraud in Birmingham, said the tactics used in the episode would 'disgrace a banana republic' he was, if anything, understating his case. It was shocking enough that six men,...

Diary.(UK general election)
April 9, 2005... This election is a swindle. It is a fraud on the electorate. We are asked to vote for one man, Blair, when he has explicitly said that he will not serve a full five years, and the chances must therefore be that the Labour machine will try, at...

This is the only exciting start to an election since 1979.(SHARED OPINION)(UK general election)
April 9, 2005... From now until 5 May, we--the people--have taken over. In practice, this means that they--the polls--have. For the next month, they decide what we say and think. The polls on the morning that the Prime Minister went to the Palace proved...

The spectator's notes.(Pope John Paul II)
April 9, 2005... People sometimes say 'Easter Saturday' meaning the day before Easter. In fact, it is the Saturday after Easter, and this year it was the day the Pope died. The first reading in the Missal for that day is from the Acts of the Apostles (iv...

How Blair betrays the crown: Peter Oborne reveals the calculations that led the Prime Minister to ditch the royal wedding in favour of the Pope's funeral.
April 9, 2005... Fifty years ago, almost to the day, Winston Churchill retired as prime minister at the grand old age of 80. On the eve of his retirement the great man gave a private dinner for the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and a very small number of family...

The Blairs.(Cartoon)
April 9, 2005... ALL THAT WMD! NO THANKS! WERE STILL FIGHTING YOUR LAST WAR! I'LL TAKE A RAINCHECK IF YOU DON'T MIND I SEE YOU STAND LIKE CREYHOUNDS IN THE SLIPS, STRAINING UPON THE START. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

God and mammon: the Pope may have triumphed over communism, says Norman Davies, but capitalism has not been kind to the Church.(Pope John Paul II)
April 9, 2005... Krakow The greatest churchman of modern times is dead: and the most Catholic nation in Europe is bereft. John Paul If, 'Papa Wojtyla' has passed on to a better life. His faithful compatriots must fend for themselves. Men and women weep...

Mind your language.
April 9, 2005... I met a Scotsman, a dominie or schoolmaster, the other day, whose son has left home to work for the Daily Telegraph in London. He, the son, was apparently very full of having got the word Vergil into the newspaper. You might ask: 'What was the...

Nothing less than victory: Michael Howard tells Richard Littlejohn that he is not even contemplating a hung parliament, let alone defeat.(Interview)
April 9, 2005... 'It's the Sun wot won it,' crowed Kelvin MacKenzie with characteristic chutzpah on the front page of Britain's best-selling newspaper after Neil Kinnock had crashed to defeat in the 1992 general election. As the nation went to the polls, the...

Everyone benefits.(culture)(Brief Article)
April 9, 2005... Thirteen local authorities have been chosen by the government to be Cultural Pathfinders, showing how culture and sport can help to deliver government priorities across public life. The government's social, environmental and economic agenda is...

Ancient & modern.
April 9, 2005... Great thinkers have recently been grappling with what 'happiness' is, and various answers have emerged that have surely never occurred to anyone before: 'love and friendship', to which 'respect, family, standing and fun' have been added. Who...

The future looks black: Andrew Kenny fears that South Africa may become the new Zimbabwe.
April 9, 2005... Cape Town The day after the election in Zimbabwe, the Cape Times (of Cape Town) carried a front-page story on the South African government's new policy to 'turn the tide against poverty' by cutting back on the tax-funded opulence of ANC...

Not as dumb as they look: Rod Liddle reflects on the implications of our exclusive survey of how much young people know about politics.
April 9, 2005... 'Young people seem keen to ensure that there are appropriate mechanisms for their involvement, but they feel increasingly burdened if there are too many requests for their participation.' Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2000 This year when...

Spectator/YouGov survey of young voters.
April 9, 2005... YouGov interviewed 270 people aged 18 to 25 online between 4 and 5 April 2005. The data has been weighted to be representative of that population. Figures are in percentages. 1. Can you name the Prime Minister of the UK? Incorrect 1 ...