Spectator articles from December 2007

Spectator archives from December 2007

Brown's fatal flaws.
December 1, 2007... As prophecies go, it had none of the ritual majesty of the Sybil of Cumae's pronouncements, none of the blood-chilling qualities of Cassandra. But it has, in its own way, come to pass nonetheless. Jonathan Powell, the chief of staff to Tony...

Diary.
December 1, 2007... It has been a monarchical week--despite the election of a republican in Australia. I don't just mean the Queen's wedding anniversary, Ugandan tour, and the unveiling of the BBC's famous TV series (of which more later). No, I'm thinking of the...

At the heart of the Labour funding scandal is the moral collapse of a once-great party.(POLITICS)(Labour Party)
December 1, 2007... 'Get me a Bishop. Get me a f--ing Bishop!' Peter Mandelson, then Labour's political strategist, yelled these words across the floor of Labour campaign headquarters at a rare moment of crisis before the 1997 general election. Inquiries were...

The Spectator's notes.
December 1, 2007... It is undeniably enjoyable to see Gordon Brown squirming about the 600,000 [pounds sterling] his party will have to pay back to David Abrahams, the man of many aliases. If Peter Watt, the resigning general secretary of the Labour party, really,...

Brown bounces back!(Cartoon)
December 1, 2007... We think that all Gordon needs is a chance to bounce again. Could you help? Wizard prang! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Get ready! Easy does it... Easy... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A Labour Whitehall boffin is talking to Flying...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.
December 1, 2007... Monday Am worried and confused. Just back from Forward Planning Meeting and whole of Grid for next three months is choc-a-bloc with extremely scary stuff. Clampdowns on everything from malingering benefit claimants to selfish single mums....

Blair may be about to convert, but will that make him a Catholic? Fraser Nelson says there is anger in the pews over the former prime minister's upcoming conversion. He led, say his critics, an anti-Catholic government, and many believe he should apologise for his support for abortion and stem-cell research before he is received.
December 1, 2007... 'My First Confession' would be a great title for Tony Blair's memoirs. At any rate, though the book may be years away, Tony Blair will soon confess his sins to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, and later (no one is sure, but the Vatican has...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
December 1, 2007... HMM--I DON'T LIKE THE LOCK OF THAT EYE HEATH WITH APOLOGIES TO CHON DAY/NEW YORKER [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Help! I'm a Marxist who defends capitalism: Brendan O'Neill is sick and tired of trendy anti-capitalists, and says Marx would have told them to get a grip and enjoy the wonders of modern materialism.(Karl Mark)
December 1, 2007... As one of the Marxists named in James Delingpole's recent Spectator article (3 November) on his alleged conversion to the commie cause, I really should be angrier about reckless, risk-hungry, overambitious bankers. Yet I find myself in the...

Mind your language.
December 1, 2007... Adam Jacot de Boinod (surely a pseudonym) is at it again. He's the man who gave us The Meaning of Tingo, full of words that look funny in English (bum, Arabic for 'owl') or encapsulate an idea that it takes a sentence in English to explain....

'Money-culture is ruining Kiev': the West applauds Ukraine's robust democracy but, says Andrey Slivka, the effects of markets and mass consumption on an unprepared country are proving disastrous.
December 1, 2007... Kiev Well, this was a fine one--the story of my fellow Yank Robert Fletcher, who'd been making a living hiring himself out in Ukraine, where I live, as a 'millionaire mentor'--that is, someone who could teach strivers from Sumy and...

Too much security makes us all a lot less secure: Ross Clark says that we will soon be the most counted and analysed people on earth--and the probability is that real threats will be lost in a fog of data.
December 1, 2007... Here is a little paradox. For 30 years during the Troubles you have been taking the Belfast to Stranraer ferry. No one asked you for identification: you just bought your ticket and off you went, even though it is quite possible that among your...

'We are at war with all Islam': Mary Wakefield talks to the former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali and finds out why she is so convinced that the West must crack down on Islam worldwide.(Interview)
December 1, 2007... Last Tuesday at nightfall, as the servants of democracy fled SW1, a young Somali woman stood spotlit on a stage in Westminster. Behind her was the illuminated logo for the Centre for Social Cohesion: a white hand reaching down across England to...

The importance of being serious about France: Ambassadors are just as important as ever, says Denis MacShane, and the new French ambassador is more important than most.(Maurice Gourdault-Montagne)
December 1, 2007... There is a new French ambassador arriving in London this week. He is Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, known as--what else?--MGM in Quai d'Orsay. It is fashionable to downplay the role of the ambassador in the modern world. Has not instant...

How to waste 2.3 billion [pounds sterling] of public money: bureaucracy is out of control in the regional development agencies, says Leo McKinstry, and that is placing a huge burden on the taxpayer.
December 1, 2007... In these times of green awareness, waste management has become an increasingly fashionable issue for the public sector, always keen to find new excuses for bureaucratic intervention. The South East England Development Agency (Seeda), one of the...

No one should be prohibited from questioning our past: Rod Liddle, in southern Poland (or maybe northern Slovakia), reflects on Auschwitz and Oxford--and on the hysterical attempts to stop the free speech debate this week.
December 1, 2007... Tarnaw, Poland (maybe) I'm hungry, stuck here with a tube of flavoured pork fat, a bottle of bison grass vodka and 400 cut-price English cigarettes. This is the sleeper train from Krakow to Bucharest, via Budapest, at the bad, cold hour of...

New world order.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... Sir: Poor old Irwin Stelzer is stuck in an Atlantico-centric world in which the main debate is still about choosing between Europe and America and deciding which side of the Atlantic Ocean is top dog ('The Special Relationship is between...

Hood's lack of style.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... Sir: Lord Patten ('Westminster politics has nothing on Oxford's battles', 24 November) shows less than his usual savvy in dealing with the vice-chancellor's departure. It was not only the reforms proposed by Dr Hood that so many Oxonians...

Razing the issue.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... Sir: Quinlan Terry (Letters, 24 November) answers Simon Thurley's plea for better architecture by pointing out, with reason, that steel and glass buildings designed to last only 40 years are less environmentally congenial than enduring brick...

Poetry packs a punch.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... Sir: Vernon Scannell, who figured in Jeremy Clarke's column last week (Low Life, 24 November), was quite a legendary figure in Milton Keynes, where he was poet-in-residence some 50 years ago. His mild, scholarly demeanour belied the fact...

Devices and desires.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... Sir: Page 13 of your 24 November issue carries an advertisement for a BlackBerry with the GPS device showing a location between St James's and Piccadilly. 'Distance to destination' is shown as 14 miles and 'Time to destination' as 19 minutes. I...

Can it.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2007... Sir: I would just add one thing to Bryan Forbes's excellent article regarding the dire state of British television ('I have earned the right to shout at my television', 17 November), and that is the insult to one's intelligence that is 'canned...

Freedom of speech is a foggy issue with no absolutes--and that's sort of the point.(SHARED OPINION)
December 1, 2007... It is a weird business when stories combine, even if they only do so in the mind of the commentator. On our screens, Tony Blair is about to fret about Jesus, making him look like a loony again. In Oxford, David Irving and Nick Griffin are cast,...

People who put their trust in human power delude themselves.(AND ANOTHER THING)
December 1, 2007... One thing history teaches is the transience and futility of power, and the ultimate impotence of those who exercise it. That is the lesson of the current King Tut exhibition. No group of sovereigns ever enjoyed the illusion of power more than...

The Liberal Democrats' sound money man; Simon Nixon talks to Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman and acting leader, who the City admires as one of the few politicians to talk sense about Northern Rock.(BUSINESS)(Liberal Democrat)(Interview)
December 1, 2007... I met Vincent Cable recently at a dinner party with a mixture of City and business bigwigs: a few FTSE-100 bosses, a smattering of hedge-fund tycoons, the odd private-equity baron. The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman was the only politician...

The end of the world is nigh.(INVESTMENT)
December 1, 2007... Before September, British portfolio managers had only ever seen a run on a bank on the cinema screen. It's a Wonderful Life shows how the Bailey Building and Loan is saved by the prayers of the local community. The collapse of Northern Rock...

Free at last: the next web revolution: Edie G. Lush explains why we're rarely asked to pay for online news and entertainment these days.(INTERNET BUSINESS)
December 1, 2007... Amid the shockwaves caused by Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, one significant policy shift attracted relatively little attention. When the ink finally dries on the deal, one of Murdoch's first...

Is that an iceberg ahead? Make mine a jereboam and put it on my credit card.(ANY OTHER BUSINESS)
December 1, 2007... First there was the news of passengers rescued from lifeboats in Antarctica as their cruise ship went down after hitting an iceberg. Then Tim Price, our guest Investment columnist this week, reminded me of ex-Citigroup chief Chuck Prince's...

If the cup fits: Peter Grogan is 'shown the ropes' at Agent Provocateur.(CHRISTMAS GIFTS: WEEK TWO OF FOUR: LINGERIE, STAFF, LUGGAGE AND WATCHES)
December 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] My inability to remember which Seventies sitcom character referred to somebody's knickers as 'harvest festivals' (because 'all is safely gathered in') has long troubled me, but the matter is now resolved. Ronnie...

'Tis the season to be lazy: Rachel Johnson suggests the perfect approach to the festive period--pay others to do the hard work for you.(CHRISTMAS GIFTS: WEEK TWO OF FOUR: LINGERIE, STAFF, LUGGAGE AND WATCHES)
December 1, 2007... For some, the countdown to Christmas starts on Boxing Day. These people carefully fold up wrapping paper to re-use, they freeze leftover brandy butter, they buy their baubles and decorations at half price in January sales, they make the plum...

Carry it off: beautiful luggage says as much about a person's style as their clothes do.(CHRISTMAS GIFTS: WEEK TWO OF FOUR: LINGERIE, STAFF, LUGGAGE AND WATCHES)(Buyers guide)
December 1, 2007... The most beautiful piece of luggage I have ever owned remains my least favourite. The navy-blue school trunk with its shiny golden clasps and my name painted on the top in white letters stayed in the attic out of sight during the holidays. But...

Time is of the essence: Alex Bilmes says that the stylish own a luxury timepiece or two--but the horologists just can't stop buying.(CHRISTMAS GIFTS: WEEK TWO OF FOUR: LINGERIE, STAFF, LUGGAGE AND WATCHES)(Buyers guide)
December 1, 2007... Being time-rich can make you cash-poor. That's something to remember when shopping for a wristwatch. Fashionable watches can be very expensive indeed. But you can also pick up a beautifully engineered, extremely handsome specimen for well under...

Mill! thou shouldst be living at this hour.(John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... JOHN STUART MILL: VICTORIAN FIREBRAND by Richard Reeves Atlantic Books, 30, pp. 616 ISBN 9781843546436 [telephone] 24 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Britain has had few public...

Christmas funny books.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... Reading reviews of new books of poetry, I am staggered at how seldom the critics quote from poems they are assessing. Describing what a poet is like, without quoting him, is like trying to describe a smell. In the latter exercise, you can get...

A criminal waste.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... THE ROAD TO SOUTHEND PIER by Ross Clark Harriman House, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 168, ISBN 9781905641444 [telephone] 7.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 With an estimated one surveillance camera in...

Ludbrooke: His Multiculturalism.(Poem)
December 1, 2007... Ludbrooke: His Multiculturalism Shows in the delicate way he rests his head --Despite every fear that she will remove it-- On the shoulder of Miss Chiang to watch Duck Soup, The video, from his...

A long way from Rome.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... CAESAR: A LIFE IN WESTERN CULTURE by Maria Wyke Granta, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 278, ISBN 9781862076624 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Although Latin, Greek and the ancient world in...

His own short story.(The Unbearable Saki: The Work of H. M. Munro)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... THE UNBEARABLE SAKI: THE WORK OF H. M. MUNRO by Sandie Byrne OUP, 19.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 314, ISBN9780199226054 [telephone] 15.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 This is an academic monograph on...

A false dawn.(Best for Britain? The Politics and Legacy of Gordon Brown)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... BEST FOR BRITAIN? THE POLITICS AND LEGACY OF GORDON BROWN by Simon Lee One World, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 304, ISBN 9781851685370 [telephone] 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Gordon Brown has a...

The parent trap.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... SLAM by Nick Hornby Puffin, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 304, ISBN 9780141382975 [telephone] 10.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Nick Hornby has often written perceptively about male adolescence, but...

The call of the wild.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... SIBELIUS by Andrew Barnett Yale, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 445, ISBN 9780300111590 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Jean Sibelius was an epic figure: an orignal who never strove for...

Sinister levity of an all-seeing spider.(Edward Burra: Twentieth-Century Eye by Jane Stevenson)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... EDWARD BURRA: THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY EYE by Jane Stevenson Cape, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 496, ISBN 9780224078757 [telephone] 24 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 As an an outstanding English painter and a...

Disgusted of Donegal.(Asking for Trouble by Patricia Craig)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... ASKING FOR TROUBLE by Patricia Craig Blackstaff, 8.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 230, ISBN 9780856408083 [telephone] 7.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 There is none of the lugubriousness of Angela's Ashes in...

The loss of enchantment.(The Magic Circle: Performing Magic Through the Ages )(Book review)
December 1, 2007... THE MAGIC CIRCLE: PERFORMING MAGIC THROUGH THE AGES by Michael Bailey Tempus, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 288, ISBN 9780752442471 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Children who have seen an electronic...

A very English domesticity.(Book review)
December 1, 2007... COLLECTED POEMS by Anthony Thwaite Enitharmon, 25, [pounds sterling] pp. 445, ISBN 9781904634393 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Anthony Thwaite is among the last surviving...

A Report on the Violent Male (1992).(Brief article)(Book review)
December 1, 2007... A REPORT ON THE VIOLENT MALE (1992) by A. E. van Vogt [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A. E. van Vogt was a doyen of the Astounding generation of mid-20th-century science-fiction writers, a group whose senior members included Asimov, Clarke and...

Conquests and coffins: Lloyd Evans looks back at the actors who have both triumphed and failed in the role of Othello.(ARTS)
December 1, 2007... On Tuesday Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor take on Othello at the Donmar. If the show hasn't sold out already, it soon will. Doubtless the starry cast will help shift a lot of tickets but so will the play's peculiar 'self-rationing' effect....

Sex with no appeal.
December 1, 2007... Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now Barbican Art Gallery, until 27 January 2008 Walter Sickert: The Camden Town Nudes Courtauld Institute of Art, Until 20 January 2008 What has come to be known as the Sex Show at the Barbican...

Blast from the past.
December 1, 2007... Percy Wyndham Lewis 1882-1957 Design Centre, Rugby School, until 8 December In the 1915 Vorticist Manifesto, published in the movement's magazine Blast, Wyndham Lewis (he dropped Percy) wrote: 3. Luxury, sport, the famous English...

Last farewells.(Cemetery)(English Cemetery of Florence)
December 1, 2007... Just outside Florence's city walls, marooned in the middle of a huge great ring road, lies a foreign field that is for ever England. Well, it's really for ever Switzerland. The English Cemetery of Florence is owned by the Swiss Reformed...

Compare and contrast.(Music)
December 1, 2007... 'We have introduced an artificial and theatrical music into the church, a bawling and agitation of various voices... Amorous and lascivious melodies are heard such as elsewhere accompany only the dances of courtesans and clowns.' 'The...

Present thoughts.(Pop 1)(Buyers guide)
December 1, 2007... 'Tis the season to be cheerful, especially if you like shopping. Which, obviously, as a heterosexual white middle-class male in his forties with no money, I don't much, unless it's for books or CDs. But at this time of year those of us of a...

Shine on you crazy diamond.(Pop 2)
December 1, 2007... The ambulance creeps to a halt outside the Brixton Academy at 9.15 on the evening of Amy Winehouse's second London gig on Friday and is greeted with a ripple of excitement by the crowd. 'She's arrived' is the whisper through the queue. And...

Traditional fare.(Movie review)
December 1, 2007... This Christmas 12A, Nationwide As the holiday season is all but upon us, I thought I would take a moment to reflect on Christmas movies of the past and the standards that have been set. There was one called Jingle All the Way that I liked...

Good humour, bad taste.(L'Elisir d'amore and Das Wunder der Heliane)(Opera review)
December 1, 2007... L'Elisir d'amore Royal Opera Das Wunder der Heliane Festival Hall After not seeing Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore for years, I went to two new productions of it in five days. The Glyndebourne one, which I reported on last week, is...

Lunatics at large.(The Dysfunckshonalz!)(Some Kind of Bliss )(Divine Humanity )(Television program review)
December 1, 2007... The Dysfunckshonalz! Bush Some Kind of Bliss Trafalgar Studios William Blake's Divine Humanity New Players The spirit of punk and its exhilarating lunacies are brilliantly captured in a new show at the Bush. Mike Packer's...

Radical prophet.(Radio)(Radio program review)
December 1, 2007... It's not what you think, we were warned by Jenny Uglow, the far-seeing biographer of Hogarth and Elizabeth Gaskell. Those 'dark Satanic mills' and 'mountains green' of William Blake's epic poem were never intended as an anthem in praise of...

Royal treatment.(Television)(Television program review)
December 1, 2007... On the very night that Monarch: The Royal Family at Work (BBC1, Monday) was being broadcast whom should I bump into at the Pen International quiz at the Cafe Royal in the queue for the coats but Stephen Lambert. Lambert, you may remember,...

Champion secrets.(High life)(improving sports performance)
December 1, 2007... New York I'm not sure which of the two sights was funnier: hundreds of Brit bargain-hunters huffing and puffing and laden with enormous shopping bags while taking advantage of the shot-to-hell dollar, or the English football heroes huffing...

Glum night out.(Real life)
December 1, 2007... Ten minutes into Les Miserables my boyfriend turned to me and whispered, 'Is it just me or is this Charlie Rap?' As the thunderous clatter of a large prop being unceremoniously dropped backstage reverberated around the mournfully tatty Queen's...

Talking turkey.(The table)
December 1, 2007... With the holidays approaching, foodies are grumbling again about turkey. The domesticated bird is overweight, too fat to fly; in cooking, turkeys easily dry out; their meat, especially the breast, is tasteless. Why bother? So I thought many...

Telling error.(Bridge)
December 1, 2007... It's not often that friends suggest I write up their bridge mistakes--in fact no one had ever suggested it to me until last weekend, when Stuart Wheeler did so during a session of rubber bridge. Alexander Allfrey, Richard Collins and I were...

If every day were Christmas: Charlotte Metcalf says that all-year Christmas shopping is here to stay.(STYLE AND TRAVEL)
December 1, 2007... Last spring I noticed that some Cotswold shops still had their Christmas decorations up. When they were still sporting Santas in the summer, I took a closer look and discovered that these were 'Christmas shops'. What's more, these shops...

Ski skool is best: Alistair Scott's winter warning: never teach your children to ski.(STYLE)
December 1, 2007... One of the biggest flashpoints in parent-offspring relationships comes when the child reaches 17 and the provisional driving licence arrives. Some parents think that they can teach their children to drive and the results are generally...

You take Manhattan: Amelia Torode says that New York's trendiest spots are in the boroughs.(ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER)
December 1, 2007... There's a famous New Yorker magazine cover from the 1970s called 'View of the World From 9th Avenue'. Manhattan is in focus and everything to the west of the Hudson River is just an irrelevant cartoon blur, tiny, receding away into the...

Spectator wine club.(Buyers guide)
December 1, 2007... This is our positively final offer for Christmas, and it's terrific. Thanks to Lay & Wheeler we have half a dozen French classics, all of which would be very welcome on the Yuletide dinner table, or at a memorable party. What's more, every one...

Chess czars.(CHESS)
December 1, 2007... Daniel Johnson, a distinguished former correspondent of the Times and the Telegraph, would doubtless have become a strong titled player had he chosen chess as a profession. His new book White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on...

Right on.(COMPETITION)
December 1, 2007... In Competition 2522 you were asked to submit a right-wing protest song. There are some fine examples of this underexploited genre in Tim Robbins's mock-documentary film Bob Roberts which features a guitar-playing senatorial candidate who...

1843: twelve in total.(CROSSWORD)(Brief article)
December 1, 2007... Two unclued lights, both consisting of one word and one numeral, are represented by the remaining unclued lights, four of two words. 1A singularly is like 17. 16 does double duty. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Solution to 1840: As you were...

Simon Pegg is a winsome actor, but even he may struggle to make me look charming.(STATUS ANXIETY)
December 1, 2007... Actors claim that the hardest thing about their profession is the ever-present possibility of rejection, but they have it easy compared to authors. First we have to find favour with an agent, then a publisher, then an editor, then the...

Ancient & modern.
December 1, 2007... Mission statements and codes of practice are all the rage today among business communities. Everyone has to have one. The trouble is, they are all the same, and consist mostly of strings of platitudes about 'best practice' and 'personal...

Nowhere to hide.(SPECTATOR SPORT)(soccer)
December 1, 2007... Clueless about who, where or what to turn to next, I wonder which was history's first body to announce a 'full and far-reaching commission of enquiry' in which to cover itself with a sub judice blanket until the army of furious castigators...

Dear Mary.(YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED)
December 1, 2007... Q. My very nice Polish cleaner wants my husband and I [sic] to come to her house for dinner one evening and, to be brutally frank, we don't want to. Her English is very limited, my Polish non-existent, and I think it would be a night of sheer...

The sense of an ending.
December 8, 2007... 'Sleaze has been the dominant factor throughout,' declared the opposition, 'and sleaze has been the end issue. Nothing better encapsulates what people think of this government. Sleaze will be one of the things that brings this government down.'...

Diary.(Diary entry)(Column)
December 8, 2007... Well, I've learnt my lesson. After my last Speccie diary was satirised by the Guardian, Emily Maitlis, Michael White, Taki, a newspaper called the Asian Age, and--honour of genuine honours!--Craig Brown in Private Eye for being too name-droppy,...

The Labour party has ended up as the unloved child of the Blair--Brown divorce.(POLITICS)(former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prime Minister Gordon Brown)
December 8, 2007... Deep party feuds never really die: they just lie buried under the flimsy covering of the good times. For Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, such times have been brief indeed. My yoga teacher tells her wobbly pupils that the point of balance in a...

The Spectator's notes.(Column)
December 8, 2007... We all know about spin in theory, but we are slow to notice it in practice. The approved version of the release of Gillian Gibbons, the 'teddy bear' teacher in the Sudan, is that the Sudanese government has seen reason thanks to the mission of...

Diary of a notting hill nobody.(Diary entry)
December 8, 2007... SUNDAY Weekend duty totally ruined by silly Sayeeda's trip to Sudan. Spent all day yesterday fielding calls for pre-trip interviews, but she couldn't do any of them because she had an urgent appointment at Daniel Galvin for a cut and blow...

Labour would get rid of Gordon--if the plotters had a real candidate: as the government sinks into a mire of sleaze and incompetence, Fraser Nelson says that Labour MPs and ministers are braced for electoral disaster and already plotting feverishly over the succession--but have no idea who could do a better job than Brown.(Cover story)
December 8, 2007... After ten tedious years of firm party discipline, life is finally returning to the corridors of the House of Commons. A lobby journalist on patrol can once again gather intelligence, whether it be from ministers colluding behind the Speaker's...

Flash Gordon.(Brief article)(Cartoon)(Column)
December 8, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: NO MORE GOADING! I THINK YOU MAY HAVE PUSHED GORDON TO FAA!

Guess what? Gordon has done something right: for all Brown's woes, he is spot on about anti-competitive sharp practice in business, says Irwin Stelzer. Now he needs to import that spirit to the public sector.
December 8, 2007... Spare a moment for a story in which Gordon Brown is the good guy. Not as exciting as tales of the money trail from David Abrahams to the Labour party's coffers; nor as bloodcurdling as tales of crimes committed by untold numbers of illegal...

'Zimbabwe is like a flipped coin in the air': as the first EU--Africa summit for seven years opens, Christopher Thompson talks to those who still suffer under Mugabe's tyrannical rule and see no reason for optimism.(President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe)
December 8, 2007... Harare It's summer and the purple flowers on the jacaranda trees have begun to bloom, but they're little comfort to Zimbabweans in the middle of a dire economic crisis. You can tell it's bad here because even the death of Ian Smith last...

The teddy bear teacher was released from prison too soon: Rod Liddle is unimpressed by Gillian Gibbons and her view of Islam--but pleasantly surprised by the unequivocal reaction of British Muslim groups to her treatment.
December 8, 2007... So the mop-headed ingenue teacher Gillian Gibbons has been released from her torment in Sudan without being horsewhipped or banged up for too long. The Scousers--Ms Gibbons is from Liverpool, naturellement--had insufficient time to organise a...

'The Arab world with its own European union': Walter Russell Mead, the chronicler of US power, talks to James Forsyth about the geopolitics of the Middle East and says that Bush has 'carried the sins of his people'.(US President George W. Bush)(Interview)
December 8, 2007... The Anglo-Saxon powers have been triumphant in every major global conflict for the past 300 years. This is the kind of statement that is so sweeping that you desperately want it to be wrong. But it is right. Either Britain or America--or...