The Spectator articles from November 2002

The Spectator archives from November 2002

Portrait of the week.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... The Fire Brigades Union and employers' representatives agreed to a deal on a 16 per cent pay rise, in the early hours of the morning on which an eight-day strike was to begin. But the office of Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister,...

Brown's black hole.(Gordon Brown)(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... Of the many personal mishaps to have afflicted ministers in the last Conservative government, few, ultimately, can have proved as damaging as the revelation that Norman Lamont had exceeded the credit limit on his Access card. No matter that...

Diary.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... Within an hour of returning to the Commons after a sabbatical tour of ex-British South Asia I find myself plunged into the firefighters' strike. The Blairites have long been envious of the glass-jawed opponents who queued up to be walloped by...

Poor, proud Prescott will soon be hauled off to the knacker's yard. (Politics).(John Prescott)(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... The origins of government mishandling of the firefighters' strike are to be found in the immediate aftermath of the general election in June last year, when Tony Blair failed to sack John Prescott. The Deputy Prime Minister had proved a...

Why our Gods must die: Toby Young says the savage new religion of celebrity has displaced older cults, with which it has much in common.
November 30, 2002... STOP all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. For the next 24 hours I'll be glued to my television set watching the final moments of Celebrity Big Brother. Admittedly, it hasn't proved quite as...

Aural satisfaction: Rachel Johnson talks to The Archers' Brian Aldridge, whose sexual exploits make television look tame.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... AT 7.02 p.m., women all over the country lock themselves into bathrooms. They pull over on to hard shoulders. And, if you're at home during the next 13 minutes and the telephone rings, your caller is no longer offended if you say, `I'm...

Coloured prejudice: Hugh Russell reports that the mixed-race tribes of Africa look down on their black cousins.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... Lusaka I'M ashamed of myself. When the 2 November issue of The Spectator finally burst through the unnatural barrier to communication known as the Zambian postal service and fell on to my desk yesterday, and I read Rod Liddle's painful...

Mind your language.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... MY husband's new hero is Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff. He (my husband) keeps exclaiming `Re-Boyce! Re-Boyce!' in a poor approximation to the tone used by Mrs Thatcher during the Falklands war. It is not a...

Kangaroo courting: labour is downgrading the crime of bestiality after lobbying by zoosexuals.
November 30, 2002... WHEN David Blunkett stood up last week to launch his blueprint on sexual morality, `Protecting the Public', and said grandly, `The law on sex offences is widely recognised as archaic, incoherent and discriminatory,' few might have imagined...

Beebosaurus Rex: Tim Luckhurst on Greg Dyke's tax-payer-funded mission to destroy his commercial rivals.
November 30, 2002... IN the BBC's prime-time plug for the offerings available on its Freeserve digital channels, a series of stars peel away latex masks to reveal more talent underneath. The trail, which includes the luminaries John Simpson and Steven Berkoff,...

How Churchill fought the spirit of the age to snatch victory from Diana. (Shared Opinion).(Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, "Greates Briton")
November 30, 2002... So many people seem not to realise how close Diana, Princess of Wales, came in that fateful autumn of 2002 to conquering these islands. Only Isambard Kingdom Brunel stood between Churchill and her. We take for granted that Churchill would...

Ancient & modern.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... WHAT a fuss everyone is getting into about the funding of universities! If ministers would only sit back with their Aristotle and Plato and think about results, all would become clear. Aristotle is very keen on the telos--the goal or end...

Why does Downing Street encourage Dirty Des? Because he threatens the Daily Mail. (Media Studies).(Richard Desmond)(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... One of Richard Desmond's heroes is Rupert Murdoch, who was profiled in glowing terms in the most recent Sunday Express. The proprietor of the Express group regards the Australian-born adventurer as an outsider like himself. In fact, Desmond...

The Aussie who saved our flag: Leah McLaren meets Rod Eddington, who is rescuing BA by sacking thousands.(British Airways)
November 30, 2002... A COWBOY name. Heavy on the consonants and crudely clipped, the first three letters doubling as an instrument of discipline, it is as solid and unpretty as the man it refers to. Given recent challenges, a perfect moniker for a captain of the...

Banned wagon: global: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... CHRISTMAS shoppers are being urged to boycott the clothes store Gap on the basis that it exploits workers in the Third World. A report in the Guardian quotes a Bangladeshi who says she has her ears pulled when she makes mistakes, and a wretch...

Sentenced to months of hard labour, fraud juries empathise with the men in the dock. (City And Suburban).(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... The charge of fraud at the Royal Mail Line led to a sensational trial, and Sir Patrick Hastings was briefed for the defence. It seemed that the company's published accounts might have told the truth but stopped some way short of the whole...

What Afghans think of the guardian: Matthew Leeming says that right-on liberal commentators were quite wrong about the war against the Taleban.
November 30, 2002... Faizabad I WAS halfway up the track that leads to the salt-mine at Taloqan, described by Marco Polo as producing the finest salt in the world, when an old man driving a donkey, two huge blocks of rock salt tied to its sides, stopped me...

Billionaires' benidorm: Philip Delves Broughton, in Monaco for the trial of Ted Maher, finds that the principality is a rotten little retirement home for fat cats.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... IT was bucketing down in Monte Carlo and the casino was empty. Croupiers sat forlornly at the tables in the gilded Salle d'Europe and in the large private rooms at the back, overlooking a sheer drop to the Mediterranean. Several of them were...

You'd think the Tories would have more sense than to try to rock and roll. But you'd be wrong. (Thought For The Day).(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... Some time ago I was jammed into the back of a large white Mercedes van and sent across the dead and dusty plains of northern Uganda to see how desperately poor everybody was. It was a pretty hellish journey. The heat and the insects and...

The what of the year? Tam Dalyell says that Tony Blair may be many things but he is not a Parliamentarian; all his achievements are extra-parliamentary.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... EVEN now, I am not sure that I really approve of the generosity of Zurich Financial Services and The Spectator in giving an excellent and congenial lunch and then dishing out awards of the year to politicians. In 1984 I was chosen as...

Wine club correction.(Correction Notice)
November 30, 2002... In the wine column of 16 November, Corney & Barrow Ltd's telephone number should have read 020 7539 3200.

Social climbers, beware! What fresh hell are you climbing to? (And Another Thing).(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... Social climbing isn't what it used to be. Dress, for instance. The right gear, a Shakespearean term, used to be essential. Provincials trying to make it at Elizabeth's court `carried their fortunes on their backs'. Ralegh, an archetypal...

Master of the shrug.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... NOBODY'S PERFECT: BILLY WILDER, A PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY by Charlotte Chandler Simon & Schuster, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 352, ISBN 0743217098 Long long ago, they used to say that the difference between the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs...

Footloose for half a lifetime.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... THE TRAVELS OF IBN BATTUTAH edited by Tim Mackintosh-Smith Picador, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 325, ISBN 033049113X Walk into an airport bookstore and chances are the shelves will be groaning with travelogues by Bill Bryson, master-pieces...

The lines are immaterial.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... BYRON: LIFE AND LEGEND by Fiona MacCarthy John Murray, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 674, ISBN 0 71955621X I once met a thoroughly heterosexual old naval officer who had been a midshipman on the ship that sailed to Gallipoli with Rupert...

Stooping to conquer.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... NOBODY'S PERFECT by Anthony Lane Picador, 15.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 752, ISBN 0330491822 Anthony Lane has been film critic for the New Yorker since 1993, and the light lash of his humour is waspish and urbane in its New Yorker-ese....

The man who would be Stalin.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... SADDAM: THE SECRET LIFE by Con Coughlin Macmillan, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 384, ISBN 0333 782003 SADDAM HUSSEIN by Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn Verso, 9 [pounds sterling], pp. 352, ISBN 1859844227 Recently I received a...

The self-promoting recluse.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... CHARLES DARWIN, VOLUME II: THE POWER OF PLACE by Janet Browne Cape, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 591, ISBN 0224042122 `If Charles Darwin had spent the first half of his life in the world of Jane Austen, he now stepped forward into the pages...

In their own words.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... RORY & ITA by Roddy Doyle Cape, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 338, ISBN 0224069233 My first memory is of the stone floor. Stone slabs. And I remember... soldiers marching, with their leggings and boots, and dragging cannon guns ...

Back in the dock.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... VERDICT ON VICHY: POWER AND PREJUDICE IN THE VICHY REGIME by Michael Curtis Weidenfeld, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 419, ISBN 0297842242 The French have never forgotten Vichy. No event in French history since the Revolution has caused such...

Can you spot the difference?(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... FAUNA BRITANNICA by Stephan Buczacki Hamlyn, 40 [pounds sterling], pp. 528, ISBN0600598675 FAUNA BRITANNICA by Duff Hart-Davis Weidenfeld, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 415, ISBN 0297825321 Time was that this sort of confusion did not...

A good tale spoilt in the telling.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... WINSTON'S WAR by Michael Dobbs HarperCollins, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 487, ISBN 000225414X Michael Dobbs is a charming, intelligent and self-effacing man, but you would not have guessed it from the blurb on the dust-jacket of his...

New figures in our national story.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... HISTORY OF BRITAIN, VOLUME III: THE FATE OF EMPIRE by Simon Schama BBC, 725 [pounds sterling], pp. 576, ISBN 0563534575 In the first two volumes accompanying his. History of Britain television series, Simon Schama had a clear framework in...

Finding paradise in your own back garden.(gardening)(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... Gardening is the nation's hobby. It is worth around 3 billion [pounds sterling] in annual business, much of it generated by television makeovers. No one is letting on that what keeps us spending is the pursuit of a dream. Makeovers are...

Still cloaked in mystery.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... SIR WALTER RALEIGH by Raleigh Trevelyan Allen Lane, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 640, ISBN 0761399326X Elizabeth I was nearly 50 when her fancy was taken by a `tall, handsome and bold man' in his late twenties named Walter Raleigh. It is...

Naughty but nice.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... INTERESTING WOMEN by Andrea Lee Fourth Estate, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 222, ISBN 0007135041 The first story in this very fine collection takes the most risks, not unlike its protagonist. Ariel, a sophisticated, self-aware, American...

Magnificent joint venture.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... SPAIN'S ROAD TO EMPIRE by Henry Kamen Allen Lane, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 609, ISBN 0713993650 One might think that Henry Kamen, having written books on Spain in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, on the Inquisition on Philip II and on...

Cooking the books.(television cooks' books)
November 30, 2002... In the past famous cooks were content to distil the experience of a lifetime into one book: Hannah Glasse and Eliza Acton wasted little time thinking of the Christmas market. Not so our television cooking idols. Jamie's Kitchen...

Quiet man of letters.(Book Review)
November 30, 2002... CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NOVEL by David Lodge Secker, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 320, ISBN 0436210053 Introducing a book of his pieces for the weekly press (Thoughts in the Wilderness, 1957, still worth a read for its tingle of honest...

The Robertson revolution.(Bryan Robertson)
November 30, 2002... Bryan Robertson, who died two weeks ago on 18 November, did more than any other single person to transform the contemporary art scene in this country, and from the mid 1960s he used The Spectator as his public platform. He was the Diaghilev...

The Empire strikes back: Andrew Lambirth welcomes the opening of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum. (Arts).
November 30, 2002... Ten years ago, Bristol council were apparently thinking of demolishing the building which now houses the newly opened British Empire and Commonwealth Museum. This would have been a great pity, for it was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel as...

Painting for pleasure. (Exhibitions 1).
November 30, 2002... Winifred Nicholson: Unseen Works on Paper (Crane Kalman Gallery, 178 Brompton Road, SW3, till 11 January) In our brand-obsessed era, artists who don't belong to movements tend to slip through the net, which is why, when you look up...

Poetic injustice. (Exhibitions 2).(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... Anthem for Doomed Youth (Imperial War Museum, London, till 27 April) `When you see millions of the mouthless dead/Across your dreams in pale battalions go...' This vision of stark horror, found in a British officer's knapsack after his...

Insubstantial fare. (Theatre).(Theater Review)
November 30, 2002... Dinner (Lyttelton Loft) The BFG (Playhouse) The Mousetrap (St Martin's) Dinner, a new play by Moira Buffini at the National, starts off brimming with promise. Harriet Walter plays a brittle, acid-tongued hostess who's throwing a...

Trio of hits. (Opera).(Carmen; Eugene Onegin; Albert Herring)
November 30, 2002... Glyndebourne's autumn season, which takes in six venues, but could surely with profit (if not of the financial variety) take in many more, is on even more enjoyable form this year, with three hits, and what seemed to be, in Norwich's Theatre...

Knussen revealed. (Music).(Oliver Knussen)
November 30, 2002... The tapes made in my unavoidable absence had cut off the broadcast's first couple of minutes: but there was no mistaking the music's voice--lithe, bright, purposeful, wittily concealing yet revealing within colourful elaborations the ghost of...

Drippy heroes. (Television).(Daniel Deronda; Dr. Zhivago)
November 30, 2002... How boring is Daniel Deronda? It's 15-odd years since I ploughed through it but I do dimly recall a conversation with some of my fellow undergraduates which went something like: `Christ, Eliot's really excelled herself this time. This book is...

Mystery man. (Radio).
November 30, 2002... Until Georges Simenon claimed to have slept with 10,000 women, the Belgian-born novelist was chiefly known for his Inspector Maigret detective stories. After that, though, men everywhere thought only of the women and wondered enviously how...

The reason why. (Hunting).
November 30, 2002... The Editor wants to know why people hunt. Being a classicist, he puts it differently. He asks what is the mens rea of the hunter. Looking round the leading members of the Vale of Tears Hunt (VT), let us search for their mens rea. Let us...

Crazy business. (The turf).(horse racing)
November 30, 2002... A delegate staying in a Blackpool hotel for a conference once complained to his landlady about being woken at 5.00 a.m. by the baying of a pack of dogs. `Why don't you complain to the police?' he asked. `Because,' she replied, `they are...

What manners? (High life).
November 30, 2002... New York `They know they cannot help their clumsy, one-handed table manners, and even the most seemingly sophisticated American makes a point of checking which side is correct before using a sideplate. And although they rarely admonish...

Facts and figures. (Low life).(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... Facing each other across the piazza of the Sardinian village we stayed in last week were two bars, one right-wing and one communist. The communist bar sold cigarettes, sweets and stamps and the fascist bar sold newspapers, magazines and...

Wild times. (Singular life).(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... The tiny propeller plane that seemed to be made from beaten tin dipped and shuddered in the air. One of the girls opposite me turned the colour of vegetable bouillon. The pilot briskly apologised for the turbulence which he attributed to...

By the book. (Bridge).(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... IN MY experience, by far the best way to improve at bridge is to read about it. There are too many pressures and distractions when you're actually playing to be able to work out the basic principles involved in solving a difficult hand. It's...

Miles gloriosus. (Chess).(Tony Miles)(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... IT is just over a year ago that the English grandmaster Tony Miles passed away at a tragically early age. This week I am remembering his achievements with notes on what was probably his outstanding game. At his best, Miles's style...

English hexameters. (Competition).
November 30, 2002... Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 2266 you were invited to provide a poem in English hexameters in the form of a `Letter from Abroad' from one friend to another. `Down in a deep, dark hole sat an old cow chewing a beanstalk,' we used to...

Crossword.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... 1592: Prickly by Columba A first prize of 30 [pounds sterling] and a bottle of Graham's exquisite ten-year-old Tawny Port (delicious drunk chilled) for the first correct solution opened on 16 December, with two runners-up prizes of 20...

Spectator Wine Club.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... BERRY Bros & Rudd are Britain's oldest wine merchants. A visit to their 300-year-old building in St James's is delightful but also somewhat disconcerting, even overwhelming. There are the ancient wood panels and the creaking floors. Recently...

A long winter for England. (Spectator Sport).(cricket)
November 30, 2002... Perth ENGLAND's cricketers lost a Test match in Adelaide but, viewed from a wider perspective, it was a wonderful week. The `city of churches' (and sex scandals) is a bit like Edinburgh. There is a high life and a low life, and most outsiders...

Dear Mary ... (Your Problems Solved).(Brief Article)
November 30, 2002... Q. I am a hereditary peer. I am also in the auctioneering business and my work takes me to the United States, where confusion frequently arises over my Christian name. What is the most tactful way for me to correct those who have...

Chicken licken. (Portrait Of The Week).(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... Three men of north African origin were arrested under the Terrorism Act, and some newspapers said that a plot to spread poison gas in the London Underground had been foiled. The government denied this was so; Mr Tony Blair, the Prime...

Set Oxbrisdge free.(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... If the Institute of Economic Affairs has a branch in the heavens, the surrounding clouds must be disturbed by a loud wailing sound emanating from the soul of Sir Keith Joseph. If any man had a reason to cry out about the unfairness of life,...

Diary.(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... They've scrubbed it off now, but until recently the outer wall of Hackney's HSBC bore a weird piece of graffiti. The ugly felt-tip scribble stood out harshly against the whitewashed stone. It consisted of a girl's name (illegible), then the...

Prince Charles should be allowed to take his pick from rows of dancing debutantes in G-strings. (Another Voice).(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... Compared with the woes besetting our own royal family, the problems faced by the Swazi monarchy in adapting to the 21st century are minor. King Mswati III has just chosen his tenth wife. The wedding will not affect his marriage to the...

`Warm, funny and blunt,' said the Guardian of Myra Hindley. The tabloids were more accurate. (Media Studies).(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... The tabloids kept Myra Hindley in prison. They threw away the key. I recall once overhearing a home secretary reassuring a tabloid editor that `he would never release Myra'. The same man might lower the age of consent or give greater freedom...

The leader we deserve: in his hypocrisy, muddle and evasion, Tony Blair holds a mirror to our comfortable suburban culture.
November 23, 2002... NO British prime minister has dominated the landscape so obviously, with so little obvious effort or for so long, as Tony Blair. You can check through the lists fruitlessly as far back as they go to find a comparable example. Maybe...

Mind your language.(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... I WAS sitting next to a lawyer at dinner, who said that I belonged to the fourth estate. I asked him what the other three were. He did not seem to mind not knowing, but thought it was very bad of me not to. As I said, he was a lawyer. ...

How Blair has betrayed us: Sholto Byrnes is sickened by the cynicism and opportunism of his New Labour contemporaries.(Tony Blair)
November 23, 2002... APRIL 1992: in the basement of an elegant town house, a group of university students watches the results coming in during the general election. In the early stages the atmosphere is tense; it is not clear which way the election will go. Then...

Why I quit the army: Gordon Bourne has resigned his commission in despair of a profession destroyed by red tape.
November 23, 2002... TONY BLAIR tells us continually that the British armed forces are `the best in the world'. They are fighting fit, says the government, and straining at the leash to do battle with Saddam Hussein. It is all the more frightening, therefore,...

Second opinion.(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... I HAVE HAD occasion before to observe that the English are a nation of shoplifters. But not even the most widely prevalent of characteristics is ever absolutely universal. Therefore, it is no contradiction to state also that the English are a...

China is a fascist country: Jasper Becker on the remarkable similarities between the policies of Jiang Zemin and Benito Mussolini.
November 23, 2002... Beijing WHEN Jiang Zemin became leader of the Chinese Communist party in 1989, no one had the faintest idea that 13 years later he would have utterly transformed it. The trappings of the party may still be Stalinist, but as the 16th...

IDS.
November 23, 2002... LOOK, IAIN, I HOPE YOU WON'T TAKE IT A MISS IF I GIVE YOU SOME ADVICE. YOU REALLY NEED TO PROTECT YOURSELF, SPEAK UP, MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD! IT DOES'T MATTER WHAT YOU SAY, TAKE ME, FOR EXAMPLE. I SAID `EDUCATION! EDUCATION! EDUCATION! `TOUGH...

Banned wagon: a weekly survey of the things our rulers around the world want to prohibit.(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... ORDINARY life must go on, the government persuaded us while administering its warning two weeks ago of a possible terrorist attack: if we allow the threat of bombings to disrupt our normal activities, then we give the terrorists what they...

`The minarets are our bayonets': Owen Matthews meets Turkey's Islamist election victor, who may yet prove to be a good thing.
November 23, 2002... Istanbul I HAVE no doubt that Allah moves in mysterious ways. But if He has chosen Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the instrument of His vengeance on the infidel, He must be given credit for startling originality. Erdogan, whose party won a...

Why women can't read maps: the high incidence of male autism reveals basic mental differences between the sexes.(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... ALMOST everything we find out about autism is disturbing. Our worry increases exponentially with every new nugget of information, just as the numbers of those children diagnosed as suffering from one or another autistic disorder seem to...

Freedom for the South-east! Mike Denham says the region is being fleeced to pay for the rest of the UK.(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... I ONCE got bashed up by the late John Smith. It was at one of those charm-offensive lunches in the City, and he had asked why London's booming financial firms kept all their jobs in the South-east rather than sharing them round the rest of...

Featuring in the Gordon and Prudence Show: an economy held up on sky-hooks. (City And Suburban).(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... Here it comes again, round with the seasons, the Gordon and Prudence Show. This version is meant to be a preview of the gala event which is timed for next March, but we can recognise the format. That thudding delivery, those ritual...

Volunteer spender. (City And Suburban).(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... SKY-HOOKS excepted, someone will need to spend more as the consumer spends less. It is no use expecting that businessmen will step forward--the outlook for business investment is dismal--but the Chancellor has a volunteer standing ready:...

Spinning wheels. (City And Suburban).
November 23, 2002... ONE more hook dangles down from the sky and today's Chancellor must hope to grasp it. His earlier forecasts assumed that other countries' economies would start to grow faster and haul ours up with them. Perhaps they will, but of the three...

Burger off. (City And Suburban).(London McDonald's closures)(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... THE Crossmaglen of the burger world is Hampstead High Street, and now McDonald's, after so many years under fire from its neighbours, is retreating in good order. In other exposed positions, across central London, the golden arches are being...

Grace under pressure. (City And Suburban).(City of Oxford)(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... I AM pleased to report a sign of grace among the investment trusts. These, as I was saying last week, are the City's distressed gentlefolk, and some of them brought their distress on themselves by joining a daisy-chain and investing in each...

Pour on water. (City And Suburban).(firemen's strike)(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... THE firemen have played their cards well, but what they really need is a code of pyrological governance. Then their pay could be set, as now happens in boardrooms, by a remuneration committee. This would be mostly made up of non-executive...

Hookers at sports day: John Gibb on mothers who pay their children's public-school fees by going on the game.
November 23, 2002... I FIRST met Jilly ten years ago when we worked together on some newspaper or other. We kept in desultory touch and then, unexpectedly, I came across her at a birthday party in a crumbling cottage on the western edge of Cranborne Chase. She is...

Ancient & modern.(Brief Article)
November 23, 2002... THE Prime Minister has been sounding off about the importance of `respect', which he does not define but clearly thinks is a vote-winner. In fact, as ancient Greeks saw, `respect'--aidos--is the other side of a far less cuddly emotion,...