Media people are always wildly excited by media events, most of which tend to leave the rest of us relatively calm. One such event is the departure of Michael Grade from the top of the BBC Governors' (soon to be Trustees') tree to the top of the much shorter and humbler ITV tree where, [...]
Lines of poetry quoted by F D Roosevelt to Churchill and by Churchill to Roosevelt, and quoted in Churchill’s wartime speeches, have acquired a huge emotional; charge for older people from that wartime context. Do Bush and Blair exchange poetry, and if so what poems would be appropriate? [More >>>]
Tony Blair’s almost-apology on behalf of Britain for the slave trade, for which neither he nor other Brits alive today bear any responsibility, devalues the concept of ‘apology’ and exemplifies the ignorant and ahistorical application of modern ethical values to those of an earlier age when slavery had both legal and biblical approval. Better to tackle current slavery, practised in various parts of the world to this day [More >>>]
A beautiful and sexy production of Mozart’s glorious opera Cosi Fan Tutte, broadcast from Glyndebourne by BBC4 — digital television only, alas. [More >>>]
A formal FCO briefing paper on the prime minister’s website says that our troops will stay in Iraq as long as the Iraqi government wants them to remain — an outrageous abrogation of the british government’s responsibilities [More >>>]
Some thoughts about two members of the royal family who have recently appeared in military or naval uniforms and other ceremonial costume without benefit of any supporting military or naval careers of any significance in their cv’s (US: resumés). [More >>>]
It's hard to know whether to laugh or weep at President George W Bush's gut-wrenching public appeal for "any idea or suggestion" from anyone, anywhere, that might get the mighty United States out of the morass of its Iraq policies. Surrounded by the whole of his Cabinet (apart from Rumsfeld, sacked a few minutes earlier [...]
Three commentators in the liberal press (Polly Toynbee, Mary Riddell, Nick Cohen) have recently attacked fundamental principles of liberty, civil rights and the rational society in implausible terms at the very time when these principles need to be most robustly defended [More >>>]
Saddam is a murderous monster fully deserving punishment, but the death sentence at the end of a chaotic shambles of a show trial pre-ordained and organised by the Americans is a moral obscenity as well as another act of political folly [More >>>]
Stephen Grey, principal exposer of Extraordinary Rendition, chronicles this criminal enterprise in a highly readable but chilling book, ‘Ghost Plane’. The moral: never trust even the most benign government with sweeping powers that will sooner or later be exploited and abused by a successor. [More >>>]
