Commentariat

You are browsing the archives of 2008 April.

The complacent, sloppy approach to administration within the criminal justice system is endemic at a time when there is more government demand than ever before for “form-filling”.

It is time for the whole of London’s great metropolis to have its say. On Thursday, it should elect Boris as mayor.

If it is a matter of faith with you that Gordon Brown is mad, terminally dithering, responsible for all the ills you suffer while entirely innocent of all the benefits you enjoy, sub-Stalinesque, constitutionally unable to empathise with your plight (whatever that consists of) and utterly incompetent, it may be better if you move straight on to the column below. Because my argument is almost premised on the idea that this weird consensus is no better grounded than was the perception, current last July - do you remember last July? - that he walked on water.

One of the great deficiencies of the dead is that they never change their minds. One of their advantages is that there’s very little they can do about it when someone changes it for them. Indeed, they can even be enlisted to back up their own overruling.

Poor old Tory squillionaire Lord Laidlaw, 65, was exposed by Sunday’s News Of The World as a Viagra-chomping sex addict. The exposé is notable for three things: the first documented instance of the phrase “trilingual bisexual”; Laidlaw’s stamina; and the fella’s plan to give £1m of his £730m fortune to a relevant charity.

I’ve walked past the house on Lordship Lane in Dulwich a hundred times, and wondered how such an elegant building could be dying of neglect. Its graceful proportions, arched windows and luxurious gables suggest a distinguished provenance, but it’s now an empty wreck. The trashed roof, the boarded-up windows, the planks shoring up the frontage all give the place a look of ineffable melancholy – as if it were aghast at the way its life has turned out. I discovered it was once the rectory to St Peter’s Church, that it was built in 1873 by one Charles Drake of the Patent Concrete Building Company, and is apparently the only surviving example in England of a Victorian “concrete house”. But its present owner can’t be found, and Southwark Council won’t demolish it because it’s a Grade II-listed building. So it stands in limbo.

Missionary who gave his heart to Kenya and translated at the trial of Jomo Kenyatta

Scholar who invented ‘drama theory’, advised the military and industry, and wrote a Kung Fu film

Hollywood ingénue who landed her first part in Casablanca but never worked for Warner Bros again

Lord Laidlaw of Rothiemay, the leading Tory donor, has said that he will receive treatment for “sex addiction” after revelations of his involvement with prostitutes.

Gordon Brown needs to “get back to basics” if he wants Labour to recover and win the next election, according to Peter Mandelson, a former Cabinet minister.

The whole joy of chocolate is that it’s a guilty indulgence, and you don’t need a university study to tell you that.

Councils are largely run by and for their standing bureaucracies. The underlying problem won’t be tackled until local authorities are given meaningful fiscal and legislative autonomy.

Now that the National Union of Teachers has once again exercised its talent for disruption, we can look forward to more sectors of Labour’s carefully cultivated client state rising in defiance.

(19 June 2000)

Despite Lucian Freud’s reputation as Britain’s most celebrated portrait painter, the reclusive artist prefers to keep himself to himself. Still, diners at The Wolseley restaurant were surprised to see Freud eating alone at the chic Piccadilly eatery last week.

In the 17 years that Matthew and I have been shackled together, as he puts it, in wedlock, we have argued over the following subjects: cooking; cleaning; childcare; tone of voice; the garden; the garden furniture; whether the tortoises (we now have two) are bothered by the bass beat of the radio; and Matthew’s insistence on buying but then never consuming Tesco’s coffee and walnut cake.

England and Wales vote on May 1st in local government elections, while Londoners will have the chance to vote for their London Assembly members and choose a new Mayor.

Terry Wogan contemplates an educational first aid training day.

A teacher has written of a recent first aid training day at her school. It was not as straightforward as you may think, writes Terry Wogan.

We, the people, need to take government back from the bureaucrats who have stolen it from us. Taking the first step on that road requires you to vote in this week’s local elections. We urge you to do so.

The recent resurgence of interest in home-grown food - an enthusiasm which we hope to foster with the Food Garden Competition - seems an entirely beneficial development.

I took Stacey out on the town this week – brought her up from country exile for a big night out. I felt a little pressure to do something special, as my normal routine of getting totally smashed in a bar talking TV bollocks was probably not what she was after.

Can Hillary Clinton do it? Is it imaginable that the cup of nomination might
be torn from Barack Obama’s lips? Is it still conceivable that America could
elect its first black president, or its first female one? Or is it possible
that, after eight years of George Bush, the Republicans could yet retain the
White House in the eccentric shape of John McCain?