Commentariat

You are browsing the archives of 2008 June.

Her Majesty the Queen has let it be known that, as one headline put it “One is on one's uppers”. Apparently the Queen cannot afford to get the decorators into Buckingham Palace without more government money.

As hard as I’ve tried - and believe me, I’ve tried - I have never been able to
get particularly upset about Scientology. Yes, it’s a hugely profitable
supplier of dubiously scientific self-help techniques that also manages to
enjoy the tax-exempt status of a religion. Yes, it has a long and dark
history of trying to silence critics through intimidation, not to mention
all those run-ins with the taxman and the FBI. Yes, it sometimes comes
between cult members - sorry, Scientologists - and their families.

There are some decent ideas in Lord Darzi’s long-awaited report on reforming the National Health Service. The proposal to shift minor surgery operation out of hospitals and into “polyclinics” makes sense; so does the idea of encouraging collectives of NHS nurses to set up their own independent health centres. The fact that these reforms have drawn fire from that most reactionary of unions, the British Medical Association, is, in itself, a sign that the rest of us should welcome them.

In theory, Barack Obama should have been Bill Clinton’s ideal candidate for US President. Young, bright, ambitious and bold, with an unerring popular touch, Mr Obama has so much in common with the former President. And, even 16 years apart, in such very different Americas, their messages of can-do optimism, social inclusion and change allow voters to think better of themselves. Whatever one thinks about Toni Morrison’s remark about Mr Clinton being the first black US President, he can nonetheless be seen as a trailblazer for Mr Obama in this way, too.

France takes over the EU Presidency from Slovenia today, but it is a very different presidency, in a very different European mood, from the one its ebullient president had prepared for. France expected to preside over a European Union in which infuriating technicalities had been settled.

If good intentions were enough to cure the 60-year-old NHS of its problems, then the job would be well and truly done.

Now, let there be no more talk of Alan Johnson leading the Labour Party. It’s all over. But that probably applies to the Government, too. Both are swamped, submerged, barely visible in an angry sea of administrative drivel.

In the Spain team that was crowned European champions on Sunday night, only two men came from Real Madrid - the team favoured by the Franco regime and for years almost the sole provider of representatives for the national side. Barcelona - that emblem of Catalan nationalism - provided three players, and the team as a whole was notable for the fact that its members originated from all corners of Spain.

Like an ageing rock star selling out stadiums around the world, the NHS continues to transcend the apparent fashion of our times. Long ago, the political and media establishment turned its back on most services that are publicly owned. Fearful ministers hand them over to anyone that wants them, from Richard Branson to anonymous members of non-elected quangos.

For some time, there has been a population leak from middle Britain. Thousands, maybe millions, of restless, disgruntled Britons have sold up and moved abroad to somewhere with a swimming-pool, agreeable wine and surprisingly nice locals. Middle-aged, middle-class and mostly middle-brained, the emigrants are not much missed as they read up on the latest horrors of life back home in their weekly edition of the Daily Express.

“I find comfort in the fact that the longer I’m in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience.”

For some time, there has been a population leak from middle Britain. Thousands, maybe millions, of restless, disgruntled Britons have sold up and moved abroad to somewhere with a swimming-pool, agreeable wine and surprisingly nice locals. Middle-aged, middle-class and mostly middle-brained, the emigrants are not much missed as they read up on the latest horrors of life back home in their weekly edition of the Daily Express.

Do you remember herpes? You’ll need to be of a certain age to conjure the particular memory I have in mind, which is of the spasm of sexual anxiety that went round when the disease first really made it into the public consciousness, after the incidence of infections leapt in America. Yikes, I can remember thinking. Weeping sores (routinely described as “agonising”), no prospect of a cure, the perpetual moral duty, ever after, to inform prospective sexual partners of your potentially hazardous condition.

In the days when Communism was flourishing, there used to be countries that gloried in names like “The People’s Democratic Republic of Outer Manganesia”. We loved this in the West, because it gave us great pleasure to point out that none of them was a republic, nor the people’s anything, nor by any stretch of the word democratic.

Raj Persaud isn’t the only mind specialist facing an awkward climbdown over one of his books. Channel 4’s entertaining “psychological illusionist” Derren Brown is also under the cosh over his last tome Tricks of the Mind.

“Would you like,” they asked, “a trip to Ibiza? We’re off on Sunday.” My brain was a-flutter with images: the broiling Balearic sun, the huge nightclub mirrorball bouncing coins of light off the naked shoulders of cavorting 18-year-olds from Surrey, the yachts lined up in the harbour at sunset where you sip your fifth Shag On The Beach cocktail, the teeming streets of the capital thronged all evening with beautiful people, the alarming white tablet given to you by the mysterious blonde in the silk halterneck…

Alicia Zubasnabar died aged 92 without discovering the true fate of her
relatives, who were kidnapped during the last military dictatorship in
Argentina. In the late 1970s, her son Roberto, her youngest daughter Elena
and her son-in-law, Héctor Baratti, all “disappeared”. All three were
militants of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party and considered dissidents
by the de facto Government. Up to 30,000 people died as a result of the
state terror that relied on kidnapping, torture and extra-judicial killings
to silence internal opposition.

Henryk Mandelbaum was part of a small group of prisoners in the Nazi death
camp of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) who were sent to clear the corpses of their
fellow inmates from the floors of the gas chambers. Having hauled them out,
they were forced to burn them in the four crematorium ovens. Later, as the
pace of the killings quickened, they had to set them alight in ditches. With
the penchant of totalitarian regimes to pervert language, they were given a
military label and called Sonderkommandos (special units).

Zoya Krakhmalnikova was a dissident Soviet writer and Orthodox Christian
activist who, after suffering for her faith under communism, brought her
unflinching moral gaze to bear on some of the most troubling questions
facing post-Soviet Russia.

Christopher Stead attended lectures by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein on
the nature of religious language while studying at Cambridge. Wittgenstein’s
views conditioned his own approach to systematic theology and the writings
of the early church fathers — the theological field that he made his own.

The development of electronic computers in the late 1940s was largely carried
out by mathematicians and engineers, who saw an opportunity to automate the
operations of earlier electro-mechanical devices that had been built to
solve equations or do complex calculations.

The European Central Bank must raise rates by a quarter point, as expected. Its credibility would would be badly dented by any other course of action

Plans to allow companies to admit abuses and forfeit the proceeds of corruption would speed up inquiries and reduce the cost to the public purse

Recent blunders at some of Europe’s biggest companies seriously risk undermining their image in the market

Transparent tendering processes and a broad consensus on the distribution of oil revenues are essential to the country’s political stability