Commentariat

You are browsing the archives of 2008 August.

Has any museum or gallery ever been placed in such an appalling predicament? Not only has John Leighton, director-general of the National Galleries of Scotland, got to find £50 million in only four months for Diana & Actaeon, one of Titian's masterpieces, but he has to find another £50 million in four years to buy its pendant, Diana & Callisto. If not, they and some 20 other pictures in the Duke of Sutherland's collection, undoubtedly the finest Old Masters in private hands, may be lost to Scotland.

Later this month it’s Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It’s one of the
holiest days of the Jewish calendar, so I’d be obliged, please, if you’d all
stay at home, turn off the TV and refrain from your usual activities. Ten
days after that it’s Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when Jews fast and
spend the day in synagogue. So I’ve also asked my Times colleagues not to
work then. And I will be mightily offended if I learn afterwards that any of
them have been eating.

Senator John McCain's choice of a running-mate was always going to be crucially important. He is 72 years old and has had episodes of skin cancer. From a medical and actuarial point of view, there must be a significant risk that he will not live to complete his first term as president, if elected. Whichever contender he chose for the vice-presidential nomination was bound to be scrutinised as having a real possibility of becoming the next president by right of succession.

I am worried. Just back from the Democratic Convention in Denver, an almost joyous event that was arguably a seminal moment of our time, I have never been this charged up, this excited, this hopeful and this concerned. Charged up that I am a part of genuine movement of people, of citizens, to positively alter the course of history. Excited that I have witnessed a unified front coming from a once fractious Democratic Party. Hopeful that the course of events culminating in the great Obama speech has swayed the fence-sitters to jump off and join in. But concerned that the politics of propaganda and panic will induce the middle of the voting pack to fall back on old rhetoric and Cold War paranoia.

The Labour MP Ann Cryer’s decision to stand down at the next general election has robbed the House of one its last true characters.

I could tell that Matthew was distracted when I phoned him in London. I wanted to give him the news that I had been asked to be a steward at the flower show in the village in Dorset where we have our cottage.

The Prime Minister will unveil a package of economic recovery measures that is being heralded as his political fight-back this week. With his tormented Government languishing 20 points behind the Opposition in the polls, it marks Gordon Brown’s last chance to regain the initiative and stave off the threat of a Tory landslide. In keeping with the spirit of his premiership, however, the relaunch has been dogged by confusion and conflict even before it has begun – bad news for an ailing government that desperately needs to recover a coherent image.

Apart from the wretchedly unlucky people of New Orleans, one other large group of Americans is looking at the storm bearing down on them with particular dread – the Republicans. With awful timing, Hurricane Gustav is due to hit the Louisiana coast on the day the Republican convention opens in St Paul. As Minnesota lies miles from the impact zone, the convention itself faces no danger. But a potential natural disaster is the last thing John McCain needs as he tries to recapture public attention following Barack Obama’s oration in Denver. It reminds Americans of the Bush administration’s dismal handling of Hurricane Katrina.

One of the many welcome consequences of the reunion of Western and Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War has been the revival of transcontinental express trains and, indeed, the creation of new services.

Fifteen months ago, there were many conflicting predictions about the Brown premiership. But there did appear to be one absolute certainty. Everyone agreed that the new Prime Minister would run the tautest of tight ships. He was notorious for bearing grudges. There was no precedent for a cabinet minister – however senior – bullying his colleagues in the way that Mr Brown had; he had regularly treated his prime minister will contemptuous insolence. So this was a man who would rule by fear.

This week, the Government is expected to announce measures to help poorer consumers hit by the rocketing prices for energy. It should go further and impose a one-off windfall tax on the unearned profits of the energy companies – a measure which has the backing of 100 Labour MPs.

For the first time in several years, the bells of our village church have counted out the lazily passing hours of a Norman summer. The old bells had worn out. The commune – which, like most communes in France, owns the church – could not agree whether, or how, to repair them.

We could call it the “Bonfire of the Vanities”, but that literary cliché feels glib for what is happening in the Metropolitan Police today. Two responsible, mature men, holding the most critical jobs in the capital, upon whose judgements and actions millions depend, bust up in public. We are witnessing scenes more poisonous than the McCartney/Mills divorce as the men get sucked up in a vortex of fury.

The offer was, to someone of my age and culture, irresistible. Madonna was touring with a show in her old, grand style. I’d always kicked myself for not making the effort to see the great Blonde Ambition tour, nearly 20 years ago now. She was coming to Zurich with a show called Sticky and Sweet. Forget the off-putting title; for once, we were going to get on the train and go and see the woman Rupert Everett calls the Funny Little Thing do what she still does best.

These are busy times for the nation’s defenders, because we’re at war with an enemy that hit us first, hit us hard, and has ambitions to cause ever greater destruction inside our country.

I am worried. Just back from the Democratic Convention in Denver, an almost joyous event that was arguably a seminal moment of our time, I have never been this charged up, this excited, this hopeful and this concerned. Charged up that I am a part of genuine movement of people, of citizens, to positively alter the course of history. Excited that I have witnessed a unified front coming from a once fractious Democratic Party. Hopeful that the course of events culminating in the great Obama speech has swayed the fence-sitters to jump off and join in. But concerned that the politics of propaganda and panic will induce the middle of the voting pack to fall back on old rhetoric and Cold War paranoia.

When Alistair Darling said that Britain’s economic conditions were “arguably
the worst they have been for 60 years”, the initial reaction from the
Opposition and media was either to compliment the Chancellor for his
“frankness” or to gloat about the way he had “let the cat out of the bag”
and thereby embarrassed Gordon Brown.

By its actions in Georgia, Russia is trying unilaterally to redefine the rules of the game. That can never be acceptable to an organisation like the EU

The chancellor is wrong to argue that the UK’s economic circumstances could be the worst in 60 years. But the same may not be true of the Labour party

Producer of The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who invented Mornington Crescent.

Canadian wartime bomber pilot who later led the longest mercy flight in the RCAF’s history.

Just a few days ago I wrote about the rules under which donations are made to political parties, and now the amounts that parties received in donations in the last quarter has been revealed.
Between them they received £10.7m, split down as follows:

Conservatives: £5.6m

Labour: £3.8m

Liberal Democrats: £945,192

This is up from £8.1m last quarter, with the Lib [...]

I probably missed this, but I can’t find a reference.

Why does Nick Robinson’s Newslog never have any comments in the first half of the month?

This applies to April, May, June and July this year.

Nick’s posts in the second half of each month get hundreds of comments, but none at all in the first half of the month.

What is going on?

My crime was committed in Oxford, in Stacey’s family wagon. A speed camera caught me on the Banbury Road on my way to a lunch at Brown’s restaurant – a comfort place I’ve been going to since I was seven years old.

We think that we know what Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, thought he was saying. The way that he said it, however, has undermined economic confidence and further weakened the Prime Minister. In his newspaper interview yesterday, and even in his attempt to clarify it on television later, Mr Darling sounded more apocalyptic than he intended.