http://www.commentariat.org.uk Summarising the Comment from the Glass Bubble Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:19:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Letters: It is the west's reluctance to accommodate Russia's security concerns which will initiate the new cold war http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/28/georgia.russia?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Letters: Friedman's scholarship made him one of the most influential economists of the 20th century http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/aug/28/useconomy.usa?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Editorial: Paperwork held by the government could make all the difference for Binyam Mohamed http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/guantanamo.terrorism?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Editorial: This week's Democratic convention builds towards open-air speech by Barack Obama http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/uselections2008.hillaryclinton?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Editorial: Titian's two paintings are among the most important old masters in private hands http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/art?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Timothy Garton Ash: Look beyond Denver's schmaltzfest and you see how the relative power of a US president is diminishing on all sides http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/uselections2008.democrats2008?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Hadley Freeman: The labels won't, and nor will the glossies. It takes the likes of Kate Moss to challenge the addiction to skinny models http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/fashion.celebrity?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Seumas Milne: Russia's defiance in the Caucasus has brought down the curtain on Bush senior's new world order - not before time http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/russia.usforeignpolicy?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Ron Prosor: The protesters who came ashore last week should blame Hamas rather than Israel for the territory's ills http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Roy Hattersley: Energy firms' profits are unearned. In hard times, it is intolerable that they cash in as people go cold http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/energy.corporatesocialresponsibility?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian David Thomson: Protests at a new satirical film are misplaced. Blunt expression is less harmful than suffocating piety http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/usa.china?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Ray Collier: Loch Ruthven http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/28/ruralaffairs?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Letters: In your report on the Notting Hill carnival you overlooked the fact that the majority of it was peaceful http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/aug/28/2?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Today's corrections http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/aug/28/corrections?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Letters: What was the point of Her Naked Skin? To show risible scenes of lesbian sex and a forced-feeding scene? http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/28/women1?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Response: Halting development allows teenagers time to consider their potential treatment, says Richard Green http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/sexeducation.gayrights?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Hugh Muir: David Lyscom, who will take the helm at the Independent Schools Council, may be our hero http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/28/1?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Letters: Government's plans would cement this country's position as the prison capital of western Europe http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/aug/28/prisonsandprobation.justice?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Look beyond tonight's Denver schmaltzfest and you see how the relative power of a US president is diminishing on all sides http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/cartoon/2008/aug/27/barack.obama.us.elections?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian Soft politics is out. Hard politics is back. A looming economic crisis is forcing us all to sort out our priorities. Voters must adjust to dearer food, fuel and mortgages. Politicians must adapt to help them. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4621993.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1882670 This summer I've been in that black hole that every working mother falls into at some point: when the childcare fails. The person who was looking after my children decided to leave, and I have been struggling to find a replacement. Some women cope by calling in sick; others hunch ... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article4622018.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=2270657 To judge by Barack Obama's disappointing performance so far in the opinion polls, reflected in the surprisingly subdued atmosphere at the Denver convention, Democrats are suffering a bad case of “buyer's remorse”. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article4621979.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=2270657 When Lord of the Flies was first written it sold only 3,000 copies before going out of print. No one could believe in Jack, Piggy and Ralph and the thought that boys could turn into murderers, lacerating each other's flesh and revelling in torture and death. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4620283.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1882670 What do these three men - all comfortably beyond the age of retirement - have in common: Sean Connery, Alfred Brendel, George Steiner? http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/magnus_linklater/article4622034.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=2270657 Russia, according to President Medvedev, is ready for a “new Cold War”. If politicians, including our own, want a new Cold War, they will get one. But the fault will be lie as much with us as Russia. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4622004.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=2270657 Finally, the warm ups are over – Ted Kennedy and his farewell call to arms, the Clintons and the latest episode of America's favourite political psychodrama. Even the uncertainty about whether the engaging but irredeemably prolix Joe Biden can keep control of the word count will have been resolved when ... http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3752/s/1c1916a/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Ccommentators0Crupert0Ecornwell0Crupert0Ecornwell0Eso0Eis0Eobama0Ethe0Esaviour0Eof0Ehis0Eparty0E910A6710Bhtml/story01.htm It feels like it has all fizzled out. All the end-of-term excitement at Westminster about Gordon Brown's uncertain hold on No 10 seems to have subsided. Was it all just the silliness induced by the imminence of the holidays? Just as, at school, the older pupils play practical jokes and ... http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3752/s/1c1916b/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Ccommentators0Cjohn0Erentoul0Cjohn0Erentoul0Ebrown0Ewill0Ebe0Editched0Ebut0Ewhen0E910A6750Bhtml/story01.htm There has been a great deal of harrumphing and anxiety amongst education traditionalists that the name of Winston Churchill is missing from the revamped national curriculum on history due to be introduced in secondary schools to be taught from next week. http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3752/s/1c1916c/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Ccommentators0Crichard0Egarner0Eso0Ewhere0Edo0Efish0Eand0Echips0Ecome0Efrom0E910A6760Bhtml/story01.htm Two presumptions seem to have taken hold of all discussion of the burgeoning crisis over Russia's actions in Georgia. One is that Moscow, by sending in the tanks, has changed the rules of geopolitics and destroyed the post Cold War era of calm and co-operation, as the Foreign Secretary, David ... http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3752/s/1c1916d/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Ccommentators0Cadrian0Ehamilton0Cadrian0Ehamilton0Ewe0Eneed0Ean0Eold0Eapproach0Efor0Ethe0Enew0Eglobal0Epolitics0E910A6770Bhtml/story01.htm It's early days, but I wouldn't mind betting that someone's already working on a Hollywood script about Clark Rockefeller, the 40-something socialite who last month prompted a nationwide manhunt by kidnapping his seven-year-old daughter. Police eventually discovered that Rockefeller was not who he seemed: their fugitive's real identity was Christian ... http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3752/s/1c1916e/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Ccommentators0Cguy0Eadams0Ea0Eghost0Ein0Eamericas0E0Esecurity0Emachine0E910A6780Bhtml/story01.htm Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, wants to give the impression that she has increased the number of police on our streets – but has she? Last week, she announced 6,000 more special constables, although recruitment of the more controversial community support officers seems to have slowed. Special constables receive only ... http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3752/s/1c1916f/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Ccommentators0Cjanet0Estreet0Eporter0Cjanet0Estreetporter0Eget0Ethese0Efake0Epolice0Eofficers0Eoff0Eour0Estreets0E910A680A0Bhtml/story01.htm After eight years of George Bush, people are hurting at home and our standing has eroded around the world. We have a lot of work ahead of us: jobs lost; houses gone; falling wages; rising prices; the Supreme Court in a right-wing headlock; and our government in partisan gridlock; the ... http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3752/s/1c19170/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Ccommentators0Chillary0Eclinton0Eif0Eyou0Esupported0Eme0Ethen0Esupport0Ebarack0Eobama0E910A6810Bhtml/story01.htm Russia's action in recognising the unilaterally declared independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was hasty, intemperate and ill-advised. It was also utterly predictable. These two regions have tried to separate themselves from Georgia ever since the break-up of the Soviet Union, and they have twice declared independence, without convincing Russia ... http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3751/s/1c18e90/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Cleading0Earticles0Cleading0Earticle0Eboth0Esides0Eshould0Ecool0Ethe0Ecold0Ewar0Erhetoric0E910A6720Bhtml/story01.htm Anyone who has lived through previous ups and downs in the housing market will find nothing surprising about the pain that housebuilders such as Taylor Wimpey are feeling at the moment. Until this year, it was an unsustainable bubble. Construction firms were always going to be in the blast zone ... http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3751/s/1c18e91/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Cleading0Earticles0Cleading0Earticle0Edont0Etry0Eto0Ebuck0Ethe0Ehousing0Emarket0E910A6730Bhtml/story01.htm Is there anything so relentlessly pursued and yet so badly defined as happiness? The Halifax bank carried out a survey two years ago to find Britain's happiest locality. Using criteria such as employment levels, house prices and salaries, it identified Elmbridge in Surrey as the most blissful enclave in the ... http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3751/s/1c18e92/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Copinion0Cleading0Earticles0Cleading0Earticle0Ehappy0Edays0E910A6740Bhtml/story01.htm There's something Oedipal, even Shakespearean, about Marcus Wareing's eclipsing of his former mentor and boss, Gordon Ramsay, in the hierarchy of top London restaurants. It's part of a syndrome in which a former protégé rises to match, then overtake, his beloved master. It happened with Gordon Ramsay who, after enduring ... http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/john-walsh/john-walsh-cut-with-gordons-sharp-tongue-a-protg-escapes-hells-kitchen-910767.html Stand by for fireworks between Jack Straw's Ministry of Justice and members of Britain's "exotic" artistic community. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/pandora/pandora-westwood-jnr-sweats-over-governments-pornography-clampdown-910761.html Recent readers of my husband Cooper's column will undoubtedly know that he was having some problems with the immigration authorities here in the United Kingdom. They took him away for questioning 10 days ago and he was held for three days against his will and then released – but his ... http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/cooper-brown/victoria-brown-my-husband-has-been-kidnapped-and-sent-to-prison-in-mexico-910559.html http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article4621982.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=2270657 Coauthor of 100 Things to Do Before You Die. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2634320/Dave-Freeman.html Medical research scientist whose work on the polio virus was rewarded with a share in a Nobel Prize. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2634149/Thomas-H-Weller.html Blues guitarist who cheerfully performed in the shadow of his more celebrated brother. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2634153/Phil-Guy.html Former Bevan Boy who spent three days in the cells but later rose to the rank of Chief Constable http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2634155/Sir-Stanley-Bailey.html Barclays director who forbade his managers in Oxford to lend money to Robert Maxwell. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2634159/Lord-Ashton-of-Hyde.html Heave-Ho Harry's Place Here we go again; another random party using our atrocious Libel Laws to close down criticism and debate. In this case it appears to be Sheffield Academic Jenna Delich, or her supporters, making legal noises to intimidate the iSP hosting the blog Harry's Place.   Harry's Place comments: Though we have ... http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mattwardman/~3/376456326/ It was a confident and forceful speech, acknowledging her supporters' disappointment yet emphasising the importance of a Democratic victory in November. She called unequivocally for party unity, and told her supporters to go out and vote for Barack Obama http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0112dd02-745f-11dd-bc91-0000779fd18c.html The US-led Nato mission is not winning against the Taliban. It needs a re-focused strategy, built around security and jobs, and it needs to break the cycle of lawlessness and corruption that is rotting the nation-building effort that has hardly begun http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ff776ae4-745e-11dd-bc91-0000779fd18c.html Susan Daniel writes: As Maria Callas’s maestro of choice during the second part of her career, Nicola Rescigno (obituary, Aug 7) was also her mentor — as he put it, her “father confessor”. I was fortunate indeed to have been the recipient of many of the musical traditions that they ... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4621325.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1972202 Michael Baxandall was one of the truly original and creative scholars of his generation. His work as an art historian had a profound impact on broader study of the humanities. He developed a radically new way of thinking about the social and cultural significance of the visual arts based on ... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4613783.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1972202 It was one of the most evocative of Cold War rituals. On Glienicke Bridge linking East and West Berlin, prisoners held by each side would be exchanged, sometimes in a blaze of publicity. In 1962 it was the US spy plane pilot, Gary Powers, swapped for a Soviet spy. In ... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4613780.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1972202