Posts Tagged ‘ Times ’

A word of advice

From Ben Macintyre at the Times, rather than from me. It concerns the recent trend (imported from the USA) of celebritising not merely elected politicians, but also their partners and spouses. Michelle Obama, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and now Sarah Brown, whose ‘heartfelt’ introduction of the Prime Minister oozed more cheese and schmaltz than the whole West [ READ MORE ]

Liberal lateral thinking

In view of the FDP’s success in the recent German elections, I thought it might be worth flagging up some articles that have appeared in the UK liberal corner of late – one on the Times from Rachel Sylvester, and one on Liberal Vision. The gist of them is that the Lib Dems in the [ READ MORE ]

Eton leads the way – again

Just came across this article in the Telegraph, also in the Sun and Times, announcing that Eton College, by far the most prestigious and well-known school in the UK, has offered a full bursary to 16-year-old Razak Farley from Forest Gate in London. This is, I should point out, nothing new – the school has [ READ MORE ]

Proper appraisal

A couple of days ago I wrote a post getting irritated at the air-headed way in which one of the Times‘s column-bots tried to write what I would be kind to call a ‘grudgingly positive’ review of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Well now Bloomberg have (probably through coincidence) come up with a decent article about [ READ MORE ]

Glasshouses and stones

Brief post for the moment: an article in the Times about the merits and demerits of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. I can’t entirely decide where exactly the tone is on the scale running between scathing and fawning – Melanie McDonagh appears to think Dr Merkel is simultaneously dull, competent, accomplished, uncharismatic, pragmatic and unemotional. Brilliant [ READ MORE ]

Whoops…

Perfect timing for another idea guaranteed to squeeze the UK banking sector’s room for manoeuvre – the new points-based immigration system is preventing banks and other large corporations from hand-picking the best applicants for their UK jobs from anywhere outside the EU unless said applicants can prove they have at least £1m to spend in [ READ MORE ]

Greatness thrust upon them

The Times has a very perceptive article by Stryker McGuire on the demise of Britain as a power on the international scene, which essentially argues that those on this little rock of a political bent will have to come to terms with much-reduced clout among the major nations of the world, and very soon too. [ READ MORE ]

101 uses for men and women

Courtesy of the Times: first the men, and then the women (in order of publication, see). My favourite ones have to be: for the men, (number 17) “helping to keep you fit and supple by generously leaving towels, socks and other items of personal attire dotted around the floor for you to pick up”, and [ READ MORE ]

Olympic financial problems

An apparent exclusive from the Times: a team from KPMG have been called in to investigate a £100m hole in the 2012 Olympics finances of the London Development Agency. £100m that the LDA should have set aside to compensate the businesses forced out of the Olympic site in Stratford – and the KPMG team are [ READ MORE ]

Speakers & expenses

Oh dear – the ladies and gentlemen in our Houses of Parliament still don’t quite ‘get’ honesty, integrity, frankness and accountability, do they? Yes, MPs’ expenses have been put online, more than a year late, as the Times rightly points out, but with all or most of the other private details on the documents “redacted” [ READ MORE ]

How to fool the police

Samizdata have a fantastic post up of late regarding the recently-unmasked police blogger NightJack (whose blog, which attracted admiration from commentators as elite as Danny Finkelstein, now no longer exists, thanks to the perversion of English privacy law by Mr Justice Eady), which features an extract from one of his best pieces, specifically about how [ READ MORE ]

Barack Hussein Obama

I rather enjoyed President Obama’s eloquent speech in Cairo, complete with references to the Qur’an – he is undoubtedly a fantastic rhetor, even if his economic policies do smack a little of a desperation to be seen to Do Something. Not exactly sure whether the USA’s stance on Israel – which Obama described as an [ READ MORE ]

Just deserts

It looks like Paul Kemsley, Alan Sugar’s ‘rottweiler-in-chief’ off the Apprentice interview team, has been forced to quit because his £500m property empire Rock Investments has imploded. As one of the wags on the Times comment thread said: “maybe he should apply for next year’s Apprentice? looks like he needs to learn some business skills”. [ READ MORE ]

A new age of transparency?

As with most scandals, the gigantic fuss caused by the MPs’ expenses revelations that have already claimed several scalps in all 3 main parties, and look set to claim several more (if only by virtue of some MPs preferring to jump rather than being pushed and standing down at the next general election), is slowly [ READ MORE ]

The Speaker resigns

The BBC has the story here, the Times here, the Telegraph here,  Guido here, Iain Dale here, Devil’s Kitchen here, and Wikipedia here. Some of my main news sources, you see… Here’s the text of his speech: Since I came to this House 30 years ago, I have always felt that the House is at [ READ MORE ]

Opinion polls

For what little they’re worth: BPIX/Mail on Sunday: Con 45pc Lab 23pc LD N/A YouGov/Sunday Times: Con 43pc Lab 27pc LD 18pc And the Times also has an interesting analysis of the predicted voteshare in the European elections being held on 4.vi.09: Con 40pc Lab 25pc LD 27pc Unfortunately, the way the Lib Dem vote [ READ MORE ]

MPs expenses

When it isn’t smear emails offering some hard evidence of endemic Westminster sleaze, it’s what the blogs have called “troughing” – elected representatives from all shades of the political spectrum not only making one set of rules for the country and another for themselves, but also lining their pockets with multiple layers of the taxpayers’ [ READ MORE ]

Story behind a picture

The Times lately ran this piece about the frankly devious behaviour of the Home Secretary: it turns out that GCHQ, which the authors succinctly describe as “the government’s eavesdropping centre”, is developing secret technology to intercept and monitor all the online activity of any UK resident, including e-mails, website visits and social networking sessions. Not [ READ MORE ]

Defence of capitalism – Praeludium

By way of anticipating a rather longer piece I’m planning on writing in the not too distant future on what the great right-liberal laissez-faire idols of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand might have to say about the current state of the world (yes, I know that’s a pretty ambitious [ READ MORE ]

The demise of Tiffin

Another brief piece from me, this time about the financial disaster looming for Tiffin Boys’ School in Kingston-upon-Thames, an institution which several people I know attended as pupils and teachers. Details to be found here from the Times and here from the Evening Standard. It has transpired that, due to severe financial mismanagement, the school [ READ MORE ]

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