It is time to doff the cap to a developer, to utter grateful thanks to a member of that much-criticised group, the energy companies. They may have resisted a windfall tax and made unfortunate jokes about profiteering from the energy...
Read moreEvery generation over the past 60 years believes that snobbery is on the way out, and without fail each of them turns out to be wrong. Class prejudice never disappears, but merely changes its character. The real division today, for...
Read moreLet us not panic. The news that Sebastian Coe is to launch the Cultural Olympiad by putting on his running shorts and sprinting through Tate Britain may not be encouraging. It might even justify fears that other desperate attempts to...
Read moreIn order for any kind of civic virtue to be taken seriously in 2008, some kind of award must be created for it – a prize to remind us all that, in spite of all the terrible things that are...
Read moreIt is something of an August ritual. The suits and faces from Televisionland migrate to Edinburgh where, infected by the general atmosphere of alternative politics and comic skittishness, they go a little too far during a speech or a question-and-answer...
Read moreFor a moment, as those figures scampered around a double-decker bus in Beijing, like actors in an over-ambitious fringe event at the Edinburgh festival, there was a glimpse of the image which Britain could present to the world in four...
Read moreThere was a time when potentates travelling the world would shoot an animal – a tiger or a lion perhaps – as an expression of diplomatic friendship towards their hosts. The modern equivalent is to trade in endangered animals. Playing...
Read moreIn a brave but almost certainly doomed attempt to appeal to America's evangelical Christian voters, Barack Obama has taken part in a televised debate at a "megachurch" in California. Although he sensibly scattered biblical references throughout his replies, the senator's...
Read moreNot so long ago we were warned that, as a nation, Britain was sitting on a fat bomb. Unless something was done about the annual inflation in obesity rates, the fat bomb would explode. There would be a terrible mess....
Read moreHow will your community be marking the imminent handover of Olympic flags from China to Britain, an event recently described by Tessa Jowell as "a truly historic moment, not just for London but for the UK"? In my part of...
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