It takes real talent to pull off the rare double whammy of being described as a leech by a City lawyer and as a mugger by a senior TV executive. Yet, on the face of it, the 43-year-old Cardiff postman who was the target of these complimentary insults did nothing exceptional to earn them. He… Continue reading The selective morality of our business leaders
Read moret is the way they present their potboilers as if works of serious endeavour which is so creepy For a few moments, I am ashamed to say, a new theory being advanced by an American academic set me thinking. Peter Schweizer, who is a research fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has been… Continue reading Oh no! Yet another asinine academic theory…
Read moreWith impeccable timing, a book which explains and excuses infidelity has just been published. Traditionally, early summer is a happy, anguished time for adulterers, seasonal erotic restlessness coinciding with the availability of longer, warmer daylight hours for illicit walks and picnics. Over the past few days, conversation among these unofficial lovers may have turned to… Continue reading Yes, good people do indeed have affairs
Read moreIn his great work Small Is Beautiful, EF Schumacher argued that, because land is our most precious resource after humanity itself, the way we treat the landscape involves our whole way of life. The mighty quango, Natural England, in its recent much-publicised Manifesto for the Natural Environment, made a similar point. The countryside and its… Continue reading Shouldn’t local people have a say on wind farms?
Read moreOnstage, the former candidate for the governorship of Texas inhaled happily and illegally on a fat cigar and confided his thoughts about the wussification of our culture. Kinky Friedman, the country ‘n’ western star, novelist and politician, is touring the UK, and was pausing between songs while his guitarist replaced a string. He had first… Continue reading Why do people have to be such wusses?
Read moreThe salaries of staff can be broadcast to the nation but ‘talent costs’ mustremain secret The BBC has an inconsistent, almost dysfunctional attitude towards money. Now and then it engages in the commercial market aggressively and enthusiastically, but, for most of the time, it likes to think of itself as a cultural institution which is… Continue reading The BBC has one law for the rich, one for the poor
Read more“SHUDAAAP!” A burly, stubble-bearded man growled yobbishly at a younger woman who was trying rather nervously to speak. “You’ve got a mahf like the Blackwall Tunnel.” The woman briefly looked as if she were about to cry. A scene from EastEnders? In fact, it was from this week’s episode of The Apprentice. The boorish bully… Continue reading Watch out! Grumpy old folk on television
Read moreThe French have become unhealthily obsessed by the personality and private life of their President, Nicolas Sarkozy. The media are fascinated by him. He is the subject of more than 100 books. A psychiatrist, Dr Serge Hefez, has given this condition of extreme fascination-repulsion a medical name: “Sarkosis”. The French, according to Dr Hefez, have… Continue reading What exactly has Cherie done wrong to be so reviled?
Read moreA horribly embarrassing incident has occurred at the Chelsea Flower Show: someone has made the terrible mistake of treating a member of the royal family as if he were a normal person. Even making an allowance for the fact that the perpetrator came from Australia, where they have surprising difficulty with the concept of deference… Continue reading What’s the point of a royal you can’t talk to?
Read moreIn the happier days when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown once made a rather good joke. During a speech at the party celebrating this newspaper’s 20th anniversary, he confessed that at times he had been exasperated by his hosts’ editorial policy. He had unveiled some great economic policy, only to find the… Continue reading Let’s take a look at life in our own backyard
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