This January Prometheus paid our era a call. Scientists (it was reported at the end of the month) have ‘announced the creation of a synthetic chromosome, knocking down one of the final hurdles to building the world’s first artificial life form’. In Maryland, at the institute of an American biologist and entrepreneur, Craig Venter, a
The appointment of a Permanent Secretary at No. 10 Downing Street shows that the office of Prime Minister is swelling fit to burst. Everyone says that the man with the new post, Jeremy Heywood, is excellent. Nothing is known against him beyond his atrociously New Labour recreations in Who’s Who — ‘child-care, modern art, cinema,
My friend Herbie from the Last National Bank of Boot Hill understood about rogue traders. When another hapless bank owned up to losses ‘due to unauthorised trading’, he added: ‘They mean nobody authorised the guy to get it wrong.’ Now that a French trader called Jerome Kerviel has set a new record by losing £3.6
Neil Collins meets Nigel Annett, who runs Welsh Water — a unique utility company which operates without shareholders and distributes profits back to its customers It does sometimes stop raining in Wales. When the sun comes out, it’s pretty stunning, thanks to the green all that rain produces, but much of the time the residents
The litigation about the death of Princess Diana drags on, to the confusion of most of us, the satisfaction of none, and I imagine to the great distress of her two sons. And what is forgotten in this grimy attempt to prove conspiracy theory is the woman herself, a true princess of delight and fantasy.
