There’s a new application you can get for your iPhone called Baby Shaker, where a baby cries and cries until eventually you get so sick of it you shake your mobile so that large red Xs appear over the baby’s eyes and the crying stops for good. Or rather there isn’t, because someone took offence
Mandelson’s fixation with bananas repays study: it shows that he has not really changed Bananas on the mind. It’s Mandelson’s fault. There I was at the weekend, reading an interview with him in the Times. This was the new Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, the one who longs to go on Strictly Come Dancing, and only wears
For once, the unity of comment on the Budget was perfectly justified. It may well have been the worst Budget in history. Which makes it all the more annoying that the ‘Red Book’, which contains the Budget details, is this year entitled ‘Budget 2009: Building Britain’s Future’. It is insulting that official documents should have
Putting Lord Mandelson into an electric Mini may not seem to bear much comparison with putting a man on the moon, but there are interesting parallels. In 1961, the US government embarked on the Apollo space programme, with the ambition of landing astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade. By 1969, it
Minsky’s moment has arrived There is a big political prize dangling over the economic crisis. Whoever now devises a coherent economic programme will mould British society for a generation. Labour won the post-Great Depression prize in 1945 by creating the paternalistic welfare state and won again in 1966 — a short-lived victory — with Harold
