The Week

Diary

Diary – 9 February 2008

David Tang reflects on the storms in China, and on being ‘Googled’ My daughter telephoned to say, to my disbelief, that she was snowbound in Hangzhou, where it never snows. The city is regarded as the most beautiful in China, with swaying willows surrounding an old lagoon on the edge of which Mao Tse-tung loved staying.

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Trust in politics is dead: long live ‘wiki-politics’

If a museum were built to honour the ancestral political class, it would not look much different from the House of Commons. Its corridors are lined with portraits of the political greats and its staircases are adorned with old Vanity Fair caricatures. ‘Honourable members’ are still treated as if they were just that, with the

McCain, please

Why have the US primaries been so gripping? Partly because they are suffused with an optimism and energy that is conspicuously lacking from domestic British politics; partly because the world cannot wait for the Bush era to reach its bleak conclusion; partly because the contest has been a rollercoaster ride, with a nail-biting finish still

Letters

Letters | 9 February 2008

Nip terror in the bud Sir: Correlli Barnett would have us believe Con Coughlin is suffering from paranoia and describes George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ as stale rhetoric (Letters, 2 February). One wonders what ailment Correlli Barnett suffers from — perhaps ‘paranoiac denial’ is a fair diagnosis. Could he inform us which countries, if any,