Motion: We were wrong to recognise Kosovo’s declaration of independence. Speakers For the motion Sir Ivor Roberts Misha Glenny Dragan Zupanjevac Against the motion Wolfgang Ischinger Paddy Ashdown Veton Surroi The voting tells the story. Before last Tuesday’s Kosovo debate most of the audience were unsure whether we were right to recognize Kosovo’s declaration of
No Jews. No hint of Jewishness anywhere. That was Howard Jacobson’s instruction to himself when he sat down to write his new novel, The Act of Love. ‘I took the restriction very seriously,’ he told Peter Florence in a discussion for Intelligence Squared on 22nd October. ‘I nearly set about writing the book without using
Mr Brown’s bank recapitalisation exercise has been portrayed in the British media as a financial and political coup. The Financial Times has been particularly enthusiastic, describing it as ‘a global template’. Mr Brown’s admirers apparently believe that the British government’s programme is both intellectually original and a real-world success, and is therefore being copied in
Melissa Kite says that the shadow chancellor should have known better than to cross the most brutal spin-doctor in Westminster, or flout the conventions of the super-rich. But we should not be distracted from the Business Secretary’s true role in this saga If George Osborne survives the spectacular fallout of his now notorious Corfu adventure
The market needs speculators who are willing to challenge the big battalions, says Patrick Macaskie. Don’t believe the hype: short-sellers were not the villains of this financial crisis People everywhere have been grappling with what has befallen them. Like the closing stages of A Midsummer Night’s Dream we are waking from a reverie and human
It is difficult to think of anything more depressing than the recent photographs of a smirking Lord Mandy in his ermine drag flanked by two of yesterday’s major groupies, Lord Falconer and Baroness Jay, she who gleefully masterminded the removal of the hereditary peers, but couldn’t resist a title for herself. At the very moment
It’s very difficult to get one’s head around the moral and ethical implications of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill on a damp and frowsy October afternoon after perhaps one too many stiffeners. I came away from my research with a vague notion that the Roman Catholic Church wishes to prevent scientists from experimenting on
Bingo is a game that I have never really seen the point of — despite recent advertising campaigns attempting to market it as the new raucous ‘girls’ night out’ of choice. It was thus with trepidation that I climbed Home House’s grand staircase and entered one of their private rooms along with 30 other guests
