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
Eddie was a model public servant: that’s why Gordon was so rude to him In Tokyo in the mid-Eighties, I bumped into a very senior Japanese investment banker who had just been to London to negotiate an operating licence. ‘We met…’ he paused for effect, bowing slightly at the neck and adopting what I can
Twenty years ago I remember driving down Pacific Coast Highway in California with two of my children strapped into their car seats behind me. They were having a humdinger of a row. They were arguing because India had picked her nose and had proudly managed to produce a bogey the size of an ant. While
Jim Cowling has chosen the right moment to launch his new business. An experienced security consultant, he has just set up a company called Shipguard, with a small office in Clerkenwell. The product: providing the men, the know-how, and if necessary the weapons, to defeat the pirates that are the scourge of Somali waters. ‘We’re
The Treasury thought the railways were in terminal decline. John Major’s government thought they were a political nuisance — vexed commuters meant lost voters. Privatisation would get the railways off the government’s back, and breaking them into 100 pieces would mean that if one piece was on strike, the other 99 would not be. In
It’s at trying times like these that my latent inner-bimbo gene struggles to reassert itself. It’s at trying times like these that my latent inner-bimbo gene struggles to reassert itself. Sod equal rights, sod women’s lib and to hell with emancipation. When my car mysteriously vanished outside Waitrose last Friday night I was immediately engulfed
On the eve of South Africa’s election, Janice Warman says its economy remains relatively attractive to investors, despite doubts about incoming president Jacob Zuma In South Africa, everything is not as it seems. If you drive along the edge of the Atlantic Ocean from Muizenberg in Cape Town, you will see a sea of glittering
British Airways staff have sometimes been accused of ‘working without enthusiasm’, says Judi Bevan — but you certainly couldn’t say that of chief executive Willie Walsh Before meeting Willie Walsh, I take a stroll round Terminal 5, marvelling at the vast, elegant haven of calm and efficiency it has become compared with the pandemonium of
I live in fear of that peculiar sharp intake of breath I seem to hear whenever I ask service men actually to service anything I own that doesn’t work. I live in fear of that peculiar sharp intake of breath I seem to hear whenever I ask service men actually to service anything I own
At last, a government response to the financial crisis that is actually working. Am I referring to last November’s VAT cut? Of course not; it has been as ineffectual as we all said it would be. Those loan guarantee schemes for struggling small businesses? Nope, still very little sign of them, I’m afraid, months after
‘From this filthy sewer, pure gold flows’: that was in 1835, but it could be today Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French political commentator, visited Manchester in 1835 when the city was the capital of the world’s textile industry. He wrote: ‘From this foul drain, the greatest stream of human industry flows to fertilise the
Ishaq Chowdhary pulled the top off a wooden crate to show oranges fringed with powdery white mould. It was a freezing morning at the fruit market in Srinagar, capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, and market workers, huddling traditional fire-pots beneath their gowns, are sipping tea and starting to unload the day’s
Richard Strauss died 60 years ago this year. Not only is he one of my top ten favourite composers, he is also the one I would most like to be cast away with on an island so that I could pluck out the heart of his mystery. His subtleties are infinite, especially his constant, minute
Last week I was invited to join Radio 2 to discuss the European parliament’s most recent time-, energy- and money-wasting wheeze Last week I was invited to join Radio 2 to discuss the European parliament’s most recent time-, energy- and money-wasting wheeze: a pamphlet asking staff to refrain from using titles such as Miss or
One of my favourite parts of London, in easy walking distance of my house in Newton Road, is what I call the Ardizzone country. This stretches from the edges of Little Venice into Maida Vale and is, or was until the crunch, in the process of rapid gentrification. I call it after the artist because,
Recessions end. Even the Great Depression of the 1930s, about which we have heard so much recently, eventually ran its course, though it took a world war to get business booming again. ‘Thatcher’s wasteland’ of dole queues, urban riots and closed steel mills in the early 1980s gave way swiftly to a world of rampant
It all started at one of the Prime Minister’s monthly press conferences. Suddenly, in answer to a question, Gordon Brown named Sir Fred Goodwin, the now notorious former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, as the man who broke the bank. After the conference the press machine of Number 10 must have gone into
Last Saturday I was sent a stiff, glossy brochure informing me of imminent changes in my local podiatry services. NHS Westminster plans to invest £540,000 in this pressing ‘service redesign’ and being a taxpayer and local resident they wanted my views. I had a questionnaire to fill out and return. Alongside the requisite ‘Are you
‘What do you say to a former Treasury economist? Big Mac and fries, please!’ This updated version of the old 1980s joke (the original butts were sociology graduates, and any scouser in uniform) has yet to make it into wider circulation, but it can only be a matter of time. If faced with such a
Inspired by Darwin’s bicentenary, Scott Payton explores the collectors’ market for historic scientific instruments As the world celebrates the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, and as awareness of climate change continues to rise, interest in the natural sciences is soaring. This is rubbing off on the collectors’ market in scientific instruments, with globes, sundials