Here we are at the moment of truth, if such a term can be applied to a French referendum. Last time round, the result was swung by boxes of Oui votes flown in from France’s ex-colonies. This time la France outre-mer has been deluged with money from Brussels. (Where does Brussels get the money? Where
A Scottish accountant has his own way of injecting the fear of God into his hearers. This must be one reason why Douglas Flint is finance director of HSBC, and made him the natural choice when his fellow accountants at Cima wanted someone to lecture on pensions. On the day, he came right up to
Lord Beaverbrook always pronounced it ‘yat’. He said, ‘Let me give you some good advice, Mr Johnson. Hesitate a long time before you buy yourself an expensive steam yat.’ There are at least 40 different ways of spelling the word, from yeagh, holke, yuath, yought, yott and yuacht, to jact, zeaghr, yoathe and zoughe. ‘And
At last some excitement. The next vote is on Monday, and this one could go to a recount. All eyes will be on the weather-vane in the Bank of England’s Court Room, which shows its directors how the wind is blowing. Next door, in an elegant anteroom, the nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee
In his book of proverbs, Blake writes, ‘A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.’ That is true enough but it is not my tree-proverb, which runs, ‘An artist sees trees he can paint.’ When I look at trees, my eyes search instinctively for paintable ones, whose trunk and branches, leaves
I found the Chancellor outside his local supermarket, conducting what he called a stationary walkabout. He had brought his spaniel, which canvassed the voters by licking them: ‘I suppose,’ said one, ‘that with a dog like that, you can’t be all bad.’ On the political battleground, this was a peaceful enclave, and indeed some of
There’s only one thing worse than slavery, of course, and that’s freedom. I don’t mean, I hasten to add, my own freedom, to which I am really rather attached; no, it is other people’s freedom, and what they choose to do with it, that appals me. They have such bad taste. The notion of self-expression
Rover has now been removed to the Happier Hunting Ground. In a brief obsequy broadcast from Birmingham, Tony Blair sympathised with the dependants. The economy was strong, he told them, good jobs were being created, and £40 million of public money had been set aside to turn Longbridge, Rover’s old home, into an industrial park.
The decisive culture war of the 21st century is likely to be between the Darwinian fundamentalists and those who believe in God and the significance of human life. It will be prolonged and bitter. Culture wars do not usually end in bloodshed but they break hearts and minds and bring terrible sufferings to the losers
To be watching the last days of poor old Rover is to intrude on canine grief. A wise vet would have put this dog down long ago. I was asking only last week when Rover would go under: after the election? Some means could surely be found, after all those years on and off life
The passing of a great pope promotes thoughts about goodness, and what constitutes it. What is goodness? And, for that matter, what is good itself? Joseph Addison was quite clear: ‘Music is the greatest good that mortals know.’ But among the greatest evils of our time, I would put pop music, its idols, its drugs
Charles Thomson has achieved what I thought was impossible. He has provoked me to sympathise with the directors of Equitable Life: the gold braid, that is, on the bridge when the ship hit the iceberg. Our oldest life assurance office — set up in 1762, which made it Barings’ twin — had been holed below
Thirteen local authorities have been chosen by the government to be Cultural Pathfinders, showing how culture and sport can help to deliver government priorities across public life. The government’s social, environmental and economic agenda is to be promoted through cultural initiatives at local level. In a joint initiative with the Local Government Association (LGA), the
The trouble with a referendum, as Kenneth Clarke noted, is that people do not always answer the question you ask them. You want to know if they favour a bimetallistic approach to the currency, and they say ‘Throw the rascals out.’ Something of the sort may be happening to Jacques Chirac. He had the French
When spring finally reached London after those Arctic weeks with the bitter wind from the east, I hurried out to Kew to see what was happening to Nature. And there it all was: millions of daffodils in massed marching ranks, spreading golden carpets between the still bare specimen trees. The crocuses broke ‘like fire’ at
Medical students arrive for my tuition, fresh-faced and innocent, all eager for the treat. For the most part, they are still of conspicuously middle-class origin, despite the government’s desire to destroy bourgeois science and replace it with the true proletarian variety. The contact these students have had with the seamy side of life has been
Paul Wolfowitz may have to choose between Shaha Ali Riza’s affections and his sense of duty. She is a gender specialist employed by the World Bank as an acting manager for external relations and outreach, he has been nominated as the Bank’s new President, the world’s biggest boondoggle is full of quasi-jobs like hers, and
This is where I came in. Another Gordon Brown budget: how well we know them by now — the thumping delivery, the gabbled numbers, the loopholes closed and opened, so many initiatives, so much complexity, so many popular causes. British films, British science, children’s centres, cars propelled by fuel made from processed hen-droppings — are
We are living through, or so it is universally assumed, the last days of a great pope. John Paul II rescued the Catholic Church from the self-destructive course on which it was drifting into oblivion, and put it firmly back on its traditional verities. He is a man of long and painful experience, acquired in
The hurricane season has opened early in Florida, where a hedge fund has blown away, leaving some seriously rich investors seriously poorer. The $250 million question, so their attorney says, is whether the money was lost, stolen or strayed. The two Koreans who managed the fund seem to have left town, so it is no