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The Spectator
Thursday
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Letters | 3 May 2012
Murdoch’s responsibility Sir: Having examined Rupert Murdoch’s dealings with successive governments, Tom Bower (‘Dangerous liaisons’, 28 April) wearily concludes: ‘Blaming the businessman for exploiting politicians’ follies is akin to blaming whales for eating sardines.’ Does the conservative doctrine of personal responsibility extend to media moguls? Or is that, as Leona Helmsley said of paying taxes,
Barometer | 3 May 2012
Place names If François Hollande is elected French president this week, he will join a very small group: world leaders whose surnames match the names of foreign countries (although Holland is strictly only a region of the Netherlands). — The closest world leader currently to bear this distinction is Co-Prince Joan Enric Vives Sicilia,
Portrait of the week | 3 May 2012
Home A report by the Commons culture media and sport select committee into News International and phone-hacking declared: ‘Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.’ Four of the ten members of the committee did not endorse this finding. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was called to
Science or starvation
At the end of the month, a group of protestors plan to descend upon a field in Hertfordshire and ‘decontaminate’ (i.e. destroy) a field of genetically modified wheat. The activists, from an organisation called Take the Flour Back, claim to be saving Britain from a deadly menace. In reality, they are threatening not only to