Comment from Times Online

Money won’t buy you love. Or good marriages

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Love and marriage, go together like a carriage and horse. Is that quite right? Does marriage plus a £20-a-week tax break equal love? Because if you could buy the quality that makes stable families, you would certainly buy love, not marriage. Where love and support are abundant, a family will flourish. Where they are absent, it will not.

The Americans know this will end in schism

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism, a decision taken in California has finally brought a large coach off the rails altogether. The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States has voted decisively to allow in principle the appointment, to all orders of ministry, of persons in active same-sex relationships. This marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.

America should keep on taking the tablets

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

America is understandably outraged that Michael Jackson was able to buy himself a personal staff of Dr Never-Say-Nos, who supplied with him the IV-drip of “liquid sleep” — among other hospital-grade drugs — that probably helped to kill him.

Don’t fear death. Enjoy the setting sun

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

As growing old gracefully becomes more attainable than ever, so we increasingly fear old age. There are predictions that in 30 years’ time there will be twice as many over-75s as there are now. The implication is that these people will be a burden on society, but does the evidence underpin the gloom?

Even out of office, Palin is her party’s leader

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Where do I begin?” Thus replied one senior Alaskan Republican when asked to comment on Sarah Palin’s latest eccentricity. Her decision to quit as Governor of Alaska with 18 months of her term still to go left him reeling. Amid all the speculation about her finances and her family and book deals and presidential runs and the bizarre reasons she gave for walking out on her job, where should he begin?

Join the club. But only if your elections are free

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The era of vigorous democracy promotion is apparently over. The “alliance of democracies” advocated by John McCain died with his bid for the US presidency. The “community of democracies” established at the UN by George Bush (with grudging EU support) is broken-backed. The problems we have run into fostering democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan have left a vastly diminished appetite (and capacity) for similar exercises.

The information watchdog without any teeth

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I smile when I hear this Government insisting that it is committed to openness about its own behaviour (MPs’ expenses, Iraq inquiry passim).

After the frolics comes the awful truth

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Top Gear on Sunday night, watched by everyone and their aunty, featured a memorable adventure in which Jeremy Clarkson, driving a rally car, played cat and mouse with the Army’s shinest, scariest, hugest big boys’ toys. And jolly cartoon stuff it was too; Mad Max on steroids. But I bet there were a lot of people who shook their heads with sadness as they watched it.

Afghanistan is still a price worth paying

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

With the recent tragic deaths in Afghanistan, many people are asking if it is worth it. While it is difficult to outline the price we are willing to pay for success in Afghanistan, the price of failure is not hard to describe.

For the Tories it’s the beginning of the affair

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Opposition aren’t really the opposition,” says Jim Hacker in Yes, Minister. “They are only the Government in exile. The Civil Service are the opposition in residence.” As a demoralised administration in decline limps weakly towards a general election, never has the joke rung more true.

Protecting aid is good politics and good for Britain. It is also right

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

What do you call a frozen fish factory built by Scandinavians in the desert of northern Kenya, which closed shortly after it opened?

Pope Benedict is the man on the money

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope, his strengths and weaknesses seemed clear. Here was an eminent theologian, philosopher and guardian of Christian truth, but a man unlikely to make the Church’s message relevant to the world today. How simplistic this now looks in the light of his third encyclical, in which Pope Benedict XVI confronts head-on the financial crisis that has rocked the world.

Too bitter a pill for me to swallow

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I haven’t had much in common with the world’s nun population, so far. But now I know how they must have felt in convents across the globe when they heard about the advent of oral contraception. Scientists have created a pill that will bring us nothing but trouble. And even though the rest of the world will embrace this innovation, I know I could never, ever, under any circumstances take it.

This Bill is a panic measure in a tarnished age

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I had the good fortune to see the House of Commons in the evening of its golden age in 1954. Winston Churchill was Prime Minister; Clement Attlee was Leader of the Opposition; Rab Butler was Chancellor of the Exchequer; Hugh Gaitskell was Shadow Chancellor; Nye Bevan was a leading Labour speaker; Herbert Morrison was Shadow Leader of the House; Anthony Eden was Foreign Secretary. Most of these men had worked together in the victorious wartime coalition and had respect and often affection for each other.

Treat Africans as part of the human jigsaw

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

OK, it was only a speech. Actions must speak before it can be seen as a pivot of history. Yet President Obama’s address in Ghana lifted my heart, as rhetoric rarely does in these cynical days.

A hymn to him: men are sexy, smart and good for women

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:39:32 GMT

Are men really necessary? That was the question that raised its ugly head following reports that scientists had created human sperm from embryonic stem cells. A team from Newcastle University claims to have produced fully mature, mobile sperm in the laboratory, which may soon be able to create a living child. If men are no longer needed for producing sperm, perhaps they are no longer needed at all — that was the suggestion humming in the media and the blogosphere last week, often rather nastily disguised as humour, with lists of ways in which men are worse than useless. Misandry — the dislike of men — is a powerful force.

Bernie Ecclestone's not alone in liking dictators

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:24:04 GMT

As a rule, one should not bother to criticise famous people for the thoughts contained in articles under their name. He or she almost certainly didn’t write it — and perhaps didn’t even think about it, either.

All around, a senseless waste of young lives

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

After his GCSEs last month, my eldest son, who is 16, headed off to Glastonbury with a bunch of friends. From Glastonbury, they went on to Cornwall. I’d written out a cheque to a backpackers’ hostel some weeks previously, smiling to myself at my memories of InterRailing round Europe when I was 17. My son is a keen surfer, so I assumed he was going to hang out with mates, catch some waves, lie in the sun. When I asked him what he actually planned to do, he said he wasn’t entirely sure, but that all of the above were probabilities - “and, you know, a bit of partying”.

Nick Clegg can’t support our troops with an arsenal of blanks

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The news from Afghanistan has been grim recently and getting grimmer - but now onto the battlefield strides Field Marshal Clegg, of the Liberal Democrat Light Armoured Division, a model of iron will, resolution and decisiveness. As Wellington once said of Napoleon, Clegg must be worth 40,000 men. And some helicopters and cluster bombs.

A free press needs no new guardians

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A frown of deep concern furrowed the cabinet minister’s brow as he stared into my eyes and told me that the freedom of the press was dear to his heart. But what if the wrongdoings of the fourth estate, the buggings and the phone-taps of politicians and celebrities, proved to be systemic? In that case the government might find it impossible to restrain the righteous anger of the House of Commons. Statutory regulation of the press could swiftly follow.

Stone the crows — and the damage is undone

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This column is normally in favour of keeping birds alive, but just for a change, let’s celebrate killing them. The house crow has just been eradicated from the Socotra archipelago in Yemen — hurrah! No more crows; all gone, defunct, wiped out. Hurray for all those dead birds!

Youth and age are no longer strictly divided

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I was chatting to a bunch of twentysomethings recently about which women they admired. “I’m a big Judi Dench person,” said one. Another proclaimed a passion for Helen Mirren. There was much warm agreement. But, I protested, these dames could be your grandmas. What about — I dunno — Scarlett Johansson? Well, they liked to see what she wore. But Helen and Judi had presence, dignity, were above the celebrity fray.

And lo, Dave Moses had a burning bush crisis

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Tony Blair won his general election in 1997 by persuading us that he was Jesus. Nobody remembers what the policies were, all we dimly recall is that he got angry when people said he didn’t have any, insisted that he was not going to get into details, and promised to let us know what the policies were later. And we’re still waiting. Some of us feel a little bit let down. We still think that he was Jesus, but in a bad way. In the wishy-washy, open-toed, passive-aggressive, turn-the-other- cheek, can’t-touch-me-guv-I’m-with- The-Big-Guy way. The Messiah, but irritating.

Great ape guide to a Great Reform Act

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In 1962 I became editor of Tonight, a nightly topical programme on BBC television. My first crisis was Don Haworth’s decision to apply for a producer post in Manchester. It was a crisis because Don was our best film director. He did not want to leave, but he needed the extra money. I tried to get his salary increased, but he was already at the upper limit of his grade, so I failed.

Zoom in to this small tale that spells defeat

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes, you have to listen to the mountains.” This was quoted to us journalists in Kabul by Brigadier-General Walter Givehan of the US Forces in Afghanistan, with pride. He uses it as part of his mission statement: a reminder, he said, always to be alert to one’s environment and ready to hear the lessons it may teach.