Friday, 16 November 2012
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Editorial: More than just mid-term woe for David CameronFriday, 16 November 2012
Normally, such dire by-election results for the governing party could be dismissed as protests. After all, Labour won most mid-term by-elections in the 1980s, and was still slaughtered at the subsequent general election. Yet yesterday's loss of Corby...
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Editorial: A watershed moment for Twitter and the lawFriday, 16 November 2012
There were more than 3,000 mentions of the former Conservative Party Treasurer on the social network on the day of the Newsnight broadcast. Lord McAlpine's lawyers have now enlisted a specialist company able to recover even deleted tweets to track do...
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A female Captain Mainwaring in the Dad's Army remake? It may be time to panicSaturday, 17 November 2012
As the feature on page 22 of Radar makes clear, these are heady times for cross-gender casting on stage. Gender-blind casting is, it seems, catching up with colour-blind casting. Having seen this production of Twelfth Night when it was at Shakespeare...
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Why do some cultures prefer small things? I think Tom Lubbock would have knownSaturday, 17 November 2012
I set about solving my confusion in a slightly perverse way, by looking through English Graphic, a recently published collection of Tom's writings on drawings, etchings and watercolours by English artists. Not Mughal painters, obviously, and only tan...
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Letters: McAlpine squanders sympathySaturday, 17 November 2012
While hundreds of victims of child sex abuse are forced to wait patiently for long-overdue justice, he is able to agree a deal to take a reported £180,000 of BBC licence-payers' money within weeks of a TV programme that didn't even name him.Apparentl...
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The Good Giraffe has his head in the clouds and a big heartSaturday, 17 November 2012
Armstrong Baillie, 32, has been carrying out random acts of kindness to strangers across the country, in the guise of the Good Giraffe. He was spotted distributing water and bananas to participants in the Edinburgh Half Marathon, removing rubbish fr...
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Editorial: Egypt's balancing act over GazaFriday, 16 November 2012
For all the human tragedy, the periodic conflicts in Gaza provoke a sense of weary inevitability. What is different this time is that the latest spasm takes place in a region reshaped by the Arab Spring. Under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt was an ally of the ...
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Save our regional theatre, because if you can’t tread these boards, the show’s overFriday, 16 November 2012
There are, however, two different theatre models under discussion here. One is the semi-legendary “rep” theatre whose demise was mourned this week by Sir Ian McKellen. In its classic form it was a small-town theatre with a resident company which put ...
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In the Tower of Babel that is Twitter, silence descends. Quite right, tooFriday, 16 November 2012
OK, aside from the odd muted grumble about wealthy McAlpine becoming ever wealthier, and the odd meek musing on how he could donate his windfall to Children in Need. But otherwise Twitter seemed to be washing its hair. How strange? This news item tic...
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Boys and bras have a place in the Girl GuidesFriday, 16 November 2012
And she talks about sex. Not in a “lie back and think of England” way, but with more of a “sit up and sort yourself out” type of approach. Julia Bentley, the former head of the Family Planning Association, was named the chief exec of Girlguiding UK t...
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Why should we be surprised that Lowry had a dark side? As an artist, it's a natural part of the terrainFriday, 16 November 2012
I admit to a predilection for the dark side myself, but then I’m a sentimentalist. The truth is that the best art is made out of an unresolved conflict between all the sides an artist has, and this much we can say: no great art was ever made by an ar...
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On Police Commissioners, you turned out in your hundreds to vote - but what were you voting for?Friday, 16 November 2012
I doubt my presence made the blindest bit of difference, but if anyone tells you they experienced a rising tide of apathy as it came to polling day, they’re fibbing. Yes, the turnout was shocking. In one ward locally, which normally polls high, fewer...
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Is dear Sir James Dyson clueless as well as bagless?Friday, 16 November 2012
While we all batten down the hatches and wait for the apocalypse to be wrought by hordes of Sapphic wastrels clutching their BAs and well-thumbed Flammarion editions of Marguerite Yourcenar, how about applying a little lit crit to Dyson's statement? ...
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Errors and Omissions: When words acquire new meanings, it's best not to stand in the wayFriday, 16 November 2012
That is true. “Elide” is a term in grammar. It means to omit, to disregard or slide over a letter, syllable or word. But it is also true that in recent years the word has acquired a new meaning: to blur the distinction between two or more things. The...
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What should the next BBC Director General do? And will the Israel/Palestine conflict ever end?Friday, 16 November 2012
It’s a very dangerous time, as the advocates of privatisation see rich pickings here. The crisis is not being overstated, but the initial causes have provided a pretext for a marvellously hypocritical show of outrage, while recent blunders (bafflingl...
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Debt rising, jobs stagnating: should the young think twice before attending university?Friday, 16 November 2012
Except rather than standing out, graduates are now finding themselves swallowed up. A major study out last week revealed that the pulling power of recent graduates has significantly declined. 40% of graduates from the 2006 cohort were still in non-g...
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A half-baked plan and a whole baked spider: time to get Dorries out of ParliamentFriday, 16 November 2012
All residents of Mid Bedfordshire are now without an MP. We have no voice in the House of Commons while our democratically elected representative is earning £40,000 on a reality TV show. Nadine Dorries has not only broken her promise to represent her...
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Debate: George Monbiot faces legal action over McAlpine tweet, but should inaccurate tweets be subject to libel laws?Friday, 16 November 2012
What's going on?Last night the BBC appeared to have agreed a £185,000 settlement with Lord McAlpine, over false child sex abuse allegations. But McAlpine’s lawyers won’t be putting their feet up yet. They have let it be known that those who named the...
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This week's wackiest stories from the web: Stupid evolution and the first burger in spaceFriday, 16 November 2012
The Dumb Shall Inherit the EarthIn a two-part paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics, Stanford University researcher Gerald Crabtree suggest that evolution is, in fact, making us dumber and that human intelligence may have actually peaked ...
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Mamma mia, these Tesco, Morrisons and Asda adverts take Christmas back to the 1950sFriday, 16 November 2012
What I didn't expect, was that that festive cheer would be laced with an attitude which, in its outdated sexism, could have come straight out of the 1950s.I am, of course, talking about the adverts for Asda, Tesco and Morrisons. The three pillars of ...
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Iain Duncan Smith's cynical attempt to redefine child poverty will do nothing to reduce itFriday, 16 November 2012
It is what he said that had me so upset. He was speaking about families, and he did make some good points.OutdatedWhen families are strong and stable, he said quite rightly, so are children. But when things go wrong in families, he added, quite right...
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BBC is well versed in drama; it's time to end this oneFriday, 16 November 2012
Lord Patten knew not what to do,As the crisis just grew and grew,And the DG's position?It was like an edition,Of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. It was Humphrys who dealt the last blow,When he exposed what his boss didn't know,He said “I knew rien”,When...
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Hungry for education? No thanks: I've already EtonFriday, 16 November 2012
I noticed these jokers were silent when, this week, something called the Springboard Bursary Foundation announced it will send 2,000 pupils from poor backgrounds to leading state and private boarding schools by 2023. Eton has signed up for the scheme...
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Questionable Time in Corby: Chris Grayling, Nigel Farage and not a trouser press in sightFriday, 16 November 2012
Chris Grayling was surprisingly tolerable...He's been an irksome thing of late, has Grayling. It's not the fact that he does the whole puff-chested, 'Tuff On Crims' thing – I expect that from Tory Justice Ministers who aren't Ken Clarke – it's becaus...
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The scandals over Jimmy Savile and Newsnight show the BBC can either modernise or die. Having a full time Chairman would be a good startFriday, 16 November 2012
I was recording a programme about Race which, when broadcast, was edited beyond recognition. The producer indicated he disliked a fellow contributor, Jane Elliott, and in my view abused his position in an apparent attempt to sabotage her career. This...
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Howling murder: Russian grandma kills wolf with axeGawker Friday, 16 November 2012
Gawker has given Maksudova the title of "Most Badass Person in Russia", after her tale of the fight was reported by Sky News."When I raised my arm up like this, the wolf was just holding my hand. Trying to claw my hand. I wanted to open his mouth and...
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Online security? Pah. Passwords are a hacker's delightWired Friday, 16 November 2012
"Your email. Your bank account. Your address and credit card number. Photos of your kids or, worse, of yourself, naked. The precise location you're sitting right now as you read these words".All these are in easy reach. This summer it took less than ...
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Letters: Energy options for 'green' ToriesFriday, 16 November 2012
It's been clear for a long time that prominent members of the Government simply don't get the urgent need to build a low-carbon economy, or recognise the huge economic opportunities this will bring. According to the CBI the green economy delivered a ...
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Editorial: All power to the Energy SecretaryFriday, 16 November 2012
Allowances must be made for wishful thinking. But, taken together with the appointments of the wind farm opponent John Hayes as Energy minister and climate change sceptic Owen Paterson as Environment Secretary, and with Mr Osborne's own dismissive al...
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Forget street art, it's the old fashioned graffiti that's really interestingSaturday, 17 November 2012
You can tell a city is having a moment, albeit a decade-long moment , when it's lauded as a capital of street art. Critic-curator Emilie Trice calls Berlin "the graffiti Mecca of the urban art world," and sure enough, it's everywhere; on the remnants...
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Editorial: Words alone will not save children from neglectFriday, 16 November 2012
In response to a report on children's services in South Yorkshire published yesterday, Michael Gove spoke vividly of the need to give social workers the backing to act more quickly in taking neglected or abused children into care. In theory at least,...
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Six ways China's new rulers could make life betterFriday, 16 November 2012
They cannot even allow people to have their opinions on TV or in the newspapers. They have already blocked lots of international sites with the Great Firewall of China, but leave the domestic sites alone. Please, as a Chinese citizen, allow me to us...
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Editorial: A different kind of celebrationFriday, 16 November 2012
How wrong they were. Celebrate sold a bare 2,000 copies in its first week and, beset by criticism, is now plummeting down the bestseller list so fast that Amazon is touting it for less than half its original price.Notwithstanding the chagrin of both ...
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