It would be some consolation to discern here the outlines of an eventual solution, albeit one very far down the line. If Mr Annan judges it worth having further talks in Moscow, then perhaps the Kremlin's position is not as rigid as it seems. And if...

The motivation is, on one level, entirely good. But it lacks proportion and perspective, allowing spivs to charge what they like (and do what they like) as they secure dodgy public-private partnerships, and allowing the spooks to maintain their longs...

As if the violence itself was not bad enough, the denials, obfuscations and legal sleights of hand from the British government in the decades since have only made matters worse. Thousands of pages of documents were spirited out of Kenya when the cou...

That Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City seemed almost welded to her towering red-soled Louboutin stilettos, also beloved of real women such as Rihanna, Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham, is well known. But, last week, Homebase reported that sales of te...

The target? The BBC, specifically its practice of paying nearly a third of presenters through "personal service companies". Finance director Zarin Patel gave some credible responses, not least that freelancing is central to the broadcast business. B...

Because they just don't. Virtually every line of All About Eve zings out of the screen and thwacks you right in the solar plexus; the most innocent question is weighed down with subtext. "What would you like to drink?" Bill asks Eve, the ingénue wo...

I love that it keeps me up to date with what's going on in my area (the traffic wardens are revolting – well, they ought to be, their wages are terrible and they get grief every other minute of the day; a tiny nameless street round the corner from ...

One example I witnessed in my career was how many of my female colleagues' view of their job changed subtly when they returned from maternity leave (as they invariably did from the 1980s onwards) and quite rightly so.With the best will in the world, ...

Yet today rail is the only form of government spending not to be cut, but benefiting from continuing increases in investment. In one way this is merely a belated recognition of the fact first stated by the great French railwayman Louis Armand 40 year...

When the day comes, I remember how much I loathe flying. I seethe at the humiliation of airport security checks. I come over all Prince Charles and fume at Richard Rogers and his ugly, sterile architecture. It's the horrific white blandness of airpor...

It's not necessarily because we think they are potential cheats that women want men to be visibly married. Jools Oliver may check Jamie's emails and phone for evidence that he might be playing away Ω as she revealed last week Ω but most women avoid ...

After 9/11, New Labour subjected the public to regular warnings that an attack was imminent and that we had to trust the Government to make decisions about how our liberty should be protected.Every decision, every argument, was framed in the context ...

That, at any rate, is the popular theory, and you would think that, as a regular commuter on the London Underground, I would agree. After all, on most journeys I have to endure the intrusive racket of an impersonal stereo, or watch as one of the cap...