Thanks to their use elsewhere in the world – and in light of out-of-court settlements negotiated previously by the Serious Fraud Office – we know what a bad Deferred Prosecution Agreement looks like: a settlement that is not in the public interest, in which companies and individuals can buy their way out of real punishment for serious crime.
I remember my first encounter with Jeremy Corbyn well because it was the first time I attended a party conference. In 1981, he was the warm-up act for Tony Benn, chairing some of the fringe meetings where the darling of the hard left delighted his followers by offering them the pure milk of socialism.
Have I aged “successfully”? Given that I have developed a rather consistent back pain, I exhale in an involuntary fashion every time I get up from a chair, and a young woman at my golf club asked me last week whether I was a “senior”, I can report that the ageing process is not going too well for me at the moment. My soul may still be resolutely in its twenties, but my body is most definitely heading towards the sunset.
One is used to high prices for arts events. One can even stomach (almost) the dreaded booking fees. But now there is a novel twist on getting our money — have us pay towards the cost of staging the event itself.
America was founded upon the idea that the government’s power should never be allowed to outweigh the rights of its people. That’s what the founding fathers had in mind, anyway. But when they etched that conviction in stone some 230 years ago, chances are they had no clue the rights they sought to protect would end up creating a rationale for mass murder.
Director Barrie Kosky may not have worked much in Britain, but he does have form: for his ENO debut he turned Rameau’s exquisitely refined Castor et Pollux into a cross between a fight-club spectacular and a voyeuristic soft-porn romp. For his Glyndebourne debut he has chosen Saul, one of the magnificent oratorios which Handel wrote in the years preceding the Messiah.
Who will actually vote for Jeremy Corbyn? Young, naïve, wet-behind-the-ears idealists, of course. New party members who don’t remember the 80s. A class of political newborns, blinking in the light as they emerge into the world of public policy, who fail to understand the issues of the real world and don't know how to shape it. There can't be anything seasoned, wise or even rational about these people. Indeed, to most in the political and journalistic class, the mere thought of voting for Jeremy... Читать дальше...
Yesterday evening, in the spirit of fun and games, I poured alcohol into my teetotal friend’s drink while he was in the bathroom. He’d ordered a Diet Coke but, let’s face it, everyone knows that a Diet Coke is immeasurably improved with rum in it. I took it upon my generous self to procure a full shot of rum at the bar – a double, in fact, which knocked me back about £17.50 - and pour it in, then waited gleefully for his return. As he sat down and took a sip of his drink then grimaced with realisation, I grinned. Читать дальше...
Crude as it may be, perhaps the best way to assess whether neonicotinoids should be used as pesticides is to examine the upside and the downside.
The discovery that a medicine for one condition is also very effective against another represents an extraordinary win for patients, doctors and the public purse. It seems improbable that a class of drug that costs less than 5p a day, and is routinely used to prevent bone fractures, could also be found to be a lifeline for middle-aged women with breast cancer. But such is the case for bisphosphonates.
When Cindy Ofili took up the hurdles, her older sister Tiffany Porter advised her to stick to volleyball. It was a comment without any sororal jealousy, back then just a reality check for a sister six years her junior who, it had to be said, was all over the place when she first tried her new sport.
Usain Bolt was quick to point out that he is not athletics’ saviour but, as the flashbulbs fired and athletics chiefs breathed a collective sigh of relief at his re-emergence, the reality proved very different.
Usain Bolt has no problem running against drugs cheat Justin Gatlin but also has no doubt about beating him in their hotly anticipated duel at next month’s World Championships in Beijing.
