Новости за 12.09.2015

The lack of public response to the British government ordering the assassination by pilotless drones of two British citizens, Reyaad Khan and Rahul Amin, is alarming but scarcely surprising. The two Isis members were killed outside Raqqa in Syria because they were allegedly planning attacks in Britain, though the nature of the threat they posed remains a secret. Their deaths were never going to shock many people in Britain, given IS’s ghastly record for carrying out ritual murders, rapes and massacres. Читать дальше...

The ironies of history never fail to surprise. Measured by any criteria, Jeremy Corbyn is the most left-wing leader in the history of the Labour Party. He understands that those who do evil abroad are unlikely to do much good at home. He is the staunchest anti-imperialist Member of Parliament.

Given that Jeremy Corbyn will not become Prime Minister, as even many of his supporters accept, there is no way that this can end well for the Labour Party. A YouGov poll at the beginning of August found that 30 per cent of Corbyn supporters intended to vote for him even though they didn’t think that Labour was likely to win the 2020 election with him as leader. Because that is not why they voted for him.

There is one economic issue this week and one only. It is whether the Federal Reserve will increase US interest rates on Thursday. If it does, that would be the first upward move since June 2006, and a giant step along the path to normal interest rates, not just in the United States but elsewhere. It would signify the beginning of the end of ultra-cheap money.

From whichever angle you inspected the proceedings, it was a very good week for the English men’s football team. Not only did our heroes – to borrow the vocabulary of the tabloids – qualify for next year’s European tournament with an effortlessness not seen in decades, but Wayne Rooney’s 50th international goal saw off a record held by Sir Bobby Charlton for more than 40 years. Doubtless all manner of alarm bells will be sounded between now and next summer – there will be injuries, calamitous losses of form and savage personal traumas ... Читать дальше...

There are times when compliments are nice. An appreciative remark about a new hairdo from someone you know and like, can, for a brief moment, make you walk just that little bit taller. But there are other times when a compliment can put a dent in your day. In the wrong environment, it can be undermining and embarrassing – the very opposite of nice.

Giving tax breaks to couples who have sex? It doesn’t sound like mainstream Tory policy, but that’s the position (for want of a better word) that the Government has got itself into where civil partnerships are concerned. It admitted as much last week in the House of Lords, when a minister flatly refused to extend the current legislation to include brothers and sisters.

Whatever happened to Canada, the land of compassion, the land so decent it verged on plain boring, the land that selflessly led the world, providing troops for peacekeeping missions abroad and repeatedly flinging open its doors to desperate refugees fleeing less fortunate nations?

As predicted in last week’s column – my entry into Israel was not entirely uneventful. First, general orientation is a problem. It seems that there is a major new player in the war against terrorism – the sign remover. The idea appears to be that if you take away any signage telling you where a company or organisation is, then a terrorist will wander around lost until he gives up.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader is the most extraordinary event in British politics since the universal franchise. Whatever else it does, it sends a powerful message to the establishment that there is an appetite for doing politics differently. An uninspiring field of conventional candidates has been swept aside by an insurgent who breaks all the rules.

The average porn user may have more egalitarian views towards women than non-users, a contentious new study has suggested.

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of new things happening. It’s more than just the election of a new Labour leader. What is acceptable to say and think has changed. We are witnessing a revolution in common sense.

When Mark Rylance and the cast of Farinelli and the King step on stage at the intimate Duke of York’s theatre in London, from the flickering glow of the candle-lit set they may see some wide eyes in the audience. For even ticket-holders primed to watch a drama about the Spanish court of Philippe V and the king’s favourite castrato singer, Farinelli, may not have heard a countertenor in full flood. Rupert Enticknap, one of three singers sharing the role of Farinelli the performer (Farinelli the... Читать дальше...

British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw may be hot property in Hollywood right now, but she’s about to go back to the very roots of her profession – playing one of the first ever actresses, Nell Gwynn, at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Even on the eve of his victory, I feel I have to admit: I felt conflicted about voting for Jeremy Corbyn. It’s not that I don’t agree with his ideas, because I do. It’s not because I feel any personal distaste for him; on the contrary, I’ve felt truly inspired by his anti-elitism approach to the leadership contest. And it’s not that I believe he’s a terrible choice for the Labour party, either. I don’t swallow scaremongering from Blairites, so obsessed with the spectre of Michael Foot and the supposedly right-wing British public (who have... Читать дальше...

A woman who was diagnosed with genital herpes days before her 21st birthday has spoken about her journey from being terrified and ashamed to telling the world she has the STI in a crusade to banish stigma.

On Thursday, we reported on the sad death from illness at the age of 34 of Debra Reiss, heiress to the Reiss clothing company. She was pregnant, and the story added: “Her unborn child also reportedly died.” Nothing wrong with that, except that if this were a story about abortion, the “unborn child” would have been a “foetus”. It is like the old terrorist/freedom fighter problem.

Northern Ireland’s political parties are to gather in Belfast on 14 September – in a markedly pessimistic atmosphere – as the British and Irish governments mount a rescue operation aimed at saving the power-sharing administration from collapse in the wake of the ongoing IRA controversy.

The streets of Henley-on-Thames are not well acquainted with protest marches. Talk of boats in the Chiltern region tends to refer to the annual regatta. Yet, today, the town so associated with quiet English conservatism is to stage a rally calling on the Government to do more for the refugees who are often “boat people” of a different ilk. Henley joins a show of solidarity centring on London – where 80,000 marchers are expected – but spreading through the regions, and around the Western world.

Some 17 years after Tony Blair delivered his soundbite about the “hand of history” touching those who were involved in the last phase of the peace process, that hand is hovering again above many a shoulder in Stormont today.

What now – are they making it easier to go bust?

At what point do people start ignoring their debts? It's when they climb to above £20,000, according to the debt manager PayPlan.

I have returned to Instagram, re- igniting the flame beneath my dead account – neglected for nearly a year – because, well, it was starting to make me look weird. At one point, really only about six or seven years ago, the act of photo-documenting the bobbins, chaff and stained underbelly of one's life and then presenting it online for the world to inspect, well, that was the weird thing.

My daughter starts a new school this month, to do A-levels. The household feels it has barely recovered from an intense summer of GCSEs. She feels the same, and she actually sat them. But no one passes through the demented circus of the public examination system entirely alone any more. Teachers, parents, siblings, grandparents, random passers-by – everyone is drawn into the drama.

If I could work out how much time I'd spent agonising over texts sent in the past few years, I'd probably have to reassess my life goals. It's scary the way you can do your head in over something as daft as a text.