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Paul Costello relates the disturbing tale of how Margaret Thatcher made a living after being PM: She entered into a lucrative deal with Big Tobacco.
Archive for the ‘Britain’ Category
January 30th, 2012
The CEO of RBS turns down his £1m bonus.
January 24th, 2012
I presented evidence on alcohol and violent crime last week in the UK House of Lords, after which I had the honour to meet Lord Walton, whom I had long admired. He told me a great joke: “Did you hear about the man who dreamt that he was giving a speech in the House of [...]
January 19th, 2012
Anthropologist Kate Fox gives a master class on British behaviour in her funny and smart book “Watching the English“. Among her many astute observations is that most Britons are sceptical of radicalism, preferring instead incrementalist politics. She parodies the prototypical English protest rally call-and-response as follows: Q: What do we want?!! A: MODEST CHANGE!!! Q: [...]
January 19th, 2012
Category: Britain, Financial crises
The front page of this morning’s Financial Times describes the struggle between the Royal Bank of Scotland and PM David Cameron over executive pay. RBS chairman Sir Philip Hampton’s salary of nearly $2 million is set to be supplemented with a bonus of at least that hefty size. Cameron is calling for executive pay restraint, [...]
January 15th, 2012
The movie studios currently promote their coming attractions through press junkets. The star sits in some hotel room with a poster or prop from the movie in the background, and then a zillion reporters are run through the room for a quick “exclusive interview”. Paul Newman likened the experience to being double parked in front [...]
January 13th, 2012
Given that I am in London and sitting in the very chair you see pictured here, it is only natural that I make this weekend’s film recommendation the movie in which it appears: Matthew Vaughn’s stylish and brutal “Layer Cake”. That’s obviously not me pictured, but the magnificent Sir Michael Gambon. He plays wily drug [...]
January 10th, 2012
Category: Britain, Drug Policy
The Economist handicaps the coming London mayoral race, noting correctly that Boris Johnson currently leads Ken Livingstone in the polls but by no means has things sewn up. But the newspaper’s house politics skew the coverage badly as the article uses this gem of circumlocution to limn Johnson’s achievements as mayor: Crime has continued to [...]
January 2nd, 2012
I am so glad that Ronnie Corbett has made the Honours List. Some stuffy sorts feel that honours should be reserved for those British actors who perform “serious works”, e.g., Osborne plays and Shakespearean dramas. But a country that has given so much to the world of comedy (and whose citizen could stand to laugh [...]
December 27th, 2011
On the 40th anniversary of Kubrick’s famous adaptation of the Burgess novel, Tim Robey analyzes the movie’s impact. I am surprised to see a British writer missing the critically important point that Kubrick’s version is not based on what Burgess actually wrote and what most Britons actually read. The UK version of the book has [...]