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 Monday 8th February 2010
Prius recall: What will environmentalists put in their driveways?Some people will have been surprised to learn that the braking problem Toyota has identified in the Prius has only caused two accidents, neither of them fatal. Not me. No one who actually owns one of these hybrids ever takes it for a spin. It’s a “show car”, a vehicle people park prominently outside their homes in order to advertise how environmentally conscious they are before hopping into the SUV they’ve got parked out back to pick up the kids from school. I discovered this when I was living in Los Angeles in 2004. I was interviewing a supermodel for a glossy magazine and when I showed up at her house I noticed a black, supercharged, S-type Jaguar sitting in the driveway. “Nice wheels,” I said when she opened the door. “Oh no,” she protested. “That belongs to my maid.” She then pointed to a white Toyota parked alongside it. “I drive a Prius.” (To read more, click here.)
Friday 5th February 2010
Why Capello? Why?Why Capello? Why? Okay, I know stripping John Terry of his captaincy has got nothing to do with the fact that he can't keep his trousers zippered. All that guff about expecting Terry to conduct himself in a manner befitting someone who represents his country can't have cut any ice with the England manager. After all, why hold Terry to a standard that doesn't apply to an ex-foreign secretary (Cook), an ex-President of the United States (Clinton), a future King of England (Charles) and -- most pointedly -- an ex-England captain (Beckham). Let's not forget that Beckham was accused of similar shenanigans on the eve of a major international tournament in 2004 yet wasn't stripped of his captaincy. (To read more, click here.)
Friday 5th February 2010
Warning: Do not click on this link to naked picture of supermodelFor once, common sense has prevailed. Macquarie Bank, an Australian financial services company, has decided not to sack one of its employees for looking at this picture of a Victoria's Secret underwear model. (Warning: Do not click on this link if there's a camera crew in your office or this might happen.) (To read more, click here.)
Friday 5th February 2010
Times education debateFiona Millar and me are at it again on the Times website. What is this? Round six? Round seven? I've lost count. You can follow the debate here.
Thursday 4th February 2010
No good deed goes unpunishedHaiti's decision to charge 10 US missionaries with child abduction and criminal conspiracy following their efforts to rescue 33 children gives new meaning to the phrase "no good deed goes unpunished". Laura Silsby, the mission's leader, says they were taking them to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic when they were arrested at the border: "Our intent was to help only those children that needed us most, that had lost either both their mother and father, or had lost one of their parents and the other had abandoned them." (To read more, click here.)
Thursday 4th February 2010
Will Cameron cast off his Clark Kent disguise to become Super Tory?In last night's Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson urged David Cameron to embrace a more radical Conservative agenda. He's worried that the cautious tone of the Party's recent announcements on the health service, foreign aid and fiscal policy are symptomatic of an intellectual timidity that will hamper Cameron's premiership. Instead of reducing state spending as a percentage of GDP, which Fraser fervently believes he ought to do, it'll be more of the same, with Gordon Brown continuing to dictate the agenda long after he's been defeated: From global warming targets to the Equality Bill, Mr Brown is passing legislation intended to tie the hands of the Tory government. He has established a network of quangos, choc full of Labour placemen, who will act as his government in exile; hoarding both power and money. (To read more, click here.)
Wednesday 3rd February 2010
Me vs Fiona Millar: Round FourFiona Miller and I went at it again last week, this time in a Question Time-style debate for Teachers TV. Also on the panel were Mary Bousted, General Secretary of the ATL, Rachel Wolf of the New Schools Network, and John Murphy, the Executive Principal of Oasis Academy Coulsdon. The topic was whether parents should be encouraged to get more involved in education -- and, in particular, whether they should be allowed to set up schools. It was a stimulating discussion in which all sides got a fair crack of the whip. You can see the debate here.
Tuesday 2nd February 2010
Inglourious Basterds gets a Best Original Screenplay nomination but The Hangover doesn't? WTF?!?I'm still reeling from the shock that Inglourious Basterds received eight Oscar nominations, only one less than Avatar. I've already blogged about Inglourious Basterds on my own website and won't stretch your patience by repeating all the same points here. I can understand Christoph Waltz getting a Best Supporting Actor nod, but to nominate Inglourious Basterds for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar is utterly incomprehensible. It isn't a screenplay, so much as a collection of stylistic tics in search of a story. Tarantino can't even write a good scene any more, let alone an entire movie. Virtually every scene in the film is at least twice as long as it needs to be and sitting through it's 153 minute running time is a hair-pulling, teeth-grinding ordeal. (To read more, click here.)
Tuesday 2nd February 2010
Obama's cancellation of moon landings is a case of 'No we can't', not 'Yes we can.'A couple of years ago, my best friend Sean Langan was kidnapped by the Taliban while making a documentary for Channel 4 in Pakistan. During his three-month ordeal he was interrogated by his captors many times and he was often surprised by what they wanted him to confess to. One subject they kept returning to were the moon landings. They refused to believe that America had put men on the moon and, again and again, they tried to browbeat him into admitting that NASA's programme of manned space flight had been an elaborate hoax. Why did this matter to them? Sean's theory is that the moon landings are clear evidence of the superiority of everything the Taliban are opposed to -- of reason over revelation, of democracy over theocracy, of science over superstition. In it's original conception, NASA's Apollo Programme was supposed to be an advertisement for the superiority of America to the Soviet Union -- a Cold War propaganda exercise -- but in the eyes of these Islamist terrorists it also served to discredit America's current enemies. Their response was to insist the moon landings hadn't happened. (To read more, click here.)
Monday 1st February 2010
New Labour's biggest losers: the children of the poorI've been spending the wee small hours of Monday morning reading An Anatomy of Economic Inequality, a 460-page report commissioned by the Government Equalities Office that was published last week. It's an extraordinary document for the government to have produced, not least because it provides the Tories with such a wealth of ammunition. The report was commissioned by Harriet Harman and it constitutes such a damning verdict on Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's premierships it reads like a deliberate attempt by Harman to discredit them. Promising to do more about Britain's economic inequality -- and chastisng Blair and Brown for doing so little -- will be a central plank of Harman's leadership campaign, no doubt. (To read more, click here.)
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