Columnists M - Z
Matthew Norman: Naked greed and other core British values
Published: 26 January 2007
Christina Patterson: Do we want to know what the future holds?
Published: 26 January 2007
Last week the medical director of a hospital told me that it was "essential to see the situation with the stars". I didn't ask him about the moon, but I think that went without saying. And in this, it seems, the doctor would have been right. According to new research, and a review of 50 previous studies, the moon can affect your hormones, your behaviour, and the size of your lunch.
Thomas Sutcliffe: How Casablanca put us on the map
Published: 26 January 2007
The first thing you see in Blood Diamond, Edward Zwick's consciousness-raising thriller, is a world map, an outline of dark yellow on black with just one country - Sierra Leone - solidly blocked in. What does it tell us, this map?
Janet Street-Porter: Class warfare over the dining table
Published: 25 January 2007
I can still remember the excitement and anticipation as I waited for my first mammoth plate of fish and chips at Harry Ramsden's huge palace in Guiseley, on the outskirts of Leeds. This homely, brick-built café, with its stained-glass windows and gingham tablecloths went from being the most famous restaurant in Yorkshire to a global brand (owned by Compass) which has expanded into seven countries. For many foreigners it is the face of British grub.
Steve Richards: Blair looks weak and cowardly, while both Labour and the Tories are trapped by Iraq
Published: 25 January 2007
Hamish McRae: America's fall from financial pre-eminence
Published: 24 January 2007
Deborah Orr: This is not a new strain of immorality, just a nation recklessly keen to get in on any act
Published: 24 January 2007
Mark Steel: There will be a Tesco store in your bedroom next
Published: 24 January 2007
Brian Viner: Country Life
Published: 24 January 2007
MY FRIEND, Robbie, got married a couple of weekends ago in his native Glasgow. Having clung tenaciously to bachelorhood well into his forties, his grip was finally eased by the lovely Fiona. Maybe that was why it was such a jolly wedding: the unrestrained celebrations of those who had almost given up hope. Maybe, too, that was why there were so many speeches. The groom spoke, as did the bride, the bride's father, the groom's father, the best man, and, most memorably of all, Robbie's former Sunday school teacher, a wonderful old girl of 91, wearing a turquoise Alice band. I'll call her Miss Cameron.
Steve Richards: The hidden debate that lurks behind all this talk of trust, terrorism and the environment
Published: 23 January 2007
Thomas Sutcliffe: A political soap opera with a twist in the tale
Published: 23 January 2007
I found myself looking up the odds for Barack Obama last week, shortly after the announcement that he formed an exploratory committee for a Presidential run. This was not because I am a betting man but because I am a sucker for a good story - and Obama's is as good as any of the official current candidates.
John Walsh: Tales of the City
Published: 23 January 2007
Andreas Whittam-Smith: If the Lord Chancellor has intervened in the cash-for-honours affair, it is for good reason
Published: 22 January 2007
John Rentoul: Even now, the impatient Chancellor will not hesitate to strike at Blair if he can
Published: 21 January 2007
Joan Smith: Dear God, Ms Kelly, you're in the wrong job
Published: 21 January 2007
Editor-At-Large: A little logo on my asparagus will hardly save the planet
Published: 21 January 2007
The second most over-used word of the moment, apart from the R-word, is carbon - as in low-carbon economy. It was a week when all our major retailers fell over themselves to assure us they weren't the evil monsters who seek to cover our green and pleasant land with superstores and parking lots, but instead are the new caring face of environmentally friendly shopping. Last Monday, Marks & Spencer announced a 100-point eco-strategy, pledging to become carbon-neutral by 2012. With support from Greenpeace and the WWF, M&S has said it will mark all produce that has been air-freighted into Britain with plane symbols, and plans to cut down on energy consumption and aim eventually to send no waste to landfill sites.
Alan Watkins: Prime ministers are prey to delusion. I am filled with apprehension for Mr Brown
Published: 21 January 2007
Deborah Orr: Sadness, swans and swimming lessons... portrait of an artist not on Saatchi's list
Published: 20 January 2007
On the lamppost outside the So Sad Show, a starving artist has taped up some shrivelled flowers in cellophane, in tribute to an imaginary roadside death. Or I think it's part of the show. Outside or inside the Guy Hilton Gallery, on Fournier Street, Shoreditch, London, it's hard to tell where art ends and entropy begins. Which is only fitting.
Matthew Norman: There's something about Barack...
Published: 19 January 2007
Steve Richards: Gordon Brown does not have any foreign policies. And why on earth should he?
Published: 18 January 2007
Thomas Sutcliffe: Is this money for art's sake?
Published: 18 January 2007
The Australian art critic Robert Hughes was in characteristically pugnacious form the other day, interviewed on Radio 4's Front Row for a curtain-raiser to the London Art Fair. "Obscenity" was the word he used to describe the prices now commanded in the salesrooms of London and New York for artists - or rather artworks - in the highest earning bracket. And Hughes - who has a long record of thoughtful attention to the relationship between monetary and intellectual value - repeated a repudiation he's made before. "Art criticism has nothing to do with the question of whether some Jasper Johns sells for $135m dollars or not," he said. "What things sell for is not my business. What I'm interested in is what they mean and what they are worth aesthetically and intellectually." This is, of course, a well established opposition, most tautly represented by that Wildean description of the cynic as someone who "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing".
Janet Street-Porter: Show caution with these stupid inmates
Published: 18 January 2007
On Tuesday 9 January I discussed the current series of Celebrity Big Brother on GMTV with Lorraine Kelly, and pointed out that the way that Jade Goody's mother, Jackiey, repeatedly asked glamorous Bollywood star and fellow housemate Shilpa what her name was, and continually pronounced it incorrectly, was verging on racism. I said this made for very uncomfortable viewing, and was surprised, as a former television executive, that Channel 4 had not edited the programme to remove the remarks because there are strict guidelines about such matters.
Deborah Orr: Give Scotland its economic independence and it will start to flourish like Ireland
Published: 17 January 2007
Mark Steel: Help the rich to save the poor
Published: 17 January 2007
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