LABOUR MPs seem to consider it bad form to mention the Old Etonian background and fabulous wealth of David Cameron or the baronetcy awaiting George Osborne. In fact, the Tory front bench contains some of the richest politicians outside the Kremlin. Wealthy landlords such as Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling sit alongside Lazards Bank’s man in the House of Commons, International Development spokesman Andrew Mitchell, who is certainly a stranger to poverty himself.
Archive for March, 2009
Denis MacShane: It’s toff at the top with Tory Bullingdon boys
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009
IT’S nice to be able to report some good news for a change. In the interests of meaningful and comprehensible communication, the Local Government Association has produced a list of jargon it wants to see banned. Among the impenetrable gobbledegook which no one can understand – quite possibly including those who came up with it [...]
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009
A GROUP claiming to be angry at executive pay has claimed responsibility for vandalising the Edinburgh home of pensioner Sir Fred Goodwin. That ought to narrow the list of suspects down to several million.
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009
FOREIGN Secretary David Miliband has invented a freshly-spun euphemism for military defeat. The Taliban, he says, has achieved “strategic stalemate” in Afghanistan. He also told the BBC that, wait for it, it is now understood that there could not be a solution in the region brought about by military means alone. Gordon Brown justifies the [...]
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009
Should Gordon Brown say sorry for the current economic crisis? You said: YES: 70% NO: 30%
THEATRE: Everyone’s a winner with revival of ravaged Restoration
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009Victory
Arcola Theatre, London
EVERY theatre buff has a list of great plays they want to see, but haven’t caught up with yet. Sometimes, the expectation of seeing the revival of a classic, even if it is a relatively modern classic, is enough to spoil the whole experience. The way that the game of fantasy theatre works is that expectations are so much better than actuality. Sometimes – but not always.
FILM ROUNDUP: It’s just like Philip Larkin, libriaran and Mafia mobster
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009AS SOMEONE who wears glasses I was disturbed by what a pair of spectacles did to the tops of the ears of actor Toni Servillo, cast as Italian Prime Minster Giulio Andreotti in Il Divo. Servillo’s ears are bent over in what must be a painful fashion. Clearly, in the early 1990s when the film is set, Italian design did not include comfort. In another scene, Andreotti is seen riding a primitive exercise bike. It looks like the U-bend of a toilet and you wonder what he is actually doing on it.
BOOKS: Turning off the tap
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009The Real Venezuela: Making Socialism in the 21st Century by Iain Bruce
Pluto Press, £15.99
DAY after day, week after week and month after month the dishonest drivel pours out in the press and on the radio and television of the Western world about Venezuelans and the supposed dictatorship under which they live. It is inspired by the shadowy but often dim plotters of the governments of the United States and some of its allies: people in Washington’s ill-named National Endowment for Democracy, for instance, which supported the failed military coup against the elected government of President Hugo Chávez in 2002, and in Human Rights Watch, an American organisation which last year cobbled together a libel on the Venezuelan government.
FILM: Tales of dancing hawks, green waters and Korean wives
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009IN 1978, American suspense novelist Patricia Highsmith was invited to be jury president at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival. As noted in Andrew Wilson’s biography, Beautiful Shadow, problems rapidly ensued “They were terribly unhappy with her and she was not happy with the festival.” Discontent with the Berlinale has been expressed for a long while and I’ve heard it every year since I started attending in 2002 – which was also the debut of the current festival director, Dieter Kosslick.
VISUAL ARTS: Frost’s cool, modern approach to art in the abstract
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, March 26th, 2009Luke Frost: Painting in Five Dimensions
Tate St Ives
GIVEN the long history of abstraction – or non-representational – painting in the 20th century, it often comes as a surprise to discover young artists still exploring the outer, more austere reaches of such work. While artists continue to depict such conventional subjects as the figure, landscape or still life – despite the long history of such work – without critics raising an eyebrow, any carefully honed and minimalist form of work is likely to be compared unfavourably with the recent past.