In Which Further Effort Is Made to Understand Blair Rage

The fury that greeted an unusually generous donation to a popular charity said something sad and profound about British journalism and possibly about the British character. But what?
Tim Lott had a go at answering that question in The Independent on Sunday yesterday:
Why do so many people spend so much of their energy on a target [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 23 August 2010 at 2:15 pm

That Mitchell and Stiglitz look

Those book lovers who saw the tall, willowy figure of the highly acclaimed novelist, David Mitchell (pictured), roaming the verdant grounds of Charlotte Square Gardens, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, over the weekend, might have been a little miffed when they opened up their copy of The Scotsman this morning, to discover a photograph of [...]

By Arifa Akbar | Arts | Monday, 23 August 2010 at 12:36 pm

A Very British Diarist

The second volume of Chris Mullin’s diaries – Decline and Fall – were serialised in the Mail on Sunday yesterday. Some of the anecdotes might have made a front-page lead story if there were still a Labour government, but I was surprised to see them picked up in precisely none of this morning’s newspapers.
Here are [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 23 August 2010 at 11:31 am

Barney – Whitehaven’s famous goose

There is much to look at in the Cumbrian harbour of Whitehaven these days. There are the yachts in the marina, the many art works, the wonderful view – but most people just want to see Barney.
Barney is the harbour goose – and has been for at least 200 years. Not the same goose, I [...]

By Alan Cleaver | Notebook | Monday, 23 August 2010 at 10:27 am

The Conspiracy Fever Subsides

The great David Kelly silly season conspiracy story has produced one last spasm before it subsides back into the dank underworld of mere “normal” conspiracy theories.
Yesterday the BBC News at 10 led its bulletin on the comments by Nicholas Hunt, the pathologist, repeating his view, given to the Hutton Inquiry seven years ago, that Kelly [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 23 August 2010 at 10:16 am

Roberto Bolaño: the continuing afterlife of a writer

A two part blog, this, to accompany my review of ‘Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview’. First of all, an overview of the books we have yet to come from Picador, Bolaño’s UK publisher; and secondly, a brief trawl through some of the best footnotes to this most fashionable – and bloggable – of authors on the [...]

By Jonathan Gibbs | Arts | Monday, 23 August 2010 at 12:47 am

More Spectator convulsions on Clegg

I fear this Coalition might be doing strange things to those right-wing brains on Old Queen Street

By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 22 August 2010 at 7:10 pm

The New Managerialism

Sean O’Grady, our economics editor, has wise advice for the Labour leadership candidates in The Independent on Sunday today:
First, admit that the last government – “for all the right reasons” – ramped up public spending too much and left the public finances too weak to face the crisis. Unforeseen and unprecedented as the crisis was, [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 22 August 2010 at 11:37 am

The Scale of the Universe

When I gave you the vampire bat yesterday, it was because I came across it when I was looking for something else (I’m sure that there is a word for that).
I was actually looking for the video below, showing the relative sizes of planets and stars, which I still can’t find on Olaf Davis’s blog [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 21 August 2010 at 4:14 pm

David Miliband has eight-point lead

Catching up on What I Missed on My Holidays, the most important news about the Labour leadership election over the summer was the appearance, finally, on 29 July of a YouGov opinion poll of Labour Party members.

As you can see, YouGov surveyed not only 1,184 party members but also 1,102 Labour-supporting trade unionists, and combined [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 21 August 2010 at 12:04 pm