Новости за 01.09.2015

One of the silliest things Ed Miliband did during the last election campaign – there were a few, I admit – was call for a female James Bond. I never doubted the then-Labour leader’s commitment to feminism, but this smacked of something squeezed out of a Things Ed Should Say To Be As Inoffensive As Possible to a Narrow Section of the Electorate committee, rather than a remark he would come out with naturally.

Note the words used by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as she unveiled plans for the first ever national testing programme to improve literacy and numeracy in Scottish schools.

American politics is so unlike British politics that it is dangerous to draw parallels, but that won’t stop us. And it doesn’t stop them, as the publication of the latest batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails shows.

It is back to school time – and to a rather different economic landscape from that of the first week of August. Share prices on the major world markets are around 10 per cent lower than they were three weeks ago, with the FTSE 100 index back to the levels of early 2013. But that is just the start of it. The so-called “fear index”, the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s volatility index or Vix, doubled in one week last month. Suddenly everyone is worried about China’s economy slowing down, just as we used to be worried about the reverse... Читать дальше...

"Oh hey, Karen. Were you on holiday yesterday?"

"No, I was off sick."

"Are you better now?"

"No, I have cancer."

"Oh my god I'm so sorry. What kind?"

"Cervical"

"Oh, how do you get that?"

Viewed billions of times a day, the six letters have been getting gradually less gawky

David Bowie is writing new music, but fans won't be hearing it in the way they might expect.

Rumours that Idris Elba will be taking over from Daniel Craig as the next James Bond have been rumbling for months now, seemingly out of nowhere, and spurred on by many’s desire to see a black man in the role for the first time. I can see where people are coming from, but why bother to try and make a progressive step in a fundamentally troglodytic franchise?

He can do better than a character Daniel Craig himself has described as an out-of-date 'misogynist'

Being pansexual is something I have always known to be true about myself. From a young age I was always aware that my attraction to people is not limited by their gender or sex, but I lacked the words to explain this. At 12 years old I was introduced to the term “bisexual” by a friend, who was attracted to both girls and boys. I finally felt as though I had a word for how I felt.

There is a fine tale about the ambitions of Nye Bevan (pictured above) in Nick Thomas-Symonds’s biography of Clement Attlee.

Whether the Scottish people like it or not – and perhaps a majority do seem enamoured of the notion – their government is acquiring more and more of the trappings of a sovereign state. Not least of these will be the inaugural “state of the union” (if that’s not too ironic a description) address by the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, on YouTube. This is a self-consciously modern gesture that may do something to counter the Brigadoon image of her nation that many in the rest of Britain, and indeed the wider world, still believe in. Читать дальше...

Anyone who has had to be wheeled from a hospital radiology department back to their ward, clutching their own X-ray, will have wondered why it is that the NHS seems to be so behind the times in information technology. Despite a failure to keep up with demands on it – and contrary to much of the one-sided press treatment it receives – the British health service continues to provide some of the best care in the world, backed by advanced technology, modern drugs and extraordinarily talented and committed professionals. Читать дальше...

When the Chineke! Orchestra steps on to the Queen Elizabeth Hall platform on 13 September, the audience should notice something unusual. One of those uncomfortable truths about classical music is that most symphony orchestras in Europe still consist mostly of white and white-Asian people. Chineke, the brainchild of the double-bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku, is Europe's first professional orchestra made up entirely of black and minority ethnic musicians.

Great Britain’s record-breaking performance at the World Championships is just the beginning, according to British Athletics performance director, Neil Black, who is predicting a medal rush at next year’s Olympics.

With 10 days to go of this leadership contest, I believe it has come down to a straight choice between Jeremy Corbyn and myself. Whoever wins, one thing that is clear: as I said at the beginning of my campaign, this contest must bring change.

Trillions get “wiped off” stock markets. But they never seem to get “wiped on”. That’s not true, of course. Stocks markets surge just as often as they plummet. It’s just that the surges tend not to get so widely reported.