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Deborah Orr: Why is it so hard to prove the obvious?

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It's a weird old society indeed when the huge stories that are hardest to break are the ones that everybody knows are true anyway. First, it was the bankers.

Andrew Grice: Clegg has to shout to be heard, but voters may be ready to listen

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

When Nick Clegg agreed to do one of his regular meet-the-people meetings at the Glastonbury Festival, he got more than he bargained for. He was introduced by Merrick, from a radical group called Corporate Watch, who ended his finely-honed poem with a tirade of abuse about the Liberal Democrats, and how they were ****ing s***.

Howard Jacobson: I never did see my function as supplier of the wherewithal to feed women's neuroses

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It isn't often we call for direct political action in this column. But we call for it today. Boycott Strictly Come Dancing. Keep your televisions off when the new season of the programme starts. Do something else with your Saturday nights. Don't buy tickets for the show. Don't vote for your favourite celebrity dancer. Just say "No!".

Robert Fisk’s World: You won't find any lessons in unity in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

At last, I have seen the Dead Sea Scrolls. There they were, under their protective, cool-heated screens, the very words penned on to leather and papyrus 2,000 years ago, the world's most significant record of the Old Testament.

Christina Patterson: Here's why nice work pays much better

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

"You know what," said a banker to me the other day, "I think they should pay me about half what I earn." For a moment, he had the thunderstruck expression of someone whose casual yawn has turned into a giant burp, and who's not quite sure how to handle the ensuing embarrassment. "Oh dear," he said, "is that irritating?" Well, yes, actually, but at least it's honest. My offer to split dinner was, I have to admit, slightly half-hearted.

Tim Collins: Afghanistan remains a worthy cause

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

With 184 men dead as a result of our involvement in the campaign in Afghanistan, many will now be asking: is it worth the effort? The bland riposte is always: "If we don't win the fight there we will have to fight it here." Unlike most spin that flows like a mighty river from the Government, this bit is actually true.

Major-General Julian Thompson: This is a deadly phase but we must keep the pressure up

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

This is very sad and sobering news and of course it is heartbreaking for the families and friends of those who have died. But we are at war and we as a nation have to accept that there will be more losses to come.

Jeremy Laurance: The decision to end a life is never easy

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Predicting the outcome for a patient in a coma is one of the hardest judgments in medicine. Some recover, some die and some remain halfway between, in a persistent vegetative state.

Jerome Starkey: The deadly task of fighting against an invisible enemy

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The grim toll of soldiers coming home from Afghanistan in coffins is testimony to the brutal contest being waged in the poppy fields of Helmand. For three years, British troops have been massively undermanned, underequipped and overstretched as they have tried to convince a deeply cynical population that they are safe from the Taliban.

Jonathan Brown: How I took on Pamplona's raging bulls – and lived to tell the tale

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

I would never claim that I was the bravest or most daring runner on the day I took to the Cuesta de Santo Domingo to try my luck against the huge beasts whose charge has turned the capital of Navarre into a magnet for international thrillseekers each summer. Nor, as the years have passed, do I feel necessarily proud that I took part in what culminates in the ritualised slaughter of fine animals in the name of entertainment.

John Rentoul: War and muddle

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:56:28 GMT

"If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well." That was the motto of one of my head teachers and it took me a few decades to work out that it isn't true. There are some things that are worth doing, and worth doing any old how; doing them too well might be a waste of time.

Ben Chu: Easton points the way on gang culture

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:55:12 GMT

The BBC news website's blog has given some of the Corporation's more thoughtful journalists an outlet for their talents which simply didn't exist before. (How much insight can you squeeze into a one minute two-way on the 10 o'clock news?)

John Rentoul: AJ4PM bulletin

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:43:24 GMT

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, spoke to the Association of Chief Police Officers in Manchester yesterday. Sky News interrupted its coverage to go live to the start of his speech, in the expectation that the Home Secretary would say something about the News of the World voicemail hacking story

John Rentoul: Bloodsport postponed

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:17:59 GMT

Fine column by esteemed colleague Steve Richards provides the much-needed balanced assessment of the Andy Coulson media event. Several journalists predicted yesterday that David Cameron's press secretary would be gone by the end of the day; several Labour ministers and MPs were privately gleeful at their enemy's discomfort.

Andreas Whittam Smith: Forget regulation – the banks are back to business as usual

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It was supposed to be "never glad confident morning again" for capitalism. After the popping of speculative bubbles during the Great Crash of 2008, surely we weren't going to carry on as if nothing had happened? Well, I am afraid to say, ahem, yes, that it sort of looks like that.

Jill Kirby: The five ways that government disguises failure as success

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Over the past 10 years, layers of government have multiplied, more regulatory bodies have been put in place, thousands of new laws have been passed and greater powers of surveillance have been accorded to the State. Yet as government activism has increased, so public confidence has fallen. How has this happened? In a new report I identify five techniques used by government to disguise failure as success.

Jeremy Laurance: Too much information can be bad

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Being told you have a life-threatening condition is no joke. The disease may be harmful, but so can the knowledge that you have it.

The Sketch: How to talk like a human being: Lesson one

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It is with great pleasure that I am able to tell you that my colleagues appeared in front of the Public Administration Committee to give evidence on Official Language, that they appeared with a professor and the lady from the Plain English Campaign, and that they weren't very good. It puts a spring in a fellow's step, that, and gives lunch an added flavour. I hadn't been asked, you see.

Ian Burrell: Lawyers could be the winners in Fleet Street hacks' 'blagging' game

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It was in Portcullis House that Rebekah Wade first let the cat out of the bag. "We have paid the police for information in the past," the editor of The Sun brazenly stated to MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport committee.

Terence Blacker: True driving force in energy debate is cash

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

In the week of the first ever Green Britain Day, I was fortunate enough to hear an exchange which captured, in an admittedly microcosmic way, the realities behind the energy debate. At a planning committee in Norfolk, one of two energy companies hoping to put up groups of wind turbines near Diss was applying for permission to erect a 60-metre wind-measuring mast. A councillor pointed out to the team of TCI Renewables that another firm, Enertrag Ltd, had recently erected a mast nearby. Was it not possible for the two firms to share the data?

Susie Rushton: The naked truth at lunchtime

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

You might not think that fine art and team sports have much in common, but, get seriously involved in either, and pretty soon all the clothes will come off. How you deal with the sight of bare flesh marks you out as a grown-up, or an immature prude. Layered over that is the natural British diffidence when confronted with non-pornographic nakedness. We're either excessively, throat-clearingly polite, or we write a stiff letter of complaint.

Sean O'Grady: Time the boot was on the other foot

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

I will never forget it. I had parked outside the bank, nipped inside to pay a cheque in, and in the intervening few minutes some goon in a rusty old Ford Escort van had turned up, clamped my Honda and was demanding money with menaces. The fine was £125: bigger than the cheque.

Erick Kabendera: What Africa wants from Obama

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Barack Obama arrives in Ghana today on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa since becoming President. It has taken six months for the most famous African son to return to the continent of his father, and manyhave been frowning that he has been relatively slow to shape his relationship with Africa.

Steve Richards: There's trouble when the spin doctor becomes part of the story

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It was only a matter of time before Andy Coulson became a news story. Coulson is David Cameron's Director of Communications or chief spin doctor. In Britain spin doctors tend to generate an irrationally intense interest, at least in the media.

John Rentoul: 'I'm not going to tell you that'

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:30:11 GMT

Ha. Andrew Gilligan skewered by his former mate Rod Liddle, in this week's Spectator: