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| Columnists |
| Issue 1364 |
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| With Bio-Waste Spreader: “As this column predicted in January 2012 (Eye 1305), the English badger cull has been a dismal failure. With the policy effectively dead and buried, a heated debate has now broken out about the apparent success of the cull underway in Ireland…” |
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| With M.D.: “‘Patients’ lives are saved when courageous people speak up - openly and honestly - and when each of us takes personal accountability for putting things right.’ So said incoming NHS England chief Simon Stevens on 1 April. The joke is that no one helps put things right for the whistleblowers; and those who smear, ignore or blackball them are never held to account…” |
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With Remote Controller: “What hasn’t changed is the cynical manipulation of the narrative by the producers. The edition began with three acts who each got a full four ‘X’ no votes from the panel before the fourth performance – a country and western dance troupe – confounded the sense of pessimism by winning a standing ovation and four yes votes in a row. But, oddly, although the cowboy hoofers were supposed to have taken everyone by surprise, the judges and hosts Ant and Dec, in the theatre wings, all had ten-gallon hats conveniently to hand to put on during the acclaim.
[Review of Britain’s Got Talent, ITV]…” |
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| With Old Sparky: “With the giant energy suppliers facing an inquiry, booting the whole awkward issue of their behaviour into the long grass as coalition energy policy enters its lame duck phase, the ‘Big 6’ have found a new game to play… the government’s new ‘capacity market’ which aims to lure anyone capable of providing additional generating capacity with extra payments just for being there, over and above any actual sales of electricity. Needless to say, consumers will pay for this…” |
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| With Piloti: “High buildings, of dubious merit, suddenly seem to be springing up everywhere, subject to little planning control and regardless of any strategic plan for London, threatening to make the banks of the Thames look more like Dubai or Hong Kong than a supposedly civilised European city. At last a campaign organised by New London Architecture is challenging the mayor and his commercial admirers…” |
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| With Lunchtime O’Boulez: “Since this column broke the story of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s pugilistic dealings with orchestral players in the LSO (Eye 1360), the terms ‘punchy’, ‘fighting spirit’ and ‘impactful’ have acquired new meaning in reviews of his performances. Meanwhile an avalanche of further Gardiner stories has emerged…” |
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| With Bookworm: “It’s not just Ukrainians Vladimir Putin can push around. Cambridge University Press, the world’s oldest publishing house, will ban books rather than offend Russia’s new tsar. Karen Dawisha, a US academic previously published by Cambridge, submitted a manuscript on how Putin and his cronies had built a kleptomaniac and authoritarian state. Alas, ‘after discussion with legal colleagues’, executive John Haslam decided the risk of Vlad impaling him in the London libel courts was too great…” |
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| With Slicker: “Next week David Green reaches the halfway mark in his four-year contract as director of the Serious Farce Office. ‘There is much to be done,’ he declared when replacing the much criticised (then and since) Richard Alderman in April 2012. Two years on, the report card suggests that is still very much the case. Green has yet to record a conviction in an investigation or prosecution begun on his watch…” |
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Letter from Lusaka
From Our Own Correspondent: “The president’s salary has increased three times since his election in September 2011. Nurses who went on strike in support of demands for wage rises were less fortunate, however. They were sacked. But criticism of [Michael Chilufya] Sata is muted – and not only for the ruthless reputation that earned him the nickname ‘King Cobra’. His people have enthusiastically rediscovered a fondness for colonial era legislation that outlaws defamation of the president. In one of the more celebrated cases, Frank Bwalya, opposition leader and Catholic priest, faces a possible five-year jail term when magistrates decide in June whether or not it was defamatory of him to compare Sata to a potato…” |
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To read all these columnists and more in full, you can buy the latest edition of Private Eye - or subscribe here and have the magazine delivered to your home every fortnight.
Next issue on sale:
29th April 2014. |
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