Author: |Posted: 4:30 pm on 30/01/09
Category: Snowblog
I am in the south looking north, in Latin America, in Colombia. The disconnect is acute. The biggest event of the day? The appearance of the Mexican and Colombian presidents at Davos.
No, don’t think Davos rocks here in the Andean foothills, on the rolling desert along the coast. But Latino presidents on the world stage, that’s a rarity – and the people here know it. Not that the north will notice these guys. Yet these presidents are at the heart of the most devastating economic and physical war, centred on drugs.
Author: |Posted: 10:28 am on 30/01/09
Category: Snowblog
It’s hot, humid and yet a sea breeze blows down the narrow streets to flutter the table cloths of the pavement cafes. Cartagena is on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Yellow, pink, white, blue houses compete for a ringside seat in this packed town. It’s a natural enough place to have a book festival. There are many writers with houses here, not least Garcia Marquez.
Author: |Posted: 9:12 am on 29/01/09
Category: Snowblog
It’s rare for me these days to visit a completely new country. I’m beginning to run out of mainstream options. I think I’ve visited around 104, though I have never been to China (other than Hong Kong) or Brazil.
Today I’m next door, in Colombia – a country twice the size of France with a population of over 40 million. I’m stranded at Bogota. Air France was deliciously, Frenchly, late from Paris (the best way to get here). So I missed my connection to the Hay Festival in Cartagena.
Bogota is cloudy, but it was clear coming here from the Atlantic. 11 hours from Europe. We wouldn’t have wanted a Hudson river job in the middle of that! (See my news on that)
Author: |Posted: 2:33 pm on 28/01/09
Category: Snowblog
John Updike’s death was announced not long before the programme went on air last night.
A flurry of phone calls to the great and the good of the literary world on both sides of the Atlantic produced Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, and Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times book review section.
Author: |Posted: 1:57 pm on 28/01/09
Category: Snowblog
The death of towering literary figure like John Updike poses a problem for a jobbing hack like me. I’m no literary critic, but suddenly something happens that actually affects your inner being. It’s not quite the same as a bank bailout or even an Obama initiative on Islam.
This is someone whose work helped to smooth my way to adulthood (was it ever smooth?). I read Updike because, like so many, I had lived a sheltered life and he connected me with the experience of other people’s lives – not least their sex lives.
Author: |Posted: 5:49 pm on 27/01/09
Category: Snowblog
I’ve been talking to people on the ground in Tehran. The political classes are gagging to talk to Obama. There’s a tremendous political struggle going on not to be the group that doesn’t get to talk to him.
It’s all very Iranian. Ultimately it will be down to the spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to decide how to respond to Obama’s open hand. But in the meantime former Iranian president Rafsanjani is urging a government of national unity to provide the forum to engage with America.
In short, my friends are telling me Iran can’t wait to do business.
Author: |Posted: 5:04 pm on 27/01/09
Category: Snowblog
Today heralded the great domestic political clash of the titans: Peter Mandelson versus Ken Clarke. Each a big beast in their own party, it would have been the first time they had collided since Clarke took over the business portfolio in opposition to Secretary of State Mandelson.
The latter has announced a rescue package for the motor industry this afternoon. Except these two Goliaths did not clash at all. They didn’t even set eyes on each other because they’re in different houses of parliament. Mandelson had to make his statement in the House of Lords; Clarke opposed it in the House of Commons.
Author: |Posted: 4:03 pm on 27/01/09
Category: Snowblog
Author: |Posted: 3:46 pm on 27/01/09
Category: Snowblog
The story of the four lords a-leaping (for allegedly offering to affect legislation in return for cash inducements) prompts all sorts of questions about the upper house of our legislature.
The House of Lords prides itself on the quality of debates, and I’m the first to accept that there are some amazing brains in there, and some amazing experience.
But some would say it is a flawed model. 800 people, in there for life, on the banks of one of the world’s great rivers. And unlike the prison system, life really does mean life.
Author: |Posted: 6:40 pm on 26/01/09
Category: Snowblog
New details have come to light over the spat between Boris Johnson and former Met chief Sir Ian Blair, on the day the London Mayor tries to pick a new top cop for the capital.
As you may recall, Blair quit last year saying he could no longer continue in the post “without the support of the mayor”.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was among the raft of people who accused Boris of having forced Blair out. She said he was playing “party politics”, but Boris denied any notions of a political coup.
Yet today Boris and Jacqui – presumably sitting at different ends of the table, metaphorically if not physically – are interviewing the final two candidates in the race to succeed Blair.
Under Freedom of Information laws we have copies of letters between Blair and Johnson; which make for very interesting reading.
“Offensive” and “outrageous” are just some of the colourful language which was used as the pair rowed behind the scenes.
