Jackie Ashley

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InternacionalTerrorismo Internacional

If Jonathan Powell was half as straight-talking inside the Blair tent as he was in his Guardian interview last week, it makes the central mystery of the Iraq war even odder. Here is someone who advocates speaking to terrorists, understands how poor intelligence can be, and admits to errors, who was at Tony Blair's shoulder for 13 years. He comes across as level-headed and dryly humorous.

In saying that Blair could be a "bit of a flippertygibbet" and was neither bold nor radical enough in office - because he feared losing it - Powell also seems to be a man prepared to speak uncomfortable truths.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaConvención y Tratados

The campaign to persuade Gordon Brown to hold a referendum on the new EU treaty is gaining force. The drums are rolling, time is short and this choice cannot be fudged. Immediately after next month's EU summit meeting, he and his colleagues have to decide whether to accept the treaty and ram it through the Commons, using his personal authority, or risk a crisis in relations with other European leaders, and the future of the treaty, by throwing caution to the winds and agreeing that the people have a right to vote directly.

Fighting for a referendum are "usual suspect" Labour MPs, including Gisela Stuart, Frank Field and Kate Hoey; the still Eurosceptic Conservatives, led on this issue by that arch-Brusselsphobe William Hague; and now some of the big voices in the trade unions, led by the GMB and the RMT.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea,

So today Des Browne faces his critics. Can the fluffy-haired defence secretary satisfactorily answer the charges about his behaviour in the crucial hours leading up to the sale of British sailors' stories to newspapers? Will the Tories boldly go one step further and demand his resignation? Will the prime minister, in his final weeks in office, dispense with Des? A nation holds its breath for the answer.Oh no it bloody doesn't. I certainly don't. What I feel is a rising sense of disgust that anyone is so pathetically interested in this third-rate and comparatively trivial story. It doesn't matter whether Des Browne makes a good fist of it in the Commons.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

There is something mysterious about Tony Blair just now. Hostility to him over the cash-for-peerages investigation, Iraq and much else does not abate. In interviews he's constantly asked when he's going to leave. The polls are terrible. He should be grey, worn down, despairing. Yet he seems almost perky. He ought to have given up on his "legacy" but he doesn't seem to have done. It is as if he knows something we don't.

Well, he does. There is a far-advanced, detailed plan for his life after Downing Street, which he hopes will keep him in the spotlight and save his reputation.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial, ,

In the seething, elbowing, cursing, foot-aching maelstrom of the Merrie Christmas shopping experience, a piercing cry goes up from along the aisle. You look over and there is a harassed, desperate woman - occasionally a man - on the edge of losing it completely with a child who is having a tantrum. The tot, or schoolchild, is furiously demanding something on the shelf. It is too expensive, or it is too full of sugar or fat, and the parent is trying to say no. Childless shoppers often look disgusted at the lack of control. Anyone with kids will roll a sympathetic eye.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,

Every age has its economic lunacies, behaviour that points to a wider problem. It might be the rocketing cost of rare tulip bulbs in old Amsterdam, the Spanish practices of the print unions at their mightiest in old Fleet Street or the madness of the junk bond market a few years later. Today there are plenty to choose from, including the booming sales of cars that can do 180mph when congestion reduces traffic to a crawl; or a housing market that has garages and beach huts selling for more than most people dream of.

But if you want something so weird that, when you stop to consider it, it may well make the historians of tomorrow blanch, it is the current craze for popping over to New York to do the shopping.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

This may sound more morbid than it was, but I was talking to my husband about how we would like to be finally disposed of, and it triggered an argument about that most modern of political phenomena, the yuk factor.For me, cremation is the wholesome, hygienic solution. It is what progressive people go for automatically. Along with being pro-social-justice, pro-abortion-rights and anti-homophobia, favouring cremation is just what you expect these days. He, it turns out, would be happy to be buried. I react against burial with instinctive horror - yuk - all those worms and microbes and slow, Victorian-style squelch as the rain pelts down and the headstones discolour.…  Seguir leyendo »