Marina Hyde

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Team Sky’s Chris Froome celebrates after winning his fourth Tour de France in July. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA

ReflexionesSocial,

It’s always exciting when something goes right down to the wire. And for many of us, the race to re-edit Chris Froome’s Sports Personality of the Year segment in time for Sunday’s show is easily as gripping as anything the seemingly bent sport of cycling can offer.

Chris is in line for the big award, and though he is about as likely to trouble world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua as Monaco’s Lewis Hamilton is, Froome is still obliged to appear for a sitdown interview, as well as star in some sort of year overview/training montage. Ideally one that doesn’t show a Brigitte Nielsen-style character lovingly administering his asthma inhaler, in homage to Rocky IV.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

For all the fact that it's taking place in Abroad, what an uncomfortably British production the Bahrain Grand Prix has turned out to be. The whole thing echoes tales of forgotten outposts of the British empire, where a rogue commandant runs amok, assisted by conspiratorial officials banished there after various disgraces back in Blighty. Were the story in the hands of a novelistic genius like Joseph Conrad, our despotic rogue and his factotum might be some renegade captain from the East India Company and his amoral manager. But modern life has a way of failing to live up to fiction, which is why we've got Bernie Ecclestone and John Yates.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaUE a debate

My chronic inability to take non-military baubles seriously means I have no idea whether there is such a thing as an EU medal of valour. There wouldn't be an Italian one, naturally - and if you get awfully affronted by blithe national stereotyping, you should certainly leave this article here - but something wonderful simply must be bestowed upon David Cerny, the Czech artist whose eight-tonne installation, Entropa, was this week unveiled in the atrium of the European Council in Brussels.

Even if you remain oddly resistant to the tractor-beam allure of public art, you are urged to make an exception for this piece.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

Of late Gordon Brown reminds one of a chap whose wife has informed him that there is a massive hole in the family budget. She will watch with a raised eyebrow as he finds a temporary VAT cut down the back of the sofa, and presents it to her with an imploring look. She will sigh in exasperated sympathy as he remembers £700m worth of supertax in an old post office account. And then she will point gently at the utterly undiminished hole in the balance sheet, and say: "I don't mean to state the bleeding obvious, love, but there is a sports car sitting in the garage, and I can't help feeling this might be the moment to let it go".…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalOrden Mundial,

By the time you read this, world peace should have broken out. It should have broken out at precisely 8.08pm Beijing time yesterday, because International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge has made his traditional plea for a worldwide military truce for the duration of the games. Yet on the offchance that the Taliban are not laying in supplies of popcorn and preparing for a fortnight on the sofa, and US and British soldiers are not garlanding their tanks with flowers, now might be the time to question the IOC's preposterously idealised version of itself.

There's nothing wrong with calling for world peace, of course - beauty queens do it all the time.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalTerrorismo Internacional

'Never fight with a pig," runs a popular aphorism. "You both get dirty and the pig enjoys it." It was this sage advice that came to mind this week as pictures of Abu Qatada emerged, showing the freed Islamist preacher popping out to get some groceries. Public outcry was ordered to ensue.

If you're at the stage of needing flashcards to keep track of your troublemaking Abus, Qatada is the radical Palestinian-Jordanian cleric who fought a deportation order, and was recently released from six years of custody on strict bail conditions, including a 22-hour curfew. Abu Izzadeen - real name Trevor Brooks - is the one who once heckled John Reid in a press conference, but went and undid all that goodwill by picking up a terrorist fund-raising conviction back in April.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

Sacré bleu! Has there ever been an entente more stereotypicale? To observe President Sarkozy's state visit to Britain this week has been to exist in a sort of sitcom rendering of Anglo-French relations - and all the more amusing for it. In fact, so stereotypically did each of the characters involved discharge themselves that the affair made Allo! Allo! look like a triumph of three-dimensional nuance.

To pluck a few of our cast at random, there was the oleaginous Frenchman who charmed us against logic and our better judgment, his fabulously glamorous wife (they've known each other 10 minutes, don't you know - but these Europeans are so passionate).…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea, ,

On the one hand, it was nice to see Prince Harry in a British army uniform, as opposed to one of Hitler's. It's a little bit like Pokemon, really. I'm hoping he'll give us a highly collectible Hutu warrior snap soon. Gotta catch 'em all! On the other, is there anyone over Pokemon-playing age who believes it was really worth it? The sheer number of man-hours and money lavished on allowing one young man to experience job satisfaction is mind-boggling. It has to be the most fatuous use of Ministry of Defence resources since Geoff Hoon.

According to the executive director of the Society of Editors, who helped establish the controversial media blackout, it was not designed to mislead readers and viewers but to ultimately give them "a deeper insight into a new side of Prince Harry".…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNuevas Tecnologías

'Life is pain,' deadpans the swashbuckling hero of the movie The Princess Bride. "Anyone who says different is selling you something." I'm afraid that this was the quote that drifted across my consciousness on Thursday as the latest news of how the internet has changed everything - again - was unveiled. According to an Ofcom study, we are all spending more time online and on our mobiles than ever, with pensioners spending longer surfing the web than any other age group. And women - they're at it too, more than men in key demographics, with the general consensus seeming to be that this is a marvellous and life-enhancing thing.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

At times it seems that no statistic to emerge from Iraq cannot be looked at in a glass-half-full kind of way. Last year, when the civilian death toll was having one of its moments in the spotlight, Iowan Republican Senator Steve King claimed: "My wife's at far greater risk being a civilian in Washington DC than an average civilian in Iraq." He explained that there were 45 violent deaths per 100,000 people in Washington in 2003 and 27.51 per 100,000 in Iraq as a whole. As it turned out, the source of his Iraq statistic was unclear, while his Washington figures were out of date ...…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

Be of good cheer. Just weeks from today, former British prime minister Tony Blair will emerge from the where-are-they-now files to take his first trip as Super Middle East Peace Envoy Man (warning: may not actually possess superpowers).In a joint announcement on Wednesday, the US, UN, EU and Russia confirmed that Mr Blair would be adopting this role with immediate effect, and it emerged that his first trip would be to Ramallah next month. Ladies and gentlemen, the Quartet just acquired a fifth horseman.

Inevitably, the news saw him having to run the gauntlet of the sneerers who have occasionally dogged his initiatives and - perhaps because he has what might be referred to delicately as "baggage" in the region - there were those who were quick to imply that he was in fact the least appropriate candidate for the job in the known universe.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica, ,

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, the spectacle of principled folk feeling the need to reassert their principles has not been uniformly edifying. Had all the students been armed, stated one rifle lobbyist on Monday, the massacre would never have happened. From NBC, who opted to air the material mailed to them by Cho Seung-hui, there were the thoughts of network president Steve Capus. "This is, I think, as close as we will ever come to being inside the mind of a killer," he posited.

Writing in the conservative National Review, self-styled "resident chickenhawk" John Derbyshire was frothingly bemused.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea

I'm afraid it was the Ryder Cup-style photo that was the last straw. It is traditional, on the eve of that golf competition, for the US and European teams to pose for photos in matching outfits. Rarely has this biennial silliness been called to mind more sharply than on Wednesday in Tehran, when the 15 released naval hostages waved cheerily for the cameras, looking for all the world as if they were confident of securing an early lead in the foursomes.

Before we proceed, two things should be stated for the record. First, it is obviously wonderful that the crew are back in Blighty and reunited with their families.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

If one is to endure a prime ministerial discourse on Iraq for any length of time these days, it is necessary - in the name of sanity - to cultivate strategies of detachment. Destroying another radio solves nothing, and there may be health risks associated with beginning one's waking day shouting dementedly at the glottal-stopped voice drifting over the airwaves. And so it was, listening to Tony Blair sing the praises of his Iraq adventure on the Today programme on Thursday, that my mind began to wander. If it wasn't all such a bleeding mess, I thought vaguely, the prime minister's delusions of success would be almost comical.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

News that Canada is to stage a reality TV show in which former Canadian prime ministers grill contestants on their leadership qualities before choosing a winner is, strictly speaking, not news at all. The Next Great Prime Minister is actually on its second outing, and the fact that the international news media have only just noticed it suggests that the wider world is even less engaged with the country's politics than are Canadians in the hallowed 18-35 age range, to whom the format is presumably designed to appeal.

Allowing former PMs Brian Mulroney, John Turner, Joe Clark and Kim Campbell to pick a notional future prime minister is probably no worse an idea than allowing Margaret Thatcher, Iain Duncan Smith and selected members of the old gang to pick a notional Tory leader.…  Seguir leyendo »