A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury. First published in US magazine Collier’s Weekly in 1952, it forms part of the collection on display from 20th May at the British Library’s “Out of this World” exhibition, which aims to make its audience rethink their views of science fiction
Anyone but Lembit
The prospect of standing as the Lib Dem candidate in next year’s London mayoral election is understandably considered a thankless task by many in the embattled party’s ranks. Lembit Opik, the publicity-hungry former MP, has continued to promote his credentials, but the Lib Dem leadership is known to be unenthusiastic, regarding it as little more than a publicity stunt. When Jonathan Fryer, regional chairman, announced in October that the selection would be delayed by a year because of the “insufficient number of approved candidates,” this was widely translated as an attempt to block Opik’s bid.
One figure to emerge briefly as a rival to Opik was the writer Dominic Carman. The son of the exuberant late QC George Carman, he had attracted unflattering headlines after coming sixth for the Lib Dems in the Barnsley Central by-election—narrowly gaining fewer votes than the BNP. Undaunted, he seemed up for another fight: when announcing his candidacy, he had a dig at Opik by pointing out that “the only two cheeky girls in my life are my wife, Rachel and my daughter, Isobel.”
But Carman has since withdrawn, citing the financial burden of giving up his professional career to hit the campaign trail for six months. The move has boosted Opik who, as his spokesman Ed Joyce helpfully points out, “has the advantage of not having a job.”
In response, Lib Dem officials have privately vowed that the “Anyone But Lembit” campaign will ratchet up a gear after the 5th May local elections and AV referendum.
Darling on the brink
It was not just Tories who were taken aback by Gordon Brown’s mea culpa over banking reform on 11th April. Brown chose the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s annual conference in Bretton Woods to confess—at last—to a “big mistake” in his failure to regulate banks, claiming he had not understood how “entangled” the world’s financial institutions had become. Alistair Darling, his former chancellor, is said to have been furious to read of the admission. He had suggested doing as much while in office, only to be rebuked. His irritation showed in media interviews that week on the Independent Commission on Banking’s interim report. Asked about Brown’s apology on Sky News, Darling snapped back: “I am not Gordon’s spokesman.”
Darling has well and truly had enough of his former boss, colleagues say, having served him loyally in government even though he was briefed against by Brown’s circle throughout. Perhaps the normally mild-mannered Darling will get his revenge in his forthcoming book on the financial crisis, Back from the Brink, out in September.
A rash young Heffer
Simon Milton, Boris Johnson’s chief of staff who recently passed away after a long fight with leukaemia, was a widely respected and well-liked figure in politics. But in his Cambridge days, he had at least one enemy—in the form of a youthful Simon Heffer, the biographer and columnist who now, according to his Telegraph byline, “addresses the core concerns of middle England with savage gusto.”
Back in 1981, Heffer was Milton’s opponent in the race for the coveted position of Cambridge University Conservative Association Registrar. During the campaign, Heffer barged into the room of the then Varsity editor and proceeded to “get down to the nitty gritty of orally canvassing [the] editor,” despite voting the very next day to retain the ban on oral canvassing. Along with Heffer’s instructions to vote for a group of his cronies collectively known as “the Rump,” and his promise that “You can have the privilege of meeting [my girlfriend] and you can ogle and go gosh,” Heffer also took aim at his opponent Simon “Paleface” Milton. Not one to mince words, the young Tory declared: “I am going to see Milton now and threaten him but see you keep your ears open, and if you hear of one person who’s been dragged out by that little fucker I want to know about it because he’ll be requisitioned so fast…”
But it was Milton who had the last laugh. Heffer’s extraordinary performance was caught on tape, and subsequently led to his expulsion from the race and the Cambridge University Conservatives Association. One imagines Milton shed few tears at this ignominious end to Heffer’s career in student politics; Prospect has it on good authority that it would have tickled him to see this story in print again after all these years.
Bailout? What bailout?
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Portugal’s request for a bailout was how long it took to arrive. For months officials in Brussels had been anticipating the rescue; financial markets had long seen it as inevitable. Yet at a summit in March the Portuguese prime minister, José Sócrates, rounded on a journalist who had the temerity to suggest that such a thing might happen—insisting that the Portuguese had pride and were not beggars.
His government collapsed just weeks later, and now the EU and IMF need to negotiate tough austerity terms not just with Sócrates (the caretaker premier) but also with his main opposition rival ahead of elections on 5th June. The idea of a bailout was so unpopular in Portugal that it made sense, politically, for Sócrates to resist one for as long as possible. Indeed, even after eating his words, his poll ratings seem to be holding up well enough to make the election outcome close. All of which illustrates the huge political problem behind the EU’s efforts to backstop the struggling single currency. They are resented in the countries rich enough to extend credit, like Germany, the Netherlands and Finland. But that’s nothing compared to the hostility in nations forced to seek the EU’s help.
Mad Dog bites back
Gaddafi’s regime has hardly shown much interest in reality—declaring ceasefires without ceasing to fire, and bussing reporters to the rebel-held town of Misrata to show how residents are overwhelmed with love for their Brother Leader (as gunfire raged in the background). No surprise, then, that on meeting reporters in mid-March, Gaddafi giggled about the uprising, assuring them that “there is no crisis, this is a little event.” Asked if he was hurt to have erstwhile friends turn on him—not least Nicolas Sarkozy (see p22)—Gaddafi was magnanimous. “He [Sarkozy] is my friend, but he’s crazy,” he explained. “I think he is suffering from a mental illness.”
One to watch
They are called the “randomistas”: an elite cadre of young economists who use giant experiments to untangle problems in global poverty. And Esther Duflo is their star.
At the “poverty laboratory” she founded at MIT, the diminutive 38-year-old French thinker has spent the last decade puzzling over the tricky problems that divide development experts: does microfinance actually work, for instance, and will anti-malarial mosquito nets be used more if they are paid for, or given out for free?
Casting aside abstruse theory and complex mathematics, she heads into the field—setting up huge controlled trials, often involving tens of thousands of people, to “take the guesswork out of policymaking.” The results are brought together in her first book: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. A Kindle version is available from 26th April; print copies follow in June.
Her answers have already seen her awarded the prestigious John Bates Clark medal—handed out each year to the best US-based economist under 40—along with a MacArthur “genius” fellowship, and a talk at the TED conference.
More importantly, they offer the best hope of moving beyond the fierce debates between the likes of US economist Jeff Sachs and sceptical author Dambisa Moyo, which have hampered recent efforts to end global poverty. If they do, the randomistas will have proved their worth.
Anyone but Lembit
The prospect of standing as the Lib Dem candidate in next year’s London mayoral election is understandably considered a thankless task by many in the embattled party’s ranks. Lembit Opik, the publicity-hungry former MP, has continued to promote his credentials, but the Lib Dem leadership is known to be unenthusiastic, regarding it as little more than a publicity stunt. When Jonathan Fryer, regional chairman, announced in October that the selection would be delayed by a year because of the “insufficient number of approved candidates,” this was widely translated as an attempt to block Opik’s bid.
One figure to emerge briefly as a rival to Opik was the writer Dominic Carman. The son of the exuberant late QC George Carman, he had attracted unflattering headlines after coming sixth for the Lib Dems in the Barnsley Central by-election—narrowly gaining fewer votes than the BNP. Undaunted, he seemed up for another fight: when announcing his candidacy, he had a dig at Opik by pointing out that “the only two cheeky girls in my life are my wife, Rachel and my daughter, Isobel.”
But Carman has since withdrawn, citing the financial burden of giving up his professional career to hit the campaign trail for six months. The move has boosted Opik who, as his spokesman Ed Joyce helpfully points out, “has the advantage of not having a job.”
In response, Lib Dem officials have privately vowed that the “Anyone But Lembit” campaign will ratchet up a gear after the 5th May local elections and AV referendum.
Darling on the brink
It was not just Tories who were taken aback by Gordon Brown’s mea culpa over banking reform on 11th April. Brown chose the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s annual conference in Bretton Woods to confess—at last—to a “big mistake” in his failure to regulate banks, claiming he had not understood how “entangled” the world’s financial institutions had become. Alistair Darling, his former chancellor, is said to have been furious to read of the admission. He had suggested doing as much while in office, only to be rebuked. His irritation showed in media interviews that week on the Independent Commission on Banking’s interim report. Asked about Brown’s apology on Sky News, Darling snapped back: “I am not Gordon’s spokesman.”
Darling has well and truly had enough of his former boss, colleagues say, having served him loyally in government even though he was briefed against by Brown’s circle throughout. Perhaps the normally mild-mannered Darling will get his revenge in his forthcoming book on the financial crisis, Back from the Brink, out in September.
A rash young Heffer
Simon Milton, Boris Johnson’s chief of staff who recently passed away after a long fight with leukaemia, was a widely respected and well-liked figure in politics. But in his Cambridge days, he had at least one enemy—in the form of a youthful Simon Heffer, the biographer and columnist who now, according to his Telegraph byline, “addresses the core concerns of middle England with savage gusto.”
Back in 1981, Heffer was Milton’s opponent in the race for the coveted position of Cambridge University Conservative Association Registrar. During the campaign, Heffer barged into the room of the then Varsity editor and proceeded to “get down to the nitty gritty of orally canvassing [the] editor,” despite voting the very next day to retain the ban on oral canvassing. Along with Heffer’s instructions to vote for a group of his cronies collectively known as “the Rump,” and his promise that “You can have the privilege of meeting [my girlfriend] and you can ogle and go gosh,” Heffer also took aim at his opponent Simon “Paleface” Milton. Not one to mince words, the young Tory declared: “I am going to see Milton now and threaten him but see you keep your ears open, and if you hear of one person who’s been dragged out by that little fucker I want to know about it because he’ll be requisitioned so fast…”
But it was Milton who had the last laugh. Heffer’s extraordinary performance was caught on tape, and subsequently led to his expulsion from the race and the Cambridge University Conservatives Association. One imagines Milton shed few tears at this ignominious end to Heffer’s career in student politics; Prospect has it on good authority that it would have tickled him to see this story in print again after all these years.
Bailout? What bailout?
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Portugal’s request for a bailout was how long it took to arrive. For months officials in Brussels had been anticipating the rescue; financial markets had long seen it as inevitable. Yet at a summit in March the Portuguese prime minister, José Sócrates, rounded on a journalist who had the temerity to suggest that such a thing might happen—insisting that the Portuguese had pride and were not beggars.
His government collapsed just weeks later, and now the EU and IMF need to negotiate tough austerity terms not just with Sócrates (the caretaker premier) but also with his main opposition rival ahead of elections on 5th June. The idea of a bailout was so unpopular in Portugal that it made sense, politically, for Sócrates to resist one for as long as possible. Indeed, even after eating his words, his poll ratings seem to be holding up well enough to make the election outcome close. All of which illustrates the huge political problem behind the EU’s efforts to backstop the struggling single currency. They are resented in the countries rich enough to extend credit, like Germany, the Netherlands and Finland. But that’s nothing compared to the hostility in nations forced to seek the EU’s help.
Mad Dog bites back
Gaddafi’s regime has hardly shown much interest in reality—declaring ceasefires without ceasing to fire, and bussing reporters to the rebel-held town of Misrata to show how residents are overwhelmed with love for their Brother Leader (as gunfire raged in the background). No surprise, then, that on meeting reporters in mid-March, Gaddafi giggled about the uprising, assuring them that “there is no crisis, this is a little event.” Asked if he was hurt to have erstwhile friends turn on him—not least Nicolas Sarkozy (see p22)—Gaddafi was magnanimous. “He [Sarkozy] is my friend, but he’s crazy,” he explained. “I think he is suffering from a mental illness.”
One to watch
They are called the “randomistas”: an elite cadre of young economists who use giant experiments to untangle problems in global poverty. And Esther Duflo is their star.
At the “poverty laboratory” she founded at MIT, the diminutive 38-year-old French thinker has spent the last decade puzzling over the tricky problems that divide development experts: does microfinance actually work, for instance, and will anti-malarial mosquito nets be used more if they are paid for, or given out for free?
Casting aside abstruse theory and complex mathematics, she heads into the field—setting up huge controlled trials, often involving tens of thousands of people, to “take the guesswork out of policymaking.” The results are brought together in her first book: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. A Kindle version is available from 26th April; print copies follow in June.
Her answers have already seen her awarded the prestigious John Bates Clark medal—handed out each year to the best US-based economist under 40—along with a MacArthur “genius” fellowship, and a talk at the TED conference.
More importantly, they offer the best hope of moving beyond the fierce debates between the likes of US economist Jeff Sachs and sceptical author Dambisa Moyo, which have hampered recent efforts to end global poverty. If they do, the randomistas will have proved their worth.
