When I first visited Northern Ireland, about summer 1990, there were army checkpoints and patrols everywhere and if you looked at a soldier (which as a curious visitor you were inclined to do) he’d point his big gun directly at you.

Representing the Student Liberal Democrats I was the only politician on a British Youth Council joint fact finding mission with whatever the equivalent body is in the republic. The rest of the party was made up of scouts and various regional bodies. Strangely the Brits were all male, the Irish female.

It was a frustrating mission. We each had to report back on how young people were coping with social issues like unemployment without making any reference to The Troubles, on the grounds that all young people have to come to terms with these things. (Given that this was the fag end of the Thatcher government and the UK was entering a deep economic recession that would claim millions of jobs, this was closer to the truth than someone about to graduate wanted to admit and I ignored the edict.)

Officially we switched off when a youth worker made an impassioned speech on religious discrimination, didn’t think anything of army patrols bursting into the minibus and pointing guns in our faces and didn’t ask about the hard looking tattooed guy with no teeth who appeared to be conducting some kind of negotiation regarding our free passage into some estate or other.

The initiatives we visited were truly pathetic. On the Bogside the best the Catholic Church could come up with was a project where teenagers were being taught how to make tea, on the basis that tea boy is a good in to any company.

In the early 2000s, I found myself conducting a little light lobbying at the Northern Ireland Assembly (time wasting as it was suspended soon after) and Belfast looked so good I took Katharine there a couple of months later for a weekend break. I reckon it’s better than Dublin.

Anyway. It’s good to see that the army’s mission has finally come to an end. Three cheers for Tony Blair!
The image is a detail from Hopewell Crescent a photo by Robert Paul Young used with permission.

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For too long I have suffered the inadequacies of a razor with just three blades, but no longer. The Gillette Fusion Power has five blades plus one.

The first shaves me close, the second closer, the third closer still, the fourth yet closer and the fifth… well you get the idea.

So many blades on one head does not come without problems, so the plus one mounted on the back is for precision shaving, under the nose and sideburns. And the whole construction vibrates so I hardly feel anything. I reckon you could shave someone in their sleep so light is this razor’s touch.

But the question that nags is: ‘when is it time to change the cartrige?’

These things aren’t cheap. A razor that told you when it was blunt would be an innovation worth paying for: toothbrush heads tell you when they need changing so why not razors?

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‘Those who like this sort of thing, will find that this is the sort of thing they like,’ Abe Lincoln, I think.

42nd Street offers very little story; it’s just an excuse for a series of set pieces. And while many people are very happy with that, it can get a little repetitive. Spectale is only spectacular when evoked sparingly. It’s a musical about a musical and I couldn’t help thinking that the subject, Pretty Girl, with its shootings and weddings might have been better.

Nevertheless, tap is quite fascinating (although Katharine reckons that there are only three or four steps) and it delivers in a ‘does what it says on the tin’ kind of way.

And with so many clearly well loved numbers, it’s a show that will continue to run and run.

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I remember meeting this guy before… it’s… it’s only Antony Gormley! Now where were we…? I remember now… we were on Crosby Beech of all places.

I’ve always felt a little mistrustful of Antony Gormley, in that all these self-portraits smack of a little egotism. But it’s hard not to be drawn to his work and Blind Light is a triumph.

The toughened low iron glass box, fluorescent light and all important cloud that makes up Blind Light, the installation that gives the exhibition its name, is the star of the show but only a part of it. Hatch, ‘a room rendered porous like a colander,’ is almost as much fun. Matrices and Expansions needs to be viewed for a time before it reveals the trapped bodies within, a bit like staring at a starry night waiting for the constellations to reveal themselves.

But do get there early – as we did – before the place is overrun with school parties and the queues grow too long.

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Cameron’s visit to Rwanda is clearly a stunt, but that’s not a bad thing in itself. There’s nothing wrong with bringing attention to an issue with a well planned spectacle… and Tory MPs reverting to their Boy Scout days to build a few toilets is quite a spectacle.

The real test is not whether the work done on this trip is of lasting value in itself, but whether the campaign of which it is a part succeeds in transforming the Conservatives into forward facing, compassionate internationalists. To hear a Tory MP linking trade, justice and poverty is quite a revelation. But traditionalists like Ann Widdecombe have been quick to piss on Cameron’s chips demanding that he talk tough on stuff like immigration. And they may even be prepared to sack him if he doesn’t return to their agenda.

It is quite amazing that an initial wobble in the opinion polls, compounded by by-election failure in a couple of safe Labour seats is all it’s taken to spark a civil war in the Tory party that looks like making a lame duck of Dave.

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With the Decent Veggie weighing in at just under £5 (add £1 for grilled halloumi) and unlimited toast thrown in, Tom’s Kitchen at Revise has thrown a great value-for-money offer into the Chorlton-cum-Hardy cafe breakfast scene.

The only minor criticism is that Tom’s own veggie sausage is a little dry and tends to crumble on the fork. Next time I think I’ll try it with the egg poached.

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Nineteen year-old Sina Paymard must be one hell of a flute player. The family of the man he killed as a sixteen year-old drug addict were so moved by his playing – with the noose around his neck – they decided he could pay them 1.5bn rials (around £78,725) instead, a hefty mark-up on the usual 350 million rials (about £18,350) for the violent death of a man (you can usually get away with killing a woman for half that).

That was last September and earlier this week he again found himself facing execution, only to be given a further ten days to find the blood money.

That’s a further ten days to politely remind Iran that it is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Those treaties outlaw the execution of children. And waiting for them to grow up is cheating.

Thanks to Amnesty International, contacting the Iranians is just a couple of mouse clicks away. Messages like this really do make a difference.
Executing Children……Executing children II

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There has been no great rush to claim the free Harrogate Spa sparkling spring water (the original British spring water, apparently) offered in compensation for Virgin having to run our train via the West Midlands (a region I thought the West Coast Mainline passed through anyway) adding fifty minutes to the journey. We just passed a tiny airport, populated by holiday airlines, rumoured to be Birmingham.

Last Thursday was far more shambolic. Arrived at Euston to discover no trains were leaving due to ‘an earlier incident’. Somehow thankfully this turned out to be a suicide.

Virgin are masters of misinformation in these situations. Delay could be half to three hours; ‘don’t go anywhere’. Silverlink customers knew how far away the train that would make their service was. Then the board suggested taking the Liverpool train, ten minutes before confirming Manchester would run.

Anyway. Just for fun seat reservations were cancelled to add to the chaos and ended up sharing a table with posh school girls from Hale. They wanted teacher to explain why anyone would kill themselves in such an inconsiderate manner; did they not think of all the people whose lives would be disrupted by their passing?

I recieved no free water on this occasion.

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A Sam Smith’s pub within sight of the National Portrait Gallery; who could ask for more?

And the Chandos on St Martin’s Lane, does a most excellent Vegetarian Bangers and Mash with onion gravy. And there’s an animated statue of a cooper on the roof.

Expect a traditional pub with real ale at provincial prices and private booths to drink it in on the ground floor, with proper pub food upstairs in the more open-plan Opera room.

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With three hours to go on a very wet M6 and other motorways, Prince’s new album, Planet Earth, appeared quite a bargain at just £1.40 with a free Mail on Sunday.

Sadly it’s not worth that modest investment. Much of it sounds like the soundtrack to a long forgotten 70s TV show with a rubbish pianist singing in the corner of a bar. Prince talking to his lover is terribly embarrassing.

But not as embarrassing as some of the characteristically hysterical headlines in the paper that are never quite supported by the words beneath.

‘The latest terror victims… trees that have graced Whitehall for 60 years’

£25m Whitehall Streetscape Project, which takes security into account, will see pavements renewed and widened, bus shelters moved, better streetlighting… and twenty new trees. Tory spokesperson is ‘depressed’ that twelve trees will go as part of ‘the so-called War on Terror’.

‘Stars In Their Eyes Killings: Man held’

You’d think the poor victim was killed on the set of the talent show she appeared on three years ago as part of a great massacre.

Oh yeah; the father of Madonna’s adopted son, whose wife died in child birth, is now happily remarried and his new wife’s expecting. The Mail on Sunday spins this into an anti-Madonna rant: ‘no, you can’t have this one’

…as if the pop star has singled this guy out, telephoning in the middle of the night: ‘give me your babies!’

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