La Hain

Peter Hain can't blame the South African security services for this misdemeanour. It is entirely of his own making. Oh fisshaw, the rules are too complicated. How can one overlook a little over a hundred thousand pounds? The veteran anti-apartheid campaigner may have managed to prove that he had been set up in the 1970s by BOSS for armed robbery, but he may find this harder to explain to the police, now his case has been referred to the Met. I heard the breaking news that the electoral commission had called in the Yard at 12.20pm and I thought, well, they said if this happened he would have to resign, so if came as no surprise that within ten minutes, Hain had announced his depature from the Cabinet.
It is farcical to think that he outspent all the other contenders for deputy leadership and he still finished fifth out of sixth. Even finishing first would not have saved him though, as can be seen by the recent troubles of the harridan Harriet Harman. His "act of incompetence" (an incredibly slovenly use of language by Gordon Brown) may not cause disaffection among the youth of Paris, but it just adds to the image that the Labour Party is a little too addicted to money. They hobnobbed with unabashed multi-millionaires and felt they wanted a cut of that as well.
Still, if it cuts out comments about "working-class traitors" when the less well-off vote Tory, then this double resignation (Work and Pensions and Wales) may have been worthwhile. In a true democracy, everyone should be a floating voter, alighting on a party whose manifesto promises they feel in tune with; that is the recipe for a class society rather than Hain's entrenching of the status quo. Strange you hear nothing about middle-class traitors or upper-class traitors voting Labour (maybe because it's harder to patronise them). You get the feeling that the harder class warriors rage against the injustice of the system, the more they actually need it to continue to sustain their philosophical existence.

The new Bond film has a title, Quantum of Solace. Um, right. So, there was Quantum Leap and there is quantum physics and er... It sounds like the translation of the title of an Italian art house film. If it wasn't part of the Bond franchise I think it would find it exceedingly difficult to get cinemas to stock it, beside a few high-minded institutions. So what does quantum mean? A discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to a particular frequency of radiation and corresponding e.g. to a single photon or to a transition between energy states of Solace? An analogous unit amount of Solace? A total amount, especially an amount of money legally payable in damages of Solace? Or, at root bottom, a share of Solace? This last meaning could be what they are trying to get that. So they didn't they just say that?!? A Share of Solace is an infinitely more engaging title. Even Bond-22 is catchier. A Bond title should be disposable but directly relating to an aspect of the film. Actually, going with the Quantum Leap thing, I think A Dimension of Solace is far better, but as James Bond is now more hard-bitten as a result of his experiences in Casino Royale, is he really the one to be doing the comforting or consoling? Since the Ian Fleming titles were effectively exhausted, the best ones have been GoldenEye, which is the satellite weapon in the film as well as a sly nod to Fleming's Jamaican retreat and Die Another Day, which takes note of a plot devlopment (and is play on the phrase 'live to fight another day'). This title may come from a Fleming short story but it may be that this is the only suitable place for it - short and sweet and over before you know it. The producers were no doubt trying to be high-minded, but it's way over the heads of most people. The writing may be of a high standard for the forthcoming film, but they should get someone else to pick the titles in future.