Do you think Nelson Mandela had a good time in Britain last week when he came to celebrate his 90th birthday? I doubt it, I seriously doubt it. It was not even his birthday, by the way. His birthday is in July, but he still came because last week was the anniversary of that famous Free Nelson Mandela concert two decades ago. And, of course, the pressure on him was building for some time to hold another concert in his [...]

Controversy at otherwise uneventful Wimbledon championship: in an interview to an American radio station Justin Gimelstob, who happens to be one of the directors of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), had a go at some of the women tennis players. He called Russian Anna Kournikova ‘a bitch’ and said that he ‘despises her to the level just below hate.’ He also referred to Czech Alize Cornet and France’s Tatiana Golovin as ‘sexpots’ and pointed out that women tennis players [...]

I hear that the House of Lords communications committee has called on the BBC to ensure that huge salaries that the corporation pays to its presenters do not undermine the quality of its news programmes. Can you imagine, it has come to that? Fifty or so people are paid so much money by the BBC that it actually influences the quality of its news programmes? It is a scandal. In a normal situation all the directors of the BBC should [...]

They still don’t get it, the Western governments, that is. They continue to condemn President Robert Mugabe and increase diplomatic pressure on him but this only strengthens his position in Zimbabwe itself. The criticism that Western leaders come up with, like Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling Mugabe’s regime a ‘criminal cabal’, does not hurt him. Look at it from the point of view of a man on the street in Zimbabwe who has been brainwashed for years into thinking that [...]

Didn’t I tell you that the Russian football team had won the quarter final of Euro-2008 against Holland because Holland played like a Mongolian national team? I did. I pointed out that the Russian players didn’t really produce anything outstanding during the tournament and knocked out Holland simply because it played like Mongolia.   And the semi-final between Russia and Spain yesterday proved my point. Spain winning 3:0 says it all really. But let me tell you something else that proves [...]

Russia is a free country where there are no special controls over the media and where people can choose freely what they want to watch and read. This was the message, or rather part of the message that has been conveyed by the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in his interview to Reuters press agency released on the eve of the EU-Russia summit which opens today in Hanty-Mansiisk in Siberia to discuss the new partnership agreement between Brussels and Moscow.   This [...]

What a pity that the High Court judge, who was considering a legal challenge to the British government’s decision to ratify the Lisbon treaty without a referendum, did not rule against the defendants? The government, that is.     Just think what could have happened had he had the courage to uphold the challenge: the treaty has already passed through the British parliament and was given the Royal Assent. It was only left for the government to deposit legal documents in Rome to close the matter. And yet, Lord [...]

This is not something I’m saying lightly but I’ll say it anyway: I hope that the Russian football team loses to the Spanish in the semi-final of the Euro-2008. There, I said it. I, a Russian, am actually wishing a Russian football team to crash out of the tournament.But let me explain myself. I have my reasons for not wanting my compatriots to win Euro-2008. First of all, I don’t think that the Russian team is playing great football in [...]

Here we go again: another former celebrity comes clean about her past. This time it is 71-year old Valerie Singleton, a former popular TV and radio presenter who has told the Mail on Sunday that during her time at the BBC she had a string of affairs with men. With many, many men, it seems.   Ms Singleton presented, among other things, that popular children’s programme, Blue Peter. In her interview she revealed that she had a fling with her co-presenter, [...]

(This article has been provided by a leading expert on international affairs.) Last month, according to an official spokesman for the Zimbabwean government, a shipment of Chinese munitions, including 3,000 mortar rounds and 1,500 rocket propelled grenades, had arrived in Harare. Although no official explanation was given how the shipment got there, word had it that the munitions came from a ship that had initially arrived at the South African port of Durban where the local dockers refused to unload [...]