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18 View comments House arrest: Captain Francesco Schettino told magistrates his actions saved 'thousands of lives' In the aftermath of the Costa Concordia disaster, the Italians themselves are getting in on the act. They’ve christened the Costa Concordia’s lifeboat-hogging skipper Francesco Schettino ‘Captain Coward’ and are selling t-shirts printed with the words shouted at him by the coast guard official Gregorio de Falco: ‘Vada a bordo, cazzo!’ or, ‘Get back on board, for ****’ sake!’ You can even buy parodies of the classic WWII British government poster: ‘Keep Calm and Vada A Bordo Cazzo.’ Of course, as those same Italians are painfully aware, the whole disaster is a terrible confirmation of every negative stereotype the world has ever had about Italy and its people. Capt. Schettino is the Berlusconi of the seas and his ship is less like the Costa Concordia than the SS Bunga-Bunga. This is a captain who crashed his ship because he veered off course to show

19 View comments My roots read like a World Cup draw. My half-Welsh father was born and spent his boyhood in Argentina and thus speaks Spanish almost as naturally as English. My mother’s family are Norwegian. Because Dad was a diplomat, I spent the first five years of my life in Moscow and Lisbon, so my baby-talk was Russian (in which I later got an O-Level) and I then spoke kindergarten Portuguese. I was sent to boarding school in the days when they still provided a classical education, so I learned Latin and Ancient Greek to what was then O-Level standard, but would now be A-Level, at least. I also got an A in A-Level French, which is the one foreign language I can claim to speak with reasonable fluency. Global reach: English is the second language of 85 per cent of Europeans, and the default tongue of the European Union While I was growing up, my family also lived in Peru and Cuba, but I only went out there on holidays, so my Spanish is rudimentary at best. Having sp

36 View comments Alex Salmond's Scotland will never have the bracing cold shower of common sense Well, Alex Salmond is half right. England will indeed, as he suggested this week be much, much better off without Scotland. We’ll get back the billions of extra pounds, raised by English tax-payers that ensure that Scots get some 20% more state-funding per head than the rest of us. We’ll finally be freed from the grotesque, anti-democratic distortion whereby Scottish MPs can vote on parliamentary bills that only affect English and Welsh constituencies, while we have no say on similar bills that pass through the Scottish parliament. And maybe, just maybe we’ll all stop moaning about one another and just agree to be friendly neighbours instead. But in another respect Alex Salmond is gloriously, blissfully, hilariously wrong. For he also said that an independent Scotland, presumably under his rule, would be transformed into a ‘progressive beacon’ for the rest of the UK

9 View comments Prodigy: But would Charles Dickens have succeeded in today's publishing industry? Imagine the scene: a brilliant young writer, whose father has spent time in jail for debt becomes a newspaper’s political columnist at just 21 years of age. His work is astonishing; from parliamentary sketches, to reports from election campaigns, to witty snapshots of the scenes and people he encounters on his travels. When he comes up with the idea for a collection of comic adventures involving Samuel Pickwick and his friends Winkle, Snodgrass and Tupman, the book is a sensation. That is what happened to Charles Dickens, when he burst onto the literary scene in the 1830s, first as a journalist on the Morning Chronicle and then as the author of The Pickwick Papers. And up to this point, one could imagine a young media prodigy having a similar success story today. But only up to this point, because here is what would happen next. The modern, classless Charlie Dickens and

1 View comments The Jubilee concert which will be held outside Buckingham Palace on June 4 will feature some of music’s biggest names, from all six decades of the Queen’s reign. Organiser Gary Barlow has already signed up four pop Sirs — Paul McCartney, Elton John, Cliff Richard and Tom Jones — as well as Dame Shirley Bassey. Which star singing for the Queen checks into hotels as Sir Humphrey Handbag? Other confirmed stars include Jools  Holland, Madness, Annie Lennox, younger acts such as Jessie J, Ed Sheeran and JLS, opera star Alfie Boe and Chinese star  Lang Lang. Meanwhile, rumours have suggested that the Spice Girls, Adele and Kylie Minogue will all appear, and — since Prince Harry and Prince William are said to have asked for rap stars to be included — Jay-Z and Kanye West. But how much do you know about the Palace pop icons? PICK OF THE POPS What did rapper Kanye West's mother do for a living? 1. What prestigious award, for setting an inspirational exa

9 View comments Tax-deductible servants could free working women, create jobs for the unemployed … and bring us 21st century Downton Abbeys. If I hired a researcher to help me with a book or an article I could deduct their pay from my taxes, because that’s a business cost. If I hired cleaners for my office, I could probably deduct their pay from my taxes, too, just as any other business can deduct the cost of maintaining its premises. But if I hired someone to clean my house, or mow my lawn I couldn’t deduct their pay from my taxes, because that would have nothing to do with my business. It seems like a pretty straightforward distinction. But this week David Cameron has indicated that it’s one he’s thinking of abolishing. He’s been to Scandinavia and among the many ideas he’s picked up on his trip – including quotas for women on company boards – is that the cost of domestic staff should be tax-deductible to the people who hire them. At the moment, many women - particula

19 View comments According to a government review, the practice of top firms hiring applicants with good degrees from top universities, instead of those who have poorer qualifications from lesser institutions may ‘militate against a widening access agenda’ and is ‘not necessarily consistent with a diversity agenda that a company may promote’. In other words, it will soon be necessary for companies to hire job-applicants who aren’t as good as the rest – just as universities will have to select students who haven’t got top grades – because ‘access’ and ‘diversity’ are now more important than quality. Kings College, Cambridge: A Government review warns firms that hiring candidates from Britain's top universities might be inconsistent with 'diversity' It’s sheer madness ... A certain path to making British business, and therefore the British economy less successful, less globally competitive and less able to support the lunatic excesses of the equality-crazed B