12/01/2008
12 Jan 2008

12 January 2008

12 Jan 2008

12 January 2008

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Features
Alice Thomson
Birth order means more than school or faith

Kirkcaldy High School vs Eton, Highland Scot vs Newbury toff, Edinburgh University vs Oxford. If you are choosing between Gordon Brown and David Cameron that’s what the next election may come down to. Or is there another factor? No one ever mentions birth order. Mr Brown is the classic case. With a younger brother, as well as an older one, he genuinely feels a strong moral duty to do his best for his father (son of the manse as he is) and to compete with his elder brother, who preceded him to Edinburgh University.

Bryan Forbes
In less than a fortnight I turned down £2 million

Bryan Forbes is drawn into a cyberspace scam by an indignant ‘happily married’ woman who invites him to Madrid to arrange a princely payoutIt all began when an email greeted me one morning with ‘Dear Esteemed Winner, we are pleased to inform you of the result of the Fatelgordo International Promotions Program. Your email address was attached to the winning number 08 15 30 31 34 43 40 and you have therefore been approved for a lump-sum payout of £685,000.

In less than a fortnight I turned down £2 million
Aidan Hartley
When elephants fight, the grass suffers

As I write this, the crackle of gunfire is audible from the veranda of our farmhouse. Warriors of the Pokot and Samburu are fighting a mile away. A bushfire engulfs the horizon. I hear the tally in blood so far is three Samburu warriors killed, and the Pokot have rustled 750 cattle.Today I hope our farm and the people who live here will be spared the violence. They were not on Boxing Day, the eve of Kenya’s elections, when Samburu rustlers armed with AK-47s hit our place and made off with 22 steers.

Denis Macshane
Putin’s Tories: welcome to the Vlad and Dave Show

Denis MacShane says that the Conservatives’ refusal to align themselves with other centre-right parties on the Council of Europe has driven them into a shabby alliance with RussiaAs Vladimir Putin moves seamlessly from being president to prime minister of Russia, amid mounting worry that Russia is slipping its democratic moorings, there is a group of 21st-century fellow-travellers the Kremlin can count on: the Conservative party.

James Forsyth
On to South Carolina: Hillary gets back on track

But it’s all still to play for, says James Forsyth. Senator Clinton’s astonishing comeback does not mean that Obama is finished by any means -— and John McCain has injected much-needed energy into the Republican primaries, tooHillary Clinton has now done something that her husband never managed: she has won a contested New Hampshire primary. In doing so, she has revived her presidential campaign and ensured that the 2008 Democratic presidential primary will be an epic and drawn-out contest.

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