Times Online April 15, 2003 People by Andrew Pierce

Euro loyalist cashes in his devalued single currency

Peter Mandelson may think that the Prime Minister will call a referendum on the single currency in the next 12 months, as he suggested in a weekend radio interview. But the pro-euro lobby clearly does not share the former Cabinet minister’s view.

With impeccable timing, Andy Mayer, a former secretary of the Pro-euro Conservative Party, has decided to kill off the Euro Information Network, which services MPs, MEPs and grassroots activists.

While Britain in Europe, the Blairite single currency campaign, continues to believe that there is hope of a referendum, Mayer, a long-standing critic of BiE, clearly does not.

In a valedictory message to his supporters, Mayer, who omitted to tell the now- disbanded Pro-euro Conservatives that he was still a member of the Liberal Democrats when he took up the post in 1999, wrote: “It was . . . my intention not to continue the service after it seemed implausible there would be a referendum in the near future or after a referendum was won.”

For Mayer, a leading Liberal Democrat activist who is a strong supporter of Charles Kennedy, last week’s Budget was the final straw.

“The Budget seems to have delivered a negative assessment despite the absence of the conclusion of the five tests,” he said, “and I see little point in dragging out the service for another month or two on that basis.”

The Euro Information Net- work attracted thousands of subscribers, including, according to a proud Mayer, the Estonian European Community press office.

“Recently, however, the service has suffered from new commitments that make it difficult to support on a regular daily basis,” he added.

“It is now unsustainable. There is a chance the main service may be resurrected in the future should circumstances change.”

Parker pens a lonely path as an author

THE creative genius of Sir Alan Parker, who directed The Commitments and the Oscar-nominated Mississippi Burning, has never been in doubt. But he found writing a novel, which he started during last year’s Hollywood studios strike, much more difficult.

“I’ve made 14 films but boy, is it hard writing a novel,” he said. “Unlike a film, every image, every fear, tear, doubt, glance and touch is there in the simplest but most difficult of digital effects: words.”

His main problem while writing A Sucker’s Kiss, a pickpocket’s odyssey through early 20th-century America, was the solitary life “without the usual 70 crew members”.

He can make up for that if the book becomes a film.

Pigs might swim, says the Vatican

HERE is one problem that the Pope’s spin-doctors will not have anticipated. The Vatican has come under fire for driving towards extinction a species of giant guinea pig, the capybara, a resident of Venezuela.

The country’s MPs were told that the beast’s popularity at the dinner table during Lent stemmed from a 400-year-old ruling from Rome that the 120lb rodent should be classified as a fish rather than meat. Spanish missionaries told the then Pope that there was precious little other protein-rich food for local Catholics to eat. Now 20,000 a year are hunted for their meat. The Vatican is being urged to do a U-turn.

• On the subject of animals. . . Fresh from the success of saving Marjon, the one-eyed lion in Kabul Zoo after the Afghan campaign, the Labour MP Tony Banks has taken up a new cause.

The former minister has tabled Commons questions to Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, urging him to look out for the animals in Baghdad Zoo. Not that there appear to be many to save.

The Bradt Travel Guide to Iraq says: “Apart from some bird cages, and three lions donated by Saddam’s son, Uday, there are only dogs in cages, family pets sold by people who could not afford to keep them any more.”

PS

• Mario Testino, the photographer who shot those extraordinary pictures of Diana, Princess of Wales, shortly before she died, has a new cultural icon. Testino, speaking at Vogue’s spring party at the palatial Il Bottaccio in Grosvenor Square, said: “After Diana the most beautiful woman on Earth to photograph has to be Kate Moss.” Judge for yourself.

• Chris Tarrant, host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? has shown he has style. He advised Sir Paul McCartney and his wife, Heather Mills, against appearing on the celebrity version of the show because he thought that they would be “terrible”.

• Plenty of surreal suggestions for what to do with 80 pairs of false nails that came in the post. They included a mosaic entitled Nail Me, to be exhibited at Tate Modern, to “use the false nails to put up false fences”. Another proposal was to “scrape them across 80 blackboards”. Lorelly Wilson wins them for her idea of using them as clues in a forensic science workshop she runs for children.

E-mail: people@thetimes.co.uk

www.charlotte.com Posted on Tue, Feb. 18, 2003

U.S. News & World Report:

George W. Bush is his father's son, all right, so maybe we shouldn't be so surprised that he's pushing ahead with plans to cut taxes, take out Saddam Hussein -- and raise cattle in Texas. Don't get the connection? Let family friend Doug Wead explain. "Presidential children," he says, tend toward completion or mimicry. Bush, adds the author of the forthcoming book "All the Presidents' Children," fits the completion theory. As in: redeeming Bush 41's broken no-new-taxes promise, punishing Saddam for plotting to kill Dad, and highlighting the cowboy side of the Kennebunkport clan.

Wead's book is a fascinating study of the 159 first kids. A common thread: Many can't live up to their father's example, end up on the bottle, and die young. Remarkably, Bush himself was headed in that direction before he cleaned up his act, shocking even his own family. Wead recalls asking brother Marvin in 1988 if W would take up their father's public service. "George?" Wead quotes Marvin laughing. "George is the family clown."

Bush could declare victory without war

Michael Dobbs, Washington Post: There is a widespread international appreciation of the fact that inspectors would not be in Iraq today if the United States had not used its overwhelming military and diplomatic power, [a senior Arab] official says. Bush could declare victory now and save himself a potential debacle. "He's shown seriousness, and Saddam caved," the official says. "If you ask whether the world is in a better position vis-a-vis Saddam Hussein than it was a year ago, the answer is `Absolutely!' Is that victory? Yes, if you want it to be."

World economy depends on Saudis

John Carey in BusinessWeek: Crude [oil] is up more than 33 percent over the past three months, climbing to $35 per barrel in the United States. Economic models predict that if the price stays high for three months, it will cut U.S. gross domestic product by $50 billion for the quarter. ... As long as the U.S. imports more than 11 million barrels a day -- 55 percent of our total consumption -- anything from a strike in Venezuela to unrest in the Persian Gulf hits us hard in the pocketbook.

One nation, Saudi Arabia, is sitting on the world's largest proved reserves -- 265 million barrels, or 25 percent of the known supplies -- and can send the price soaring or falling simply by opening or closing the spigot ... . "The entire world economy is built on a bet of how long the House of Saud can continue," says Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.