Look South

I am now an official survivor of the unmitigated blitzkrieg people in the UK call Red Nose Day. I suffered the relentless onslaught of weeping celebrities begging me to part with my cash to help starved Africans. I just managed to stomach the general public going berserk for a day, colouring their hair red and jamming 17 fat cross-dressers into a Mini Cooper, all in the name of charity. But, despite the absurdity of it, Comic Relief's Red Nose Day works. The charity extravaganza and telethon that happens every two years have raised more than £337-million since 1985, with 60% going to causes in Africa. That said, there is also something about this feel-good frenzy and media juggernaut that is Red Nose Day that makes me feel just a little uncomfortable. Am I the only one who feels the bitter irony of engaging in a pie-eating contest to raise money for the starving? I do not want to be a party pooper or discourage philanthropy, but how much thought is really going into this type o...

Few issues could throw the British media into the frenzy created by the pending royal wedding between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles and the newly legislated ban on fox-hunting. While ostensibly separate issues, the debate on both has centred on the same principle, namely that, in each case, national tradition is 'under threat'. The moral standards of the country will crumble, cry some commentators, if an adulterous divorcee becomes supreme governor of the Church of England, a position to be bestowed upon Prince Charles when he becomes king. Fox-hunters too cry foul, claiming that another great centuries-old tradition is being undermined. But is tradition a good enough reason to retain the status quo? And is tradition beyond change? For centuries, in Western culture, it was traditional for women not to be educated and for universities to be all-male institutions. Witch burning and female circumcision are traditional practices still carried out in parts of Africa to...