Monster Question To Which The Answer Is No, asked by my former colleague Martin Jacques* on the BBC News website. That is number 872 in my classic series, now a book, an e-book and a competition.
Extra marks to the BBC for Jacques’s question’s being included in a series called “A Point of View”. So, it is a point of view, but such a controversial one that it has to be phrased as a question to soften the blow. The BBC instinct for so-called balance runs deep.
Thanks, as so often, to Oliver Kamm, who saw it first.
Number 864 in the QTWTAIN series was asked by Channel 4 News, but I am only now catching up:
Scarlett Johansson: Obama’s secret weapon?
That will be “secret” as in “Hollywood Democrat on stage in front of large audience and audience of millions on television endorses Democratic candidate”.
Number 863 was asked by Judy K, after I noted Kevin Maguire’s report that Nick Clegg spoke to Herman van Rompuy in Dutch in order to frustrate a civil servant from No 10 sitting in on the meeting:
Wasn’t Clegg obliged by ministerial rules to have his talk with Rompuy noted? Serious breach of ministerial Code?
Judy K also drew my attention to the first in a new series, of QTWTAINe (Neither), asked by Slate:
Are You an Ann or a Michelle?
*Jacques was an executive at The Independent in the mid-1990s, when I was a political correspondent.
Eagle Eye 