Thomas Sutcliffe
Recently by Thomas Sutcliffe
Tom Sutcliffe: The life lesson all children need to learn
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
I momentarily turned into Norman Tebbit over the weekend – an unsettling experience which was vaguely reminiscent of that bit in The Fly when Jeff Goldblum suddenly starts buzzing uncontrollably. The catalyst in my case wasn't a careless test-run with a matter transmitter but overhearing a comment on the story that teachers were now finding themselves facing their own pupils on interview panels.
Tom Sutcliffe: This papal tone of petulance is shameful
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
The Pope's weekend address reveals that he still doesn't understand what went wrong
Tom Sutcliffe: We wrinklies really don't have it so bad
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
The lottery of birth date has given the current generation of over-50s unearned advantages
Tom Sutcliffe: Happiness – who needs it?
Friday, 19 March 2010
'There's a lot of grimness out there," said the TV producer Daisy Goodwin earlier this week, complaining about the literary miserablism she'd encountered as the chair of this year's Orange Prize for Fiction jury.
Victims should not be allowed to shape law
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Tom Sutcliffe: How does Denise Fergus's experience qualifiy her to talk about jurisprudence?
Tom Sutcliffe: The bitter ending
Friday, 12 March 2010
In what circumstances is it acceptable for a work of art to cheat us? Or, to put it another way, why is that we sometimes complain that a novel or a film has taken us for a ride ("colloq. to tease, to mislead deliberately, to hoax, to cheat") while at other times we celebrate the fact that we have been taken for a ride ("device on which one rides at an amusement park or fair"). I ask the question in the light of a localised cluster of twist endings – two of them in recently published novels and one at the conclusion of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. I might as well confess right away that I don't know what the twist is in the case of the Scorsese film, only that there is one and that it has provoked yelps of complaint from those who have seen the film. Comparisons have been drawn with The Sixth Sense – and they haven't always been flattering to Scorsese.
Tom Sutcliffe: No wonder our teenagers are so demanding
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
In a valedictory speech to the Association of School and College leaders, its general secretary, John Dunford, has suggested that a modern culture of "instant gratification" has made the job of teachers "immensely harder than it was even 10 years ago". Tutored by television talent contests and online gaming, today's students, he argued, have come to expect instant results and are easily frustrated by anything which doesn't deliver an immediate sense of progress. "To engage the impatient young people of Generation Y, something more is needed."
Tom Sutcliffe: Here's how to protest against bank bonuses
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
What shall we do about bankers? It's a question that neither seems to be getting an answer nor going away, which is a most frustrating combination. And I wonder whether, in the absence of any immediate hope that it will be answered, it needs a bit of grammatical tinkering.
Tom Sutcliffe: I miss the shock of the new
Friday, 26 February 2010
It's traditional to adopt a knowingly superior attitude to the first English reviewers of Ibsen's Ghosts – The Daily Telegraph's apoplectic response having a place of honour when it comes to furious fulmination.
Tom Sutcliffe: So it's yes to some drugs, no to others
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Historically speaking any encounter between students and drugs has always resulted in a diminution of intelligence. At least it always did when I was at university when the two main drugs of choice - alcohol and marijuana - were widely regarded as antithetical to brainwork. They could be a reward for intellectual endeavour, or an escape from it. But very few people believed that either made you cleverer. And it wasn't difficult to see the truth of this even when you were under the influence.
Tom Sutcliffe: Rape should not just be an issue for women
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
I wonder whether the Haven rape centres will feel that they got value for money with the online opinion poll they commissioned to mark the 10th anniversary of the support service they offer for rape victims? On the one hand, "Wake Up To Rape", the report that resulted from the survey, did get quite a lot of coverage in the media – which is always part of the point of such operations. On the other hand, the findings appeared to suggest that social attitudes to rape remain hopelessly confused, despite decades of campaigning on the issue.
Tom Sutcliffe: I would rather not see my future, thanks
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
A bus may get us long before we get to where science told us we were going
Tom Sutcliffe: The mother of all villains
Friday, 5 February 2010
Mo'Nique is, apparently, a "lock" for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Having seen her performance in Precious I'm not inclined to disagree. If I was a voter myself I'd have considerable difficulty in shaking off the Vera Farmiga crush that has had me in its grip since I saw Up in The Air but I think even I might concede in the end. When Farmiga's on screen with George Clooney what you're interested in is the pleasure of a long rally – the lobs and the surprising backhands. It's a game for two players. When Mo'Nique turns up in a scene in Precious, though, the whole damn thing becomes a one-woman show, and while that might not offer the best definition of "support" as an actress, it should guarantee that she sticks in the mind when it comes time to fill in the voting forms. Mo'Nique has something else in her favour too. She – or rather Mary, the character she plays – is a monster. And in the right shape there's nothing we like more.
Tom Sutcliffe: Time to have confidence in the future
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
The great aphorist Ambrose Bierce defined an aphorism as "pre-digested wisdom" in his Devil's Dictionary – a blankly unaphoristic definition which contains more than a hint of self-criticism. He was right to be suspicious, with the memorability and neatness of aphorisms so often seducing us into forgetting everything that contradicts them. But sometimes you encounter an aphoristic phrasing of an idea that requires you to do all the digesting, so neatly does it encapsulate a much larger thought.
Tom Sutcliffe: Are you talking to me?
Friday, 29 January 2010
It's slightly odd, when you think about it, that we expect to be ignored in the theatre. We're the reason the damn thing is happening, after all, and yet in 99 cases out of 100, everyone involved pretends we're invisible. The curtain rises and the people on stage start talking to each other, or occasionally themselves, as if we're not there. And worse... if you make it too obvious that you are there, by taking an urgent phone call, say, they get absolutely bloody furious. "Who's paying the bills, pal?" you might be inclined to ask – but of course you never do, because our invisibility and our muteness is part of the contract.
Tom Sutcliffe: An age-old problem that affects us all
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
So what's it to be then? A "martini and a medal", Martin Amis's deliberately provocative shorthand for street corner euthanasia booths, or "flexible working" until we drop in the traces? Are Britain's old people a demographic time-bomb, or are they a resource that we can't afford to waste (or, more bluntly, just can't afford unless they chip in themselves)?
Tom Sutcliffe: A good play has no sell-by date
Friday, 22 January 2010
Watching the current revival of John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation the other night I found myself thinking about the durability of plays.
Tom Sutcliffe: 'Miracles' that can be guaranteed
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Journalists know what an earthquake story looks like and will strive to deliver it
Tom Sutcliffe: TV is about a lot more than moving images
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
There was a lot of excitement about the third dimension at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas – with numerous manufacturers unveiling various kinds of 3D television sets and 3D computer displays. But when you looked more closely at the froth and hype and exuberance, almost all of it appeared to stem from people who had a strong vested interest in leaving us dissatisfied with boring old D, never mind how many pixels it could boast or the dizzying height of its definition.
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Columnist Comments
• Peter Popham: A cathedral turns its back on the people
This week the people who run St Paul's Cathedral gave us a lesson in what it's not for.
• Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Guns first, then with indecent haste, the deals
As the regime fell, victory turned to vendetta and voyeurism.
• Mary Ann Sieghart: Cameron picks a fight when he doesn't need to
Let's play a game of fantasy headlines – or rather nightmare headlines.
Most popular in Opinion
Read
1 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Guns first, then with indecent haste, the deals
2 Editor-At-Large: Seems we'll use any word today except a word of kindness
3 Simon Carr: A disaster for Cameron completely of his own making
4 Robert Fisk: You can't blame Gaddafi for thinking he was one of the good guys
5 Mary Ann Sieghart: Cameron picks a fight when he doesn't need to
6 Peter Popham: A cathedral turns its back on the people
7 Paul Vallely: God knows why Dawkins won't show
9 Oliver Wright: PM misjudged strength of feeling in his own party
10 Steve Richards: The Sceptics' rage over Europe is a proxy battle
Emailed
1 Robert Fisk: Do you know the truth about Lockerbie?
2 Editor-At-Large: Is Rooney's Juicy Jeni so different from Belle de Jour?
3 Rebecca Armstrong: It’s not so much the cost as the value that counts
4 Letter from Simon Kelner: Glen Campbell is still riding in a star-spangled rodeo
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