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Kate Moss is my kind of supermodel
The world of supermodels would be far duller without the likes of Kate Moss.
A spirited column in the Daily Mail by Alison Boshoff puts the boot in to Kate Moss. Moss appears "to have engaged in an enthusiastic retox' after detoxing in a luxury resort in Bodrum", says Boshoff about the latest little Moss escapade (which ended with her being escorted off an Easyjet flight on her return from Turkey). "How is it that the supermodel has been left looking less like an alluring free spirit and more like a boozed-up, over-entitled diva who is losing the plot?"
Kate, we are reminded, has a reputation for being the last to leave any party and has earned the nickname The Tank because of the amount of alcohol she can consume. Her husband, the rock frontman Jamie Hince, "has urged her for some time to cut down on the booze and cigarettes hence her nickname for him, The Vicar".
A friend of Moss's springs to her defence: "She is very happy to grow old disgracefully. She's got more money than she knows what to do with, and whatever people say about her ageing, she has never been in more demand as a model." I hope this last bit is true. Alison Boshoff may be right that Moss "is no longer the fairest of them all", and right too that she is always getting into scrapes. But isn't that what supermodels are meant to do? How dull the world would be if they all behaved in a way that would please the Daily Mail.
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On the subject of booze, Hugo Rifkind says in The Times that his favourite revelation last week was the disclosure by Raheem Kassam, a former Ukip staffer, that he had bonded with Nigel Farage via a ritual known as a "PFL". A PFL, says Rifkind, is "shorthand (forgive me) for a proper f***ing lunch".
Which written down, I suppose, sounds like the sort of thing Frenchmen keep little city flats for, but wasn't that at all. Rather, as Kassam explained to a gamely foul-mouthed Emily Maitlis on Newsnight, the PFL "just involves a lot of booze". In this case, eight bottles of wine for four people, to be exact.
Rifkind says his own lunches are not PFL at all, but involve him pushing his keyboard aside "and eating a salad out of a plastic pot". Indeed, he wonders how anyone manages to work properly after an alcoholic lunch, no matter what the "old guard" might say. Boris Johnson "bragged last year about the ability to write fluently and fast' after drinking an awful lot' at lunch. I just don't believe it."
Rifkind's skepticism is understandable, but I do believe Boris. At the risk of being branded "old guard", I've seen plenty of people mainly journalists, I admit who've been able to write fluently and fast and, indeed, well after a boozy lunch. Perhaps it takes practice.
Besides, while the best that most politicians probably manage these days is a lunchtime orange juice, it is one of the attractive things about Nigel Farage that he still likes his PFLs.
Tabloid money: "Must we go looking for every leaky tub from Libya?"
The winner of the Labour leadership contest will be "Unite boss Len McCluskey and his gang of grumpy public-sector union barons", says Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun, though Andy Burnham will be the actual candidate. As for former "leadership reject" David Miliband, "with all the preening arrogance that cost him the job in the first place", he has spelt out why he's the man to put things right for Labour. "I rarely agree with John Prescott, but he nailed it by telling the banana-waving ditherer to butt out. He should shut up,' snarled Prezza. The Miliband period is now gone.'"
"The greatest navy in the world should not be a ferry service for the poor of the Third World," says Tony Parsons in The Sun. "The navy that ruled the waves for centuries should not be picking up boat people from Ghana, Nigeria and Somalia just because they fancy a council house in Guildford, Nuneaton and Surbiton.
"The Royal Navy is never going to turn away from a boat in distress. But do we really have to go looking for every leaky tub that pushes off from the coast of Libya? They might get unloaded to Italy, but they don't linger there long. They dream of getting in the back of a lorry bound for Blighty. Who can blame them? If you can sneak into this soft-touch country, nobody will ever make you leave."
"If you have crocodile tears, prepare to shed them," says Paul Routledge in the Daily Mirror. "The bankers are upset. They feel hard done by, bashed' and undervalued." They "want fewer taxes and more freedom to make bigger profits".
George Osborne, however, says that bankers who commit financial crime should be "treated like criminals" and Mark Carney warns they may face more regulation. Osborne and Carney are right, but will anything happen? "Nothing in the Queen's Speech. No details from the chancellor." Is it really likely, given the lobbying power of the City, that the banks will be reformed? "I have my doubts."
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