The week in review

So perhaps Tuesday is an odd choice for a week-in-review type article, but these things tend to occur when I have a moment's peace to write them, which is become an increasingly elusive event these days.

Some noteworthy events over the past few days (not in any particular order)...

• Tony Wilson dies. The music producer who launched the careers of legendary bands Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays and helped crystallise the "Madchester" music scene through the rise of the Hacienda nightclub ends up dying of a heart attack while waiting for cancer drugs that the local NHS trust couldn't afford to give him.
  
  
• Stock markets nosedive. The world holds its breath as share values collapse under the weight of a million unpayable mortgages offered to Americans with lousy credit history. Why should one country's loan sharks be able to decimate the pension funds of the rest of the world?
  
  
• Foot and Mouth strikes again. Will it be another summer filled with images of cow carcasses being forklifted onto burning pyres? Cattle farmers are bracing for the worst - i.e., another widespread cull - although the damage seems fairly limited so far. Prepare for an avalanche of conspiracy theories, though, as it looks like the virus could have escaped from a nearby government research facility.
  
  
• Canada claims Arctic sovereignty. Bless! Just days after the Russians plant a flag under the North Pole, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper promises to beef up the country's defence of its northernmost territories, saying that the "increasingly attractive and critical" resources to be found under the melting ice required Canada to "protect [its] territorial integrity in the Arctic". Well quite, but how exactly are you going to do that when faced with the might of Russia and the U.S., both of which are also claiming a large slice of the pie? Now would be a good time to remind ourselves of just how many ships Canada has to patrol its vast Arctic fishing waters: Two. Oh, and one submarine.
  
  
• Karl Rove resigns. High time, too. Byeeee!
  
  
• Silly season begins. Hurrah! A chance for some much-needed summer levity, as displayed to brilliant effect in yesterday's underwhelming-yet-classic Evening Standard billboard screamer, "GORDON BROWN'S HOLIDAY SECRETS".