The Independent's new look: Madame Arcati review

Certain darling Arcatistes have messaged me privately imploring me to cast my eyes on the redesigned Independent. It's not as if I haven't other things to do. I'm busy. But as I sit here drinking a lunchtime latte mocchiato from my Tassimo coffee machine - barcoding has never been put to better use - I succumb to blandishment and compromise by summoning up the front page. Only.

To quote the No 1 single of the moment: omg! I am utterly appalled. Return editor Simon Kelner simply has not a clue about visual seduction. The Mail grabs and molests and you yield against better judgement; the Telegraph emits a tractor beam with its high-low mix of hoity-totty. Even the ghastly Express catches your attention with a waggle of a varicose veined pin before you hurry past. But the Independent! I just don't want to look at it. It makes me feel all Hannah Montana and want to go ew!

Why can't Kelner simply steal some ideas from other papers if he can't master the idiom of sexy look?

Now, of all the papers, the Indy is my least unfavourite. Its mind is in the right place, it does not demand the return of the Coliseum, it doesn't hire tomb-toothed loony James Delingpole; atheistically, it's on the side of the angels. The case for the Indy is a good one. New owner Alexander Lebedev potentially has a great asset here. So why the hell (to use a Carole Malone-ism) can't it get its face right?

Where to start? First, why all that white space to the right of the headline? How many trees were felled for that art statement? A front page must demand our instant interest; there's no time for lolling. If a paper wants stylised it must commit not omit. The only case for white space on a front page is a signposted area for reader shopping lists or moustache doodling - a playpen for idlers. And is "Goldmans" literate? Is the plural accepted use for Goldman Sachs? It just doesn't read right.

And what's with the fancy font for the new Viewspaper? You expect to see those squiggles on wedding invites or Valentine's cards or in a movie starring Margaret Lockwood - for lickle sticky-out finger occasions when silly tarts dress like Jordan and the men breathe in for the cummerbund.

Logically and aesthetically, the front page makes no sense. The Indy primarily is a read paper. One way to signal this fact is to have plenty of words on the page and several stories. What we have instead is the one story body copy squashed down at the bottom in favour of a hideous great plane and a dumb monster screamer (with tabloid exclamation mark). The overall sell is basically tabloid though the product is broadsheet all but in size. What is Kelner thinking of?

The only thing going for this front page is the come-on for Gauguin's Girls in the bottom right hand corner, featuring a patch of female pubis: an advert for the editor's cock-cunting inclination no doubt because it would be hard to imagine, say, a naked Alex Reid here with his flaccid four-incher hanging down like a rotten corgette.

Oh no. Must do better. The overall impression is that of a local newspaper with airs. This may work if the paper does go freebie. But not if you're looking for cash.

The stars speak: Brown, Blair and President Hillary Clinton

My areolae always turn a deeper shade of pink when the latest Old Moore's Almanack dive bombs from the heavens - vox stellarum, no less! I like to steal a march via the mumbo jumbo powers - and the 2008 edition is just out. Published since 1697, its astrological compass is a wide one, conflating predictions on weighty international affairs with pointers to favourable periods for flat-race jockeys. Between these future scopes are ads of much curiosity - the Egyptian goddess Isis promises self-assurance through her incantations, in English. Wonders to behold.

Now, it's easy to mock. I could dwell on the fact that though the eponymous Dr Francis Moore is a master of horoscopic calculation, he thinks Anthony Eden's predicted resignation was in 1937 when he means 1957. But no matter. Where's a decent sub-editor when you need one? I come not to bury Dr Moore but to congratulate him for he got a couple of things right - the departure date of Tony Blair and the flavour of the new capo dei capi's government, Mr Broon.

Last September I noted Moore's certainty - from his vantage point of early autumn 2005 for the 2007 edition - that in July 2007 “The Sun and Moon are on the Midheaven at London pointing to somewhat greater popularity for the government. Radical changes both in policy and personnel are possible, and will be carried out very smoothly.”

Is it not reasonable to suppose that Old Moore's had foreseen Blair's departure date even before the then PM himself had faced up to reality? - and is not the Blair-promised "smooth and orderly transition" (to Brown) anticipated? We could argue over this, so let's say it was a shrewd guess. And Moore is correct about the government's popularity - nine points ahead of the Tories as I write.

For August 2007, national celebrations are foreseen as “old-fashioned values are reasserted” with more and more people getting married ... well, an exaggeration perhaps, but puritan Brown is likely to alter the tax credit rules to favour married couples, and I'm sure that it is this that Moore foresees as the country is enveloped in a stifling dose of Scottish Presbyterianism. Expect happy headlines from the Daily Mail, then.

Labour-haters can take comfort that everything goes pear-shaped from November '07 when scandals renew our healthy and deserved loathing for politicians. Oh dear, the Mail proves characteristically fickle as it did with Blair.

So, all that was in the 2007 edition. What of the 2008? When it was put together Moore would not have been certain - from the vantage point of October 2006 (long deadlines!) - that Brown was a shoo-in for No 10. That doesn't stop him from running an astrological profile of The Gord (along with the likes of Noel Edmonds and Helen Mirren). Brown has not one but four planets in secretive Pisces - so even if I didn't know that the subject was once suspected to be gay or bisexual, I would have to say that this is a man acclimatised to surreptitiousness and the murk-side of Westminster. Valedictories on his political career will feature the word "enigmatic", I predict.

Moore fails emphatically to predict Brown's accession beyond the obvious "Gordon Brown's future lies in the hands of his fellow MPs and they may think his credentials are sound ... " Yes, and the sun may shine yet. But Moore is less convinced that Brown can hold onto power against what he calls the "charisma of Cameron". Improbable now, but events, dear boy, events ...

Moore's map for 2008 is exceedingly depressing for Brown: though it will be a "business-like year" for the UK, rather humdrum due to "slow-moving planets" as Pluto moves into Capricorn, the government will be reviled - I therefore deduce that if Brown does not call a General Election in 2007, he will test his appeal some time after '08. Or Moore is utterly wrong, as no election is hinted at.

For the US however we should congratulate in advance the Democrats on a return to power as President-elect Hillary Clinton beckons in November. Meanwhile, "At Doncaster, the November Handicap races may be won by a 3-year-old carrying 8st 8lb."

Foulsham's Original: Old Moore's Almanack 2008, £1.99

Blair's downfall foreseen?

Reading Robert Harris’ vivid and splendid new novel Imperium re-ignites my interest in Ancient Roman history and the Sybil – the prophetesses who read for the empire. How I wish we had their like today, as opposed to the legion of henna-haired "channellers" and their rip-off psychic phonelines milking the vulnerable at £1.50 a minute (most credit cards welcome).
The nearest contemporary Britain can claim to the Sybil is the cheapo annual Old Moore’s Almanack and its horrible Flash Gordon monochrome graphics. Yet it's this I turn to occasionally during national or international dramas, in the hope of alighting on an instructive astrological prediction, if only to requisition it in the shaping of a dinner party opinion that may make me look perceptive if not psychic in hindsight.
So I open up the edition for 2007 and turn to the month of July, for it is then that Tony Blair promises to step down having resigned in May prior to a leadership election. And I am intrigued to read the following:

“The Sun and Moon are on the Midheaven at London pointing to somewhat greater popularity for the government. Radical changes both in policy and personnel are possible, and will be carried out very smoothly.”

A “smooth and orderly transition” even? Can it be possible that the Pluto-diminished heavens had already pronounced death on Blair’s premiership, as far back as sometime before September 2005 when Dr Francis Moore drew up his horoscopes?
We shall see.
Of course there’s no indication whether we're actually due a new PM in July or whether he will be Gordon Brown. Yet is there a clue for August? National celebrations are foreseen as “old-fashioned values are reasserted” with more and more people getting married – perhaps the now ex-Chancellor will have introduced more tax incentives to get hitched. The Gord has never much cared for Tony’s social liberalism, so you never know ….
Still, whoever takes over whenever, it’s predicted that by November the government will be embroiled in “scandals at the highest level”, so plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.