Blair’s baby

THERE was a time, only a couple of years ago, when the Millennium Dome at Greenwich, to London's east, risked turning into a huge white elephant, unloved and unvisited. But—predictably—as opening night draws near, the hype is beginning to take over. This week Tony Blair paid an anticipatory visit to the dome. Perhaps betraying a residual nervousness about the reception of a project he is closely identified with, he lambasted critics of the dome as insecure cynics who “despise anything modern and are made uneasy by success.” The dome, he insisted is a “triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity.”