Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 23 July 2015

Gesture politics A royal home movie from 1933 apparently showed the future Queen, aged seven, and her mother giving a Nazi salute. Like the Swastika, the stiff-armed salute was not invented by the Nazis. In this case they took it from the Mussolini and his Fascists, who thought it came from ancient Rome. Three Roman soldiers are shown making such a gesture in Jacques-Louis David’s 1784 painting ‘Oath of the Horatii’.But the US beat both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy by using the gesture to accompany the pledge of allegiance. Hitler himself claimed the salute was one of peace, saying it meant ‘Look! I am holding no weapon.’ But like

Peter Jones

Vespasian vs Islamic State

As Ahmed Rashid argued last week, it is hard to see what the West is doing in the Middle East, occasionally dropping bombs on Isis, whose effect may well be to hand Syria over to al-Qaeda. The Roman general Vespasian (ad 9–79) would propose a different strategy. The Romans had never found the Jews easy to get on with — the feeling was mutual — and semi-provincialising Judea in ad 6 had not helped matters. In ad 66 a major revolt broke out there, and the legate in Syria, Cestius Gallus, was ordered to crush it. He was driven off in disorder, and in ad 67 the emperor Nero sent

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 23 July 2015

Q. Travelling on a train recently I happened to notice two former acquaintances, sitting together and very nearly opposite me, neither of whom have I spoken to for several years. The two are unknown to one another. This unfortunate coincidence left me in a difficult situation, as one is a most agreeable and attractive young lady whom ordinarily I would gladly have engaged in conversation in the hope of renewing our acquaintance, while the other is a former barman who could easily have launched into an anecdote about my rumbustious behaviour in my student days. Fearing that such an intervention might result if I spoke, I remained silent throughout the journey.

Taki

High life | 23 July 2015

I think back to my Greek childhood and longing for the once cosiest and most romantic of cities overwhelms me. Actually it’s too painful to think back: all the blood spilled during the communist uprising, the beautiful neoclassical buildings destroyed by greed and lack of talent, the impeccable manners of the people that showed respect for the elderly, the church and the nation. They all went with the wind, that horrible sirocco from the south that has been used as an excuse for crimes of passion committed under its influence. This ache for a lost past is nothing new. Elsewhere and memory are most vivid in one’s mind, as are

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Trattoria tour

The Gatto Nero — or ‘Black Cat’ — is in Burano, a tiny island in the Venetian lagoon. It is close to ‘haunted’ Torcello, with its ancient campanile and its branch of the Cipriani restaurant. (The only equivalent thing I can imagine is a branch of Soho House at Dracula’s castle, or possibly Chernobyl.) I like the name Black Cat; it reminds me of the Blue Parrot in Casablanca. I like that you must leave San Marco, with its tat and wonders combining queasily, to get here; I like the brightly coloured houses like Bratz dolls fighting; it looks, to me, like Notting Hill with fish, lace and a soul.

Dot Wordsworth

Charon

‘What about the moon Tracey?’ asked my husband facetiously when an astronomer on the wireless, talking of Pluto’s moon Charon, pronounced it ‘Sharon’. As usual, things turn out not to be so simple as my husband’s understanding of them. Everyone knows that Pluto was named in 1930 by an 11-year-old girl, Venetia Burney. Her mother, the sister of the quirky belletrist Geoffrey Madan, was the daughter of Falconer Madan, Bodley’s Librarian. Madan mentioned the discovery of the new planet to his granddaughter, who came up with the name Pluto, god of the underworld, which Falconer Madan mentioned to the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, who cabled the Lowell Observatory

Tony Hall

Diary – 23 July 2015

There’s nothing quite like a First Night — and last Friday we launched the Proms, the most celebrated classical music festival in the world, now in its 120th year. There’s the thrill of walking into the Royal Albert Hall for the first time; taking your seat with thousands of other music fans; the ‘heave ho’ chant from the Prommers; the quiet before the music begins. It’s a vast space, but it can also feel very intimate. So it was perfect for the opening concert with moments of quiet reflection in works by Mozart and Sibelius, as well as great walls of sound in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. With almost 300 players

Toby Young Toby Young

Why I voted for Jeremy Corbyn

Is the ‘Tories for Corbyn’ campaign politics at its most infantile? As one of the few conservative commentators willing to defend it in the media, I’ve been doing my best to rebut that charge. The most frequent line of attack is that there’s something dishonest about it. The Labour leadership election isn’t an open primary. It’s restricted to members, registered supporters and affiliated supporters. OK, you can register as a supporter for £3 — a change brought in by Ed Miliband to reduce union influence — but only if you pretend to be a Labour sympathiser. And that’s just wrong. The short answer to this is that no such pretence

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 23 July 2015

‘I’ve lost my phone,’ yells Trev. We’re in a club. He’s come charging on to the dance floor to tell me. He’s always forgetting where he’s left his phone and getting in a state. Trev’s phone is old and crap and the screen is the most shattered screen I’ve seen on a phone that still works. Everyone knows Trev’s crap phone. People pinch it for a laugh just to wind him up, then give it back. It’s value to an opportunist thief is less than zero. He generally loses his phone two or three times of an evening. ‘Where did you have it last?’ I shout back. It’s an obvious

The Spectator

Giving up the fight

“Whether it’s in Iraq, Syria, Libya or elsewhere — as Prime Minister, if I believe there is a specific threat to the British people, would I be prepared to authorise action to neutralise that threat? Yes, I would.” It is almost two years since David Cameron lost a vote on intervening in the Syrian war and he has barely spoken about foreign affairs since. He is now slowly returning to the subject, making the case for pursuing Islamic State in Syria. The recent murder of 30 British holidaymakers in Tunisia was almost certainly planned in Isis’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. The Prime Minister is making the fairly simple case that

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 July 2015

Home Parents would be able to have their children’s passports removed if they were suspected of planning to travel abroad to join a radical group, under provisions outlined by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to deal with Islamist extremism. It emerged that five British pilots embedded with allied forces had been taking part in air strikes over Syria, which Parliament had voted against in 2013. Julian Lewis, the Conservative chairman of the Defence Select Committee, accused Mr Cameron of making up policy ‘on the hoof’. Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, said that in order to defeat the Islamic State, ‘tanks would have to roll

Melissa Kite

Real life | 23 July 2015

‘Cydney, we are not moving to Cobham!’ I told the spaniel in my best outraged Margot Leadbetter voice. What a sad moment. All my adult life I have worshipped Cobham as a haven of everything good and right and well-functioning in the world. A place of old-fashioned values and comforting, staid right-wingery. A place of millionaires and lottery winners. A place where the streets are paved in Chelsea footballers, slightly drunk after a night out at the local steakhouse. I have loved Cobham with all my heart, having one foot in it, by stabling my horses there, and one foot back in Balham, south London, where I live. Recently, I

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 23 July 2015

The smart phone is a wonderful thing. We are never out of touch anymore, neither with friends nor with the world at large. But increasingly we read of the harm that it is doing us. We are no longer its masters but its victims. It makes us tense, anxious and insecure. We respond with unnatural haste to every noise it emits; and even when it isn’t peeping or squeaking at us, we neurotically check it all the time for messages that might have crept in surreptitiously. Psychologists and sociologists are having a field day warning us of its dangers. Our obsessive phone checking is affecting our brains, they say. It

Robin Oakley

Easy does it

For all their formidable physical presence, racehorses spook easily. A sudden gust of wind flapping a plastic sack, a page from yesterday’s Racing Post blowing across the stable yard can provoke a fit of the twitches: eyes rolling, nostrils flaring and back legs snapping out a lethal kick. Trainers need a capacity for quiet reassurance and you don’t need long at Clive Cox’s Beechdown Farm in Lambourn to be struck by its overriding calm. His charges had pounded up watered gallops dried by a breeze like a hairdryer and as Clive hosed down their sleek coats afterwards, he declared, sponge in hand, ‘This is the best part of the day,

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 23 July 2015

Moving house is traumatic but moving bridge club is worse. Young Chelsea left Barkston Gardens, its home for over 30 years, exactly two years ago, and since then we have all been living a nomadic existence, relying on the kindness of others. Well — last Friday manager Nick Sandqvist kept his promise and opened the doors of the new, expanded YC in Goldhawk Road, right opposite the Tube station. And what an opening it was. The famous Friday night IMPs duplicate kicked off with 66 pairs jost-ling for a seat, and some sadly arriving too late to find one. It was FANTASTIC. Well worth the wait and heaven to see

Doc

2221: Shielded

The unclued lights are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. Elsewhere, ignore two accents.   Across   1    Transfers year-groups (7) 11    Mushroom in cooker and much of the basmati (6) 12    Neighbours character’s hangers-on (7) 14    No Parking in island for Persian king (5) 15    Gamble on a lake drying after rain (5) 17    Powder that’s almost strong (6) 19    Catechism redesigned according to plan (9) 24    Plastic bags from carriages, having nothing new put back in (9, hyphened) 26    Enters hurriedly and attacks damagingly (9, two words) 29    Former hanger-on heard on Wipe Out (7) 30    Tall

Doc

To 2218: Fab!

The unclued lights are all preceded by GREAT to form the phrases that can be confirmed in Brewer. (The clue at 40A suggests GREATEST LIE, also listed in Brewer). First prize Leslie Mustoe, Hitchin, Hertfordshire Runners-up Rhiannon Hales, Ilfracombe, Devon; Andrew Vernalls, Milton Common, Thame, Oxfordshire

Douglas Murray

Je Suis Charlie? Even Charlie Hebdo has now surrendered to Islamic extremism

Bad news from the continent.  In an interview with the German weekly Stern, Laurent ‘Riss’ Sourisseau, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, announced that he would no longer draw cartoons of any historical figure called Mohammed. This follows his former colleague Renald ‘Luz’ Luzier saying a couple of months back that he would no longer draw Mohammed either. ‘Luz’ announced that he was leaving the magazine shortly afterwards. I don’t judge either of them for this decision. ‘Luz’ happened to be running late for work on the morning that the Kouachi brothers forced their way into the Charlie Hebdo offices and started shooting his colleagues.  ‘Riss’ was in the office and

Steerpike Steerpike

Financial Times staff live blog the sale of their paper: ‘we’ll be sent to Canary Wharf’

After much speculation, the Financial Times has today been purchased by Nikkei, the Japanese media group, for £844 million. Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei is buying Financial Times from U.K. publishing group Pearson for $1.29 billion http://t.co/x26Px8sXfW — MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) July 23, 2015 This comes after the paper’s owner Pearson confirmed it was on sale this morning. However, it had been thought that the German media group Axel Springer were the frontrunner for the purchase. With the sale confirmed, little is known about what the new owners have planned for the paper: FT editor @lionelbarber says to look to nikkei's track record and Japanese corporate culture as reassurance pic.twitter.com/D66f5krNEH — Renée Kaplan (@rkapkap) July

Steerpike Steerpike

Tony Hall: the BBC is like James Bond

As staff at the BBC face cuts and budget tightening following the Government’s plans to reform the Corporation, their director-general Tony Hall has offered his own defence of the licence fee. Writing the diary in this week’s Spectator, he mentions that Tracey Ullman was recently transformed into Dame Judi Dench as ‘M’ in the James Bond films. Hall goes on to suggest that the BBC has some parallels to Bond with both in possession of a ‘very special licence’: ‘When Tracey spent the day as Dame Judi Dench on location last week, so talented are the make-up and prosthetics team that passing members of the public were fooled into thinking she was