Society Archives

Thursday

7 May 2015

The Spectator at war: War by poison

From ‘War by Poison’, The Spectator, 8 May 1915: THE nature of the gases by means of which the Germans have won undoubted local successes is gradually being ascertained, and the more we know of the gases the more brutal does the use of them appear. At first we heard them spoken of simply as asphyxiating gases, a description which suggested that men were overcome by them as men are rendered unconscious by fumes in a mine or a sewer. But the information now coming from the hospitals proves that the Germans have not scrupled to resort to a truly diabolical use of chemical science, and to discharge at their opponents

James Forsyth

A voting system that’s past it

The defence of the Westminster first-past-the-post voting system is that while it’s certainly unfair, it delivers decisive results. A relatively small swing in support from one party to another can deliver the kind of parliamentary majority that ensures fully functioning government. This worked well when British politics was a two-party business, and pretty well when it became a three-party affair. But in this new era of multi-party politics, the Westminster voting system is no longer fit for purpose — as the past few months have demonstrated. When Britain was asked about changing electoral systems in the referendum for the alternative vote, we stuck with the devil we knew. Understandably: at

Alex Massie

The disunited kingdom

Never before — at least, not in living memory — has there been such a disconnect between north and south Britain. We vote together, but cast our ballots in very different contests. Scotland and England, semi-detached in the past, are more estranged than ever. The mildewed contest between David Cameron and Ed Miliband touches few hearts north of the Tweed; the battle between Labour and the SNP still mystifies many of those sent north to observe the strange happenings in Scotland. Edmund Burke wrote of another revolution: ‘Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all

Bruce Anderson

Spawn of the devil

There are those who claim that this column is idiosyncratic. They have seen nothing yet. I am about to mention a subject which has never previously appeared in any drink column, ever. Tapioca. That must be the acme of idiosyncrasy. I was staying with my friends Eyzie and Ro in Somerset. Especially if you have no weight issues, they are the perfect hosts, for they both love cooking. My duties are limited to bottle–opening, saucisson-slicing and, of course, supervision. They also have an abundant kitchen garden, a deep freeze full of the trophies of the game season and excellent local suppliers for all the victuals they themselves cannot provide. A

Jonathan Ray

May Wine Vaults

Despite being the old man of St James’s, Berry Bros & Rudd is anything but stuffy. Yes, of course Berrys is traditional, selling plenty of cru classé claret, vintage port and so on, but it’s imaginative too, championing neglected regions as much as it does emerging ones. It has over a dozen wines from long-ignored Greece, for example, and was the first major merchant to list serious Chinese wine. They have done us proud here, not least because the wine buying director, Mark Pardoe MW, being the soft-hearted, easily persuaded, Spectator-loving chap he is, has lopped up to 20 per cent off the RRPs. The 2012 Domaine Lyrarakis Dafni (1)

Rory Sutherland

Why estate agents aren’t dying out

I don’t like to make business predictions, but — barring some apocalypse — I suspect there will be plenty of estate agents around in 2065, and occupying prominent high-street shopfronts just as they do now. This may seem an absurd prediction: after all, almost no one now uses an estate agent to find a house: we go to property websites instead. And, since we all assume the purpose of an estate agent is to find buyers for a house, a role usurped by Rightmove and Primelocation, we think the remaining days of the estate agency are few. However, perhaps the principal role of an estate agent is not to find

The Spectator

Chemical weapons

From ‘War by Poison’, The Spectator, 8 May 1915: By the consent of all men who are not savages, the use of poison is ruled out in war, and has been prohibited by custom for centuries. And war by poison is being practised not only in Europe; in German South-West Africa the Union troops, as we are informed by a Colonial Office Paper, have come across many wells poisoned with arsenic… ‘Poisoned wells’! The very phrase calls up visions of warfare with the wildest and most fanatical tribesmen in the world, but not with the inhabitants of the most highly organised country in Europe.

Julie Burchill

Barbados

Unusually, I didn’t leave the British Isles until I was 35, when I went to the Maldives for a fortnight. (You bet it was a culture shock, considering that the most exotic place I’d been until then was the Bognor Regis branch of Butlins.) But I’ve globetrotted like a footloose fiend since then, and on my travels I’ve observed that the pricier the watering hole, the less likely vacationers are to look happy. The Crane is one of the most beautiful hotels in Barbados, but plagued by sour-faced English types complaining about there being no skimmed milk or a cloudy swimming pool (‘quite troubling’). There were groups of good-natured Americans

Martin Vander Weyer

My nominee for politician of the year: the honourable member for Athens B

After the heat of battle: the accolades, the recriminations, the telling of history by the victors. It’s six months early for our Parliamentarian of the Year shortlist, but my nominee for this year’s top award is… the honourable member (or one of them) for the constituency of Athens B, Yanis Varoufakis. Last week, the grandstanding Greek finance minister was declared to have been ‘sidelined’ from his nation’s on-the-brink debt negotiations, following a more than usually stormy meeting with fellow European finance ministers in Riga. ‘They are unanimous in their hate for me; and I welcome their hatred,’ he tweeted, quoting Franklin Roosevelt. How we journalists sighed at the prospect of

Julia O’Brien

‘Mili-what? Who’s he?’

‘Are all of these questions about politics love — because I’m really not political?’ Oh dear. I’ve just lost another respondent two minutes into a three-minute survey and the chances of achieving my hourly target, and therefore continuing my employment in pre-election polling, are receding fast. Perhaps she didn’t hear my scripted preamble: ‘Could you spare a few minutes to take part in a survey on the upcoming general election?’ What sort of questions did she think I’d ask? ‘Do you think SamCam pulled off the midi-skirt?’ At least I can take pleasure in hearing a colleague struggle a few booths down. ‘No, not electrics madam, election.’ And then, a

Lucy Vickery

Iffy

In Competition No. 2896 you were invited to take Kipling’s ‘If’ and recast it on behalf of a politician on the campaign trail. In an interview with the New Republic in 1985, Mario Cuomo said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. And Hugo Rifkind, in conversation on Radio 4 with the poet Ian McMillan about the relationship between politicians and poetry, noted that ‘If’ is often cited by politicians as moral inspiration. So it seemed like a good idea to give you the chance to put a twist on Kipling’s rousing poem, on behalf of one of the contenders in the current campaign as they neared the

James Delingpole

My part in a masterpiece of political correctness

Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry, James Delingpole: all winners of major art prizes. I was awarded mine last week by Anglia Ruskin University (formerly Anglia Polytechnic) which I think is a bit like Cambridge (it’s in the same town), though bizarrely its excellence has yet to filter through to the official UK uni rankings, where it’s rated 115th out of a list of 123. Anyway, the point is, I won. Sort of. I ‘won’ this extremely important prize in the way that Michael Mann, the shifty climate scientist, has been known to claim he ‘won’ the Nobel prize when it was awarded to the IPCC. That is, the prize wasn’t handed

Mary Wakefield

In praise of the pit bull

Last night I saw a woman dancing with a pit bull terrier. It was about 9 p.m. and her curtains were open, lights on. Music must have been playing, though I couldn’t hear it through the glass, because she was singing as she danced the dog about, leaning back to balance his considerable weight. Her arms made a seat for him, as you might carry a child, his paws on her shoulders. The woman gazed down lovingly at the dog, who looked embarrassed but patient, as if this wasn’t his first dance and wouldn’t be his last. I watched them for a while, standing unseen in the street, half-wondering whether

Wednesday

6 May 2015

Christopher Snowdon

I don’t trust these latest obesity predictions from the nanny state

Seventy-four per cent of men and 64 per cent of women in Britain will be overweight or obese by 2030, or so the newspapers have reported today. In Ireland, the situation will be still worse, with the obesity rate amongst women predicted to rise from 23 per cent today to 57 per cent (!) in 2030, with 89 per cent of Irish men overweight. The research in question was presented at a conference in Prague today but remains unpublished so we do not know how its authors arrived at these figures. A representative of the World Health Organisation says, ‘the data needs to be taken with extreme caution’, but this advice

Steerpike

Why was Peter Hitchens’ column missing from the Mail on Sunday?

Today’s front pages have received criticism across the board for being too party political with the election only a day away. Now questions are also being asked as to why Peter Hitchens’ weekly column was missing from the Mail on Sunday at the weekend. Instead, the columnist, who has been vocal about his disdain for David Cameron, tweeted his pre-election column from five years ago on Monday. The article asks readers ‘not to fall for the shimmering, greasy, cynical fraud which is the Cameron project’: So far no explanation has been offered and Hitchens has said that he is unable to comment on why his column was missing from the paper: However, the writer is

Hope Whitmore

Why elections are bad for your health

The excitement and anxiety was tangible during the election of 1997. Even as a child I was able to pick up on it. I saw the signs of stress in the adults around me: jiggling knees, bitten lips, my mother twirling hair around an index finger. Elections are stressful and this can cause serious health problems – anxiety, obsessive compulsive tendencies and even depression. A senior editor of a British publication spoke to me about his ‘irrational’ and ‘obsessive’ behaviour around the American election in 2000, in which he was rooting for Dubya: The internet just was just up and running and I found myself compulsively visiting websites to see if there had been

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Men and munitions

From ‘National Concentration’, The Spectator, 8 May 1915: The two great needs of the hour are more men and more munitions of war. We have got so to organize our forces that while more men are spared for the fighting line, there shall also be more men engaged, and efficiently engaged, in the manufacture of shells and other munitions of war. We have always pleaded in these columns for scientific recruiting, but what we want now is scientific recruiting, not merely for horse, foot, and artillery, but also for the factory and the shipyard. Translated into the world of immediate action, this means that we have got to do two

Tuesday

5 May 2015

Melanie McDonagh

Princess Charlotte’s middle names will soon seem extraneous

Beatrice Elizabeth Mary. Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary. These are the full baptismal names of Princesses Beatrice, Princess Anne and the Queen respectively. And what use are any of them other than the first one in each case? Today the papers have worked themselves up into a state of mild hysteria over the Cambridges’ choice of name for their daughter. Charlotte: fine, one for Prince Charles. But the Elizabeth and especially the Diana bit really got them going – the child’s third name merited an entire front page in the Mail. Diana won’t be forgotten, says her ‘closest friend’, Rosa Monckton. Well, fine. But what are the chances that anyone will remember

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Erection Day approaches for James Duddridge

Mr S has witnessed his fair share of election literature cock-ups this year. First Steerpike revealed how Flick Drummond’s campaign posters had to be redesigned after her name could be mistook for another f-word from a distance. Then Matthew Hancock fell victim to a folding issue with his leaflets. As they say bad things come in threes, so Steerpike was hardly surprised to hear that a third Conservative candidate has had an issue with their canvassing plans. James Duddridge, the MP for Rochford and Southend East, narrowly escaped his own Freudian slip: Mr S hopes that this will put an end to the party’s misfortunes ahead of Thursday.

Christopher Snowdon

Why are we getting fat while exercising so much? Try reading George Orwell

Last week I mentioned a widely reported article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine which claimed that ‘physical activity does not promote weight loss’. The article was taken down by the journal last week due to ‘an expression of concern’. It remains offline as I write this, but the controversy rumbles on. At the risk of further upsetting the low-carb community (who seem particularly antagonistic to the doctrine of ‘calories in, calories out’), I am returning to it today. Let’s start by looking at a series of blog posts by Jason Fung of Intensive Diet Management that have been doing the rounds on social media. He, too, argues that