Society

Thursday

Jeremy Vine

Jeremy Vine’s diary: Zipcars, hipster milk and the word that means I’m losing an argument

Last Tuesday I tried to sign up to a new life. My wife and I argued, slightly. ‘I don’t think this will work!’ she laughs, and I reply feebly: ‘But babe, it’s the future.’ (My use of the word ‘babe’ is like a label on the conversation — WARNING: HAVING ARGUMENT WHICH I AM ABOUT TO LOSE). She protests that she needs a car for ferrying kids and clearing the allotment and occasional 5.30 a.m. starts at work, and I produce a small piece of plastic and wave it, like Neville Chamberlain. This is my trump card. I have signed up to Zipcar. With this rectangle I can unlock a hire car

Toby Young Toby Young

Nigel Farage’s class war

I initially thought Nigel Farage had made a mistake in unveiling Mark Reckless on the final day of his party conference. Wouldn’t it have been more disruptive to announce the news during the Conservative party conference? But after spending the first half of the week with the Tories in Birmingham, I now think it was the right decision. It put the fear of God into the party faithful. The dominant topic of conversation at the bar of the Hyatt Regency was who would be next? My colleague Dan Hodges compared the atmosphere to the Antarctic research station in The Thing, the horror film in which an alien takes on human

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Today’s Disney princesses look like Russian mafia wives. This is their café

The Disney Café is a gaudy hell on the fourth floor of Harrods, Knightsbridge. It is adjacent to the Harrods Disney Store, and also the Harrods Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, in which females between the ages of three and 12 can, for fees ranging from £100 to £1,000, be transformed into the tiny, glittering monsters called Disney princesses. They look like the late Queen Mother, but miniaturised. They glide — or are carried, if very small — from boutique to café in hooped plastic gowns in poisonous pink; combustible cloud-dresses, made for arson. Their hair is tight with curls and hairspray, and topped with the essential tiara. They look obliviously class-obsessed

Dot Wordsworth

How did Mark Reckless get his surname?

When I first heard ‘Wonderwall’ being played in a public house, in 1995 I suppose, I thought it was some unreleased Beatles record that had been just been discovered. The song appeared on an album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, which has on the cover a picture showing two men about to pass in a very empty Berwick Street in Soho. It must have been daybreak. In the middle distance a magenta doorway indicates the location of a shop called Reckless Records. It’s a good name for a second-hand record shop. Is Reckless such a good name for an MP? I was surprised by how many people made a little

Taki

I felt so awful I almost prayed that we would crash

This is about life up high. Two weeks ago The Spectator had that rapscallion and mischief-maker Peter McKay writing about how great it is to pilot a plane. (He’s taking lessons and has flown solo.) I’ve always been told that riding a motorcycle and piloting a plane are about the same, and McKay is a motorcyclist. His build, looks and accent are far more suited to riding on two wheels than to piloting a plane (that role is more one for a Cary Grant type). But I am being snobby and writing like McKay — cattily. Reading about flying brought back pleasant memories, but also a tragic one. When my

Jeremy Clarke

Chatting up Katherine Mansfield

I like the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, who according to Virginia Woolf smelt like a civet cat and had a hard, cheap face, and who was the only contemporary writer of whom she was remotely jealous. I like her writing and I like what I read about her short life. I’m not saying she was a great writer. I’m only saying that my imagination finds her writing voice oddly congenial. It strikes it as supremely impersonal, poker-faced and tart, with a quietly powerful undertow of sexual recklessness. But that might be just me. Funny things, writers’ voices. I suppose we meet them halfway and we either embrace them or

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Must we tip other people’s servants in London, too?

Q. What is the etiquette on tipping in London houses? I have been in the habit of staying with friends who don’t have cleaners and live fairly dishevelled lives so the question hasn’t come up before. But the other night my husband and I stayed for the first time with someone new. In the morning when we offered to strip the bed we were told she had someone coming in to do it. As we drove away it suddenly occurred to me that I should have left a tenner, but my husband says you only leave tips in the country as London dailies are overpaid and don’t have the same

Alexander Chancellor

Evan Davies is SO not Jeremy Paxman (thank God)

It’s unusual for somebody promoting his own television programme to tell you not to watch it, but that’s what Evan Davis has been doing. At least, he has asked us not to watch Newsnight during his first week as its chief presenter — the week that is now drawing to its close — because it probably wouldn’t be any good until he’d had a bit more experience. And even then it might turn out to be no good, he’s said: we probably would know by Christmas if it was a disaster. As it happens, I am writing this just before his first appearance on the late-night news programme, but I

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 2 October 2014

I don’t know about the only gay in the village but I am starting to feel like the last woman standing. In the two most recent events I have played, the Cavendish Pairs in Monaco and the superb Vilnius Cup, I was the only female playing and frankly, ladies, I missed you.   Vytas and Erikas Vainikonis invited eight of the strongest teams from Europe to Vilnius and treated us to three days of battling it out in a double round robin. Well, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, WE WON! Here is my partner, the Great Malinowski, the only declarer in the room to bring home this contract.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 October 2014

Home The Commons, having been specially recalled, passed, by 524 votes to 43, a motion supporting ‘the use of UK air strikes to support Iraqi, including Kurdish, security forces’ efforts against Isil in Iraq’. Only after four days did RAF Tornados from Akrotiri in Cyprus find some targets in Iraq to bomb. In support of her contention that Isil’s ‘hateful ideology has nothing to do with Islam’, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, in a well-received speech at the Conservative party conference, quoted the Qu’ran: ‘Let there be no compulsion in religion’ (Sura 2:256). A poster intended for staff was put up by mistake in the window of a Sainsbury’s in

Robin Oakley

These are the ones to watch in the Prix de l’Abbaye and the Derby

Rightly, the authorities are doing all they can to find and discipline the disgruntled racegoer who threw a beer can at the champion jump jockey Tony McCoy after a recent contest at Worcester. McCoy, of course, as well as being the straightest man riding, is a teetotaller. But I couldn’t help thinking of the response when the then English women’s cricket captain Rachael Heyhoe Flint was asked about riotous crowds in the West Indies. She replied, ‘If the crowd throw bottles at us we’ll throw them back—unless of course they are full.’ Newmarket’s sunny Cambridgeshire meeting on Saturday was combined with a beer festival but there were no untoward incidents,

Melissa Kite

Three years on and I thought I would soon be free of the Slobs

A letter arrives from the lawyers handling my defence in the phantom whiplash injury claim. It is now coming up to three years since a singularly rough-hewn couple alleged I had incapacitated them by shunting my little convertible in a slow moving traffic queue into the back of their people carrier. I haven’t heard much from them since I appointed legal counsel and notified them of my intention to fight their claim all the way to the highest court in the land. They went a bit quiet after that, failing to submit all the necessary details setting out how and when they want to see me in court. All we

Doc

2182: Tops

The unclued lights are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer.   Across   1    Poet has overdose first (5) 6    More than one figure of speech is about Roman soldier (7) 11    Where to eat, relax and gossip once about god (10) 15    Note this colour for French artist (4) 16    Standard bill size (7) 17    Healthy condition isn’t safe without one unwinding (7) 18    US railroad 16 (3) 19    I tell Aaron about what’s rising from kinship (10) 21    Pious Jew proves who he is (5) 27    Determined to visit ancient city (4) 28    Souvenir from Cheshire, licensed

Doc

To 2179: Cos

The unclued lights are abbreviations of seven English and one Welsh county, which themselves are inflected headwords in Chambers. (Consequently, Hants at 35 Across was disallowed) First prize Christina Casement, West Harting, Hampshire Runners-up R.C. Teuton, Frampton Cotterell, Nr Bristol; Jane Smith, Beeston, Kings Lynn, Norfolk

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Meet our new online comment editor: Anne Jolis, from the Wall Street Journal

I’m delighted to introduce a new editor here at Coffee House: Anne Jolis, who will be joining The Spectator later this month as online comment editor. She’s an American, and started her career at the Gloucester County Times in New Jersey and she ended up as a Wall St Journal comment editor. She is a winner of the coveted Bastiat Prize for journalism but, more importantly to us, she’s a finalist for two of our recent writing awards: the Matt Ridley prize for reality-based science writing and Shiva Naipaul prize for travel writing. Anne will be the third Shiva finalist to have joined the staff of The Spectator: the other

Melissa Kite

A new report calls into question what the RSPCA has been up to recently

Yesterday, the RSPCA published the long-awaited review of its prosecutions policy. Interesting choice of timing – it finally released the critical report on the day of Cameron’s conference speech. Talk about burying bad news. The review recommends that the RSPCA no longer prosecutes hunts because it also campaigns on hunting, and calls into serious question the direction it has been taking. Personally, I think the charity needs a serious re-think after some shocking miscarriages of justice where it has pursued pet owners for very minor infringements, and been totally unaccountable and closed to any kind of public scrutiny. We now need a proper debate and I urge anyone interested in

The Spectator

Podcast: naked selfies, happy Tories and divorced Catholics

Why is everyone obsessed with taking naked photos of themselves? From celebrities to politicians, people can’t seem to stop taking explicit ‘selfies’. It’s the ultimate expression of our increasingly puerile and narcissistic society, says Rod Liddle in this week’s issue. Rod joins Freddy Gray on this week’s podcast, along with Maria Miller MP, the former culture secretary, who is currently campaigning for a change in the law to make revenge porn illegal. From sex to politics. The Tory party conference finished yesterday, and James Forsyth, our political editor, and Isabel Hardman, our assistant editor, join the podcast from Birmingham. They take a look at the highs and lows of the

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Slow and steady

From The Spectator, 3 October 1914: Quick results must not be expected. It must be remembered that in military as in political affairs it is a comparatively easy task to prophesy, but in both cases the prophets are always apt to have much too ambitious a time-table. Events which are expected to happen in a few days or a week take a month or a couple of months to arrive. We expect movements to mature to-morrow which, in fact, are not carried out till the prophets have almost forgotten their predictions. A notable example occurred at the beginning of the present week. The optimists were all talking about envelopments, but

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The age of selfie-obsession

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_2_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Rod Liddle and Maria Miller discuss selfie obsession” startat=85] Listen [/audioplayer]So it now seems pretty clear to me that we can no longer send women photographs of our genitals without worrying that we might be the subject of some horrible sting operation and consequently suffer public humiliation and possibly lose our jobs. One by one, the harmless little pleasures in life are being withdrawn from us. It is even being said that we would be wise not to photograph our own genitals at all, let alone send the snaps to anyone, because a third party might somehow acquire them and cause us mischief. If this is true, I