Society

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Knee-jerkers vs knee-tremblers

A little joke by Paddy, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, turned upon something to be shunned. Conservative ministers, he said, had ‘indulged in a spasm of knee-jerking which would have made even St Vitus feel concerned’. He has, I think, got his spasms in a twist. Apart from saying ‘Aaah’, the cartoon task for a patient at the doctor’s is to cross a leg for it to be hit with a little hammer. ‘Striking the tendon below the patella gives rise to a sudden extension of the leg, known as the knee-jerk,’ wrote the physiologist Sir Michael Foster in 1890. He was a busy man, sitting on committees to rid Victorian

The Spectator

One week to save Britain

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union” startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]Next week, the most important vote in recent British history will be held. Indeed, it may well turn out to be one of the last ballots in British history. Seven months ago, this magazine devoted its front page to warning that the United Kingdom was at grave risk of dissolution. The unionist apparatus had decayed, argued Alex Massie, and Alex Salmond was the best late-stage campaigner in Europe. The SNP deployed the language of nationhood and destiny, while the ‘no’ campaign droned on about the Barnett Formula. The conditions for calamity

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 September 2014

Home England suddenly began to take the prospect of Scottish independence seriously after a poll of 1,084 people by YouGov put support for it at 51 per cent and opposition at 49 per cent. A survey by TNS showed 38 per cent of Scots backed independence compared to 39 per cent opposing it (with 23 per cent not knowing). The pound fell to its lowest for ten months against the dollar. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in concert with Labour and the Liberal Democrats, promised a timetable for further devolution if voters in Scotland would only reject independence. The Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition agreed

Tom Holland

Tom Holland’s diary: Alex Salmond is the Scottish referendum’s answer to Shane Warne

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union” startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]I feel a bit about the Scottish referendum as I did about the 2005 Ashes series. In both cases, those of us in the know were gripped with a nervous tension right from the very beginning. Shane Warne, Alex Salmond: the same smirk, the girth, the same potentially lethal form. That whole summer of 2005 I was on the rack, following every convulsive twist and turn, hoping against hope that England would manage to cling on to a precarious lead until stumps were drawn on the final day of the series. Tracking the

Doc

2179: Cos

The unclued lights are of a specific kind. Additionally each is a legitimate inflected headword in Chambers. Elsewhere, ignore one acute accent and an apostrophe.   Across   4    By the way, black weapon is a valuable curio (9, two words) 9    C.O.O.L.E.R. characters in the mail? (10, two words) 12    Types of lenses — 1000 nice ones distributed (7) 14    Undertaking in 1A is cut by Harpagon (5) 16    Difficulty with butlers at heart will annoy (6) 21    Puss goes to and through such a passage (8) 22    Means to an end suggests food and games (7) 24    Reduced money for

Doc

to 2176: ,

The unclued lights are BUTTERFLIES (as is the ‘comma’ in the title). The pairs are 7/34A, 13/24, 33/6 and 35/25.   First prize Sheila Beesley, Coventry Runners-up J. Caldwell, Winster, Windermere; Kim Conchie, Falmouth, Cornwall

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Meet society’s latest ‘victims’: fatties, nerds and geeks

Exciting times for those of us who are fatter than we should be. The feeling of being put upon may be, at a stroke, translated into full-on discrimination status if researchers at University College London have their way. According to academics at UCL who’ve conducted research into the effects of fattist stigma, ‘shaming and blaming’ fat people is counterproductive and society needs to confront one of ‘the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice’. Their research proves that although two thirds of British adults are overweight and a third are obese, nagging and jeering at them only makes the situation worse. Tell me about it. I am merely a stone or

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

In Palestine, homosexuality is a capital offence. Does Peter Tatchell not realise this?

Peter Tatchell has been awarded an honorary fellowship from Goldsmiths University for ’47 years of LGBTI activism’ and campaigning. I’m not sure I agree with these baubles, but if anyone deserves one, it’s probably Tatchell. A good man, by and large. Tatchell has in turn passed on his honorary fellowship to Palestine, as a statement against the ‘occupation’ by Israel. Right on! Right on! Let’s just briefly compare the treatment of LGBTI people in those two territories, then – Free Democratic Palestine and the Vile Fascist Entity. The Palestinian National Authority awards the death penalty for homosexuals. In Israel homosexuality has been legal de facto since 1963 and de jure

Allie Renison

The genius of Jean-Claude Juncker

For all of the protestations about Jean Claude Juncker’s unsuitability for what is, ultimately, the EU’s top job (sorry, Angela Merkel), the unveiling of his new Commission yesterday has confirmed his reputation as a master of compromise and consensus. The City’s expectations that the UK would be given a standalone financial services brief were so low that it by and large opposed the job’s split from the Internal Market Portfolio. The shock in Brussels when it was announced that Lord Hill would be given this responsibility reverberated all the way to London. Dealing with financial services isn’t the total of Lord Hill’s duties, either. He will also have to deliver Juncker’s grand aim of creating a ‘Capital

The Spectator

Podcast: Stay with us, Scotland!

With only seven days to go until the referendum, urgent action is needed to help save the Union. In this week’s issue, we asked Spectator readers to write to Scottish voters, saying why they are hoping for a ‘No’ vote. The response was extraordinary. You can read some of the letters here. Fraser Nelson is joined by Tom Holland and Leah McLaren to discuss what else can be done to save the Union at this late stage. They also take a look at Canada and Quebec, and how their union managed to survive not one but two referendums. It’s safe to say that Westminster has gone into full panic mode.

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: An apology to a chemist

‘An apology’, From The Spectator, 12 September 1914: WE are informed that a story told in a letter from a correspondent signing herself “A Country District Visitor,” and published on August 22nd, 1914, has had an injurious effect upon Mr. C. H. Schuhmacher, Chemist, of Heswall, Cheshire. In contradiction of the statements quoted in that letter, we are now informed that Mr. Schuhmacher is a natural-born British subject of English parentage on his mother’s side, and that his only son, Mr. Cyril Schuhmacher, is serving this country with the Liverpool Scottish. We deeply regret that anything published in our columns should have given pain to the gentleman in question or

James Forsyth James Forsyth

After a referendum campaign like this, will even no mean no?

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and Fraser Nelson discuss the crisis in Westminster” startat=1142] Listen [/audioplayer]This is really happening. The Scots could vote to end the greatest, most successful union in human history next week. Westminster has, at last, woken up to this threat and what it would mean for the United Kingdom as a whole. The result has been panic, frenetic activity and a promise to turn Scotland into part of a quasi-federal state. Such has been the speed of this offer that no one quite knows what it means for the rest of the United Kingdom. But keeping Scotland in the Union is the order of the

Sean Thomas

Countries shape character (so get ready to like Scots less)

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union” startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]As I write this, I am sitting outside a weinhaus in Kaub, a half-timbered town on the wooded slopes of the middle Rhine. If you don’t know the place, I recommend a visit: the scenery is lovely, the hiking is fine, and the Riesling is great (they have to handpick the grapes, like peasants in a Brueghel painting, because the river-ine vineyards are too steep for machines). But there is another reason to make the agreeable journey to Kaub: it’s a brilliant place to contemplate the mysteries of nationalism and national

Bruce Anderson

The Society of Odd Bottles and the Sisterhood of the Black Pudding

The Honourable Society of Odd Bottles has been mentioned in this column before. I can report that the membership is growing. We are now comfortably into low single figures. The other night, the Bottles assembled. At present, we have no lady members, although there is no rule to prevent it. That is hardly surprising. At present, there are no rules. Nor do we usually have a Toast to the Lassies. But despite their absence, we began by discussing women. We decided that for certain purposes, females could be divided into two groups. There is the voice of duty, and of diet, constantly monitoring their menfolk’s intake. Many years ago, when

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why is nationalism OK when prefixed by the word ‘Scottish’ but not ‘British?’

My second favourite religious joke is an old Jewish joke (which I read in the Harvard Review, so I assume it has passed the political correctness test). Two Jews pass a church displaying a sign promising $1,000 to all new converts. After much debate, one of the men decides to take up the offer and enters the church. An hour passes, then another as the friend waits outside. Finally he comes out of the church and his friend eagerly asks, ‘So, did you get the money?’ The first man glares back and says, ‘Is that all you people think about?’ You could transfer this punchline to the Scottish independence debate.

Michael Tanner

Michael Tanner: Why I prefer Donizetti to Strauss

Three operas this week, each of them named after its (anti-)heroine: one of the heroines (the most sympathetic) murders her husband, one of them spends her time successfully plotting the deaths of her mother and stepfather, one insists on the murder of a prophet who refuses her advances, and has an orgasm as she kisses the tongue of his severed head. Very much standard operatic fare. Two of them belong in the grand tradition of German high romanticism, one to the Italian tradition of bel canto melodrama of the first half of the 19th century. Unfashionably, I much prefer Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor to Richard Strauss’s Salome and Elektra, indeed

Nicky Haslam

A summer’s social whirl, from Bette Midler to Satan

This summer brought highs and lows, sadness and laughter, some irritating, some exhilarating. I was fortunate to be uplifted by an encounter with Leslie Bonham Carter, a remarkable woman who seems quite British but is in fact American. She is the daughter of Condé Nast, who founded the company that bears his name. He was born 145 years ago, in 1869. Leslie witnessed the full glamour of 1930s America. When the first world war came, many British grandees packed their children off to America. Young Leslie had opposite plans. All she thought of was how to get to England, to be there in its darkest hour. Diplomatic strings pulled, she

Brian Lara

Brian Lara: Why I’m helping build a cricket stadium in Rwanda

Twenty years ago, in 1994, I had a golden summer. I scored 375 against England in Antigua, a Test record that stood for nine years, and two months later I posted 501 against Durham, which remains today the world record in first-class cricket, as my team Warwickshire achieved an unprecedented domestic treble. I was in my mid-twenties, and of course I was very happy, but I was also very aware that in another part of the world, a great tragedy was unfolding. Every evening when I turned on the TV there were images of the genocide in Rwanda, and the contrast with my own feelings of euphoria haunted me. It

James Delingpole James Delingpole

My amazing dad has found the secret of a happy life

This week I wanted to tell you about my amazing dad. He hasn’t died or anything. I just thought I’d get in there with my panegyric quick while he’s still got most of his marbles and before he’s lying in a coffin quite deaf to all the nice stuff I’m about to say about him. So: my dad. What prompted this was a chance remark he made the other day about having left school at 15. Fifteen? ‘Well I wasn’t enjoying it,’ he explained. ‘And Dad said he couldn’t afford the fees. So it made much more sense for me to come and work for the family firm as a