Society

Old, vulnerable and hungry – the shocking view from inside the NHS

I am leaving London soon, coming to the end of my time as a voluntary hospital visitor working from a chaplaincy in a London teaching hospital. I have been roaming around a variety of wards for the last three years, only one day a week, but in those few hours I have seen quite a lot. The most disturbing things have been the poor quality food, which cannot aid anyone’s recovery, and the neglect of the very old and vulnerable, the patients rather ominously labelled ‘bed blockers’. On my last visit, the Anglican chaplain was not in the hospital, so instead of attending a morning service with him in the

Keep your hair on! Seven tips for doing so, past Movember

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_30_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Henry Jeffreys and Sarah Coghlan join Mary Wakefield to discuss Movember and other wackiness.” startat=1456.1] Listen [/audioplayer]Some men are growing facial hair for Movember but lots of people are just trying not to go bald. Male pattern baldness affects half of men over the age of 50, according to the British Association of Dermatologists. But that’s not all – half of women over the age of 65 are also grappling with hair loss. Usually, though, their hair thins, rather than disappearing quite so radically as it does in men. So what can both sexes do to preserve their crowning glory, or mitigate what they’ve lost? 1. See your

Podcast: Refugees, Ed Miliband and the Thames

Britain’s appalling record on refugees is a moral failure, and a national disgrace, says Justin Marozzi in this week’s issue of the Spectator. We are now witnessing a global crisis on a scale not seen for 20 years, and our only response is throw money at international development, while letting in far too few refugees. But as Douglas Murray argues, economic migrants to the UK have poisoned public tolerance for genuine asylum seekers. It’s time for a frank debate about immigration, he says. Justin and Douglas join Fraser Nelson on this week’s podcast, to discuss the moral arguments for and against letting in refugees. Life isn’t easy for Cameron at

Kurds can pull off miracles, but they need help against Isis

The Kurds can pull off minor miracles when they need to. They require active support, however, now they are at the centre of the global struggle against the self-styled Islamic caliphate, Isis. Recent history shows the Kurdish potential. Eight years ago in Iraqi Kurdistan, there was much talk about oil and gas reserves. Some thought it was all hot air; their oil sector is now huge and has driven another once impossible dream – rapprochement with Turkey, which needs vast energy supplies to fuel its growing economy. Energy could even fuel Kurdish independence. However, a longer history hangs over the Kurds. Nearly a century ago, Kurdish hopes of a single

The Schumacher effect: ski helmets and the grim power of celebrity

For a melancholy example of the power of celebrity, head to the Alps. Since Michael Schumacher’s accident last December in Méribel, the use of ski helmets has soared in the mountains. My skiing instructor in Verbier, in the Swiss Alps, said the Schumacher effect was particularly acute among the young and the old — it’s seasoned skiers in their forties and fifties, battling the neurotic caution of middle age, who still keep their heads bare. Even half of the devil-may-care, schussing ski instructors now wear helmets. A philosopher would have a field day with the illogical aspects of the Schumacher effect. Schumacher was wearing a helmet and yet still suffered

Wine merchants might just be the happiest people in the world

A delightful girl came to see me this morning. She is helping with the research for a biography of David Cameron. Someone had told her that he was not comfortable in his own skin. There was only one reply to that: balls. I have never known anyone so much at ease with himself. That discussion made me consider the concept of bien dans sa peau. There was Cardus’s marvellous description of Emmott Robinson: ‘It was as if God had taken a piece of strong Yorkshire clay, moulded it into human form, breathed life into it and said: “Thy name is Emmott Robinson and tha shall open t’ bowling from Pavilion

To make asylum work, we’ll have to talk frankly

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_6_Nov_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Justin Marozzi, Douglas Murray and Fraser Nelson discuss immigration” startat=53] Listen [/audioplayer]It is the easiest thing in the world to say who should come to Britain and why. But if there are people who should be coming here, then surely there are others who should not? It is through our unwillingness to address the second part of this question that our problems arise. All polls show a majority of the British public want immigration reduced. But our politicians do not know what to do about it. One answer is to be honest. The Canadian and Australian ‘points-based systems’ we often hear about these days is just cover-speak for

The shameful truth: Britain lets in far too few refugees

Pictures from Calais have returned to our television screens, showing desperate men and women trying to break into lorries bound for Britain. A Sudanese man died jumping from a bridge onto a lorry heading for Dover. Another perished after falling from the axles of a bus. The mayor of Calais has blamed Britain for being an ‘El Dorado’ offering aspirational benefits to migrants — but as she’d know, the Africans arriving in her morgues would never have qualified for welfare. They risked death due to a sense of desperation, and hope, that we can scarcely imagine. The same is true in the Mediterranean, where 2,500 have died after embarking on

James Walton uncovers the sound of Nashville – money

Twenty minutes into BBC4’s The Heart of Country (Friday), there was a clip of Chet Atkins, country music’s star producer of the 1960s, being asked to define ‘the Nashville sound’. Atkins reached into his pocket, pulled out some coins and rattled them in his hands. ‘That’s the Nashville sound,’ he said with a slightly rueful smile. ‘Money.’ By this stage, mind you, the revelation of Nashville’s commercialism didn’t come as an enormous surprise. After all, WSM, the radio station that started the whole thing with its live shows from the Grand Ole Opry, was the broadcasting arm of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company. It also took a stern

The unexpected joys of working while pregnant

‘You are like my cat.’ So I was told when eight-and-a-half months pregnant, just before going on maternity leave from the bookshop. I had hauled myself up from putting a book away on the bottom shelf — no mean feat when one is quite so heavily spherical — and this cat-loving young woman had caught me exhaling a little too vociferously. I certainly didn’t feel especially feline, but as it transpired her cat had just had kittens, and I looked just like the cat had looked before giving birth. The lady giggled. Working in the bookshop while visibly pregnant has made me aware how touchingly awestruck we all still are

How did Britain ever have unarmed criminals?

The release of Harry Roberts, the man responsible for shooting dead three policemen in 1966, has sparked a vigorous debate about whether he should have stayed in prison until he died. The idea that ‘life should mean life’ for anyone who kills a policeman is a police-pleasing policy that the Home Secretary promised she would implement in a speech to the Police Federation last year. But a more interesting aspect  of the Roberts story is what it shows about the changing nature of Britain’s career criminals, and the values — if that is the right word for them — that they share. Until quite recently, criminals in this country did

Is the way our hospitals treat old people down to underfunding – or organised neglect?

I am leaving London soon, coming to the end of my time as a voluntary hospital visitor working from a chaplaincy in a London teaching hospital. I have been roaming around a variety of wards for the last three years, only one day a week, but in those few hours I have seen quite a lot. The most disturbing things have been the poor quality food, which cannot aid anyone’s recovery, and the neglect of the very old and vulnerable, the patients rather ominously labelled ‘bed blockers’. On my last visit, the Anglican chaplain was not in the hospital, so instead of attending a morning service with him in the

Thanks but no thanks

In Competition No. 2872 you were invited to submit an author’s acknowledgments page that contains subtle indications that no thanks at all are due to those mentioned. E.E. Cummings does the anti-dedication in style in his 1935 volume No Thanks, which he self-published with financial help from his mother. Its dedication page contains a concrete poem printed in the shape of a funeral urn that opens with the words ‘NO THANKS TO…’ and goes on to list the names of the 14 publishing houses who had turned the collection down. This comp called for an altogether more softly-softly approach, with any ill will on the part of the author to

Rory Sutherland

S&M&B&Q: Why aren’t there sex-and-shopping novels for men?

I never got beyond page 20 in Fifty Shades of Grey. No one got shot in the first chapter, and there were more than four characters, so I rapidly found the plot confusing. In any case, I am averse to physical pain in any form (if I were to engage in BDSM activities, my secret codeword would be ‘ouch’) so it wasn’t really my thing. But the book does leave us with one literary Everest still to be conquered: if someone can write a pornographic novel for women, is there a similar fortune to be made writing a sex-and-shopping book for men? So that’s my plan for retirement. To write

Martin Vander Weyer

What British start-ups are still missing

This issue includes the new Spectator Money supplement, in which I hope you’ll find a bouquet of stimulating ideas. The cover piece by the enterprise campaigner Michael Hayman waxes lyrical on the important theme of investing in high-tech start-ups: important because it’s an exciting thing to do with the slice of savings on which you’re happy to take higher risks, but also because bold new businesses hold the key to future growth. At a dinner hosted by Hayman last week, I met a selection of business founders and early-stage investors. The mood was one of optimism in what’s seen as an increasingly benign UK arena for start-ups, buzzing with world-class

The Spectator’s portrait of the week

Home Fiona Woolf, the Lord Mayor of London, resigned as the head of an inquiry into historical child sex abuse three months after Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former president of the family division of the High Court, resigned from the same appointment. Both had been criticised for having establishment links. ‘It is really going to be hard to find someone with no connections,’ Mrs Woolf said. ‘A hermit?’ Exploitation of vulnerable children has become the social norm in some parts of Greater Manchester, according to a report by Ann Coffey, the Labour MP for Stockport. The Serious Fraud Office opened a criminal investigation into accounting irregularities at Tesco. A report into alleged

Isabel Hardman

The cruel kernel of truth in Jean-Claude Juncker’s huffing and puffing

David Cameron’s desire to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Europe means we’ll hear plenty of huffing and puffing from various bigwigs on the continent over the next few years. The trick for Cameron, as James said on Monday, is to work out when this huffing is just bluffing and when it’s actually an expression of a serious intention. Today’s grouching from Jean-Claude Juncker, in which the new president of the European Commission complained about ‘certain Prime Ministers’ objecting to the extra bills foisted upon them two weeks ago, probably doesn’t tell us a great deal about the outcome of the Prime Minister’s renegotiation. Juncker threatened that ‘there will no longer be

Steerpike

Old-school wedding announcement from Benedict Cumberbatch in the Times

Mr S would not like to be on the Times news desk this morning, as the paper realises they have been scooped by their own announcements page. Actor and global heart throb Benedict Cumberbatch has announced in the traditional manner that he is to marry his girlfriend Sophie Hunter, but it was only after the paper was published that anyone seems to have noticed. Cue a hurried story up online, and one hell of showbiz scoop suddenly exclusive to everyone. But where was the front page picture story? Update: Times news hands point out that the announcement was given a very small nod on page 20 of this morning’s edition.