Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 1 May 2014

Home The British economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2014, disappointing hotheads who’d expected 1 per cent. It was 3.1 per cent bigger than a year earlier, but 0.6 per cent smaller than in 2008. Pfizer, the American pharmaceutical company, said it wanted to take over AstraZeneca, with a £60 billion bid that would make it the biggest ever foreign takeover of a British-based company. The Labour party said it was leaving the Co-op Bank and taking its £1.2 million overdraft elsewhere. UK Financial Investments, which manages the Treasury’s 81 per cent stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland, blocked a plan for 200 per cent bonuses. A film version of Dad’s

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes: Max Clifford’s conviction vindicates juries. But so did the acquittals

The conviction of Max Clifford for indecent assaults feels like a vindication of the jury system, as did the acquittal of the many other showbiz characters charged under Operation Yewtree. One reason I keep raising questions of justice about the current obsession with paedophilia is out of suspicion that those most zealous in their accusations are unhealthily interested in the subject. This was the case with Clifford himself and, of course, with the newspapers with which he did business. Celebrity culture is, in essence, a form of pornography which incites powerful people to exploit unpowerful people. It acquires an extra twist of perversion when it turns on those it has

Lavatch

2160: 18 Down

Six unclued lights are 18 Down from the same source (five are entitled to appear; the sixth appears regularly). Six cells initially contain between two and six clashing letters; these must be resolved to display thematic 18. Elsewhere, ignore three accents and two apostrophes.   Across   10    A Republican politician maintains British dealt badly with defence material (12, hyphened) 12    Marsh tree (5) 13    In speech, lifts poet’s handles (7) 15    Awkwardly got up on camel bred to travel (9) 16    Crack plus heroin – a drug (6) 17    Protecting money, American wealthy mostly lacking heart? (8) 21    With musical backing, orator’s clipped style

Lavatch

To 2157: Song X

If the grid were a TIMEPIECE (13/12), the six perimetric words (GRANITE, LIMESTONE, SERPENTINE, GREYWACKE, DALRADIAN and HORNFELS) might collectively suggest ‘Rock Around the Clock’, which song was RECORDED (22) SIXTY (19) years ago, on 12th April 1954, by Bill Haley & His Comets. HALEY (eighth row) was to be shaded.   First prize David Peachell, Bexley, Kent Runners-up J.E. Green, St Albans, Herts; E.C. Wightman, Menston, Ilkley, W. Yorks

Will Gore

Estate agents, Elton John, and free champagne – this is how you build a thriving community

To impress prospective homeowners most estate agents usually draw the line at getting their teeth whitened and buying the second cheapest suit Top Man has to offer. The people flogging flats and houses on the site of Battersea Power Station made a bit of extra effort last night by putting on a lavish bash, with a headline performance from Elton John, for those interested in, and rich enough, to live in the shadows cast by London’s most famous chimneys. Or as a spokesman for the Battersea Development Company, the good people behind the massive redevelopment of the dilapidated site, put it, this was a party for ‘the purchasers of homes, potential

Chris Walker

Labour’s rent control policy will not solve our housing problems

Labour’s decision to impose rent controls will do little to solve our housing problems. Rent controls are at best misguided and at worst could be counterproductive, longer term. Misguided because rents have not actually been rising that fast in recent years. ONS figures show that rents rose by only 1 per cent in England in the year to March (1.4 per cent in London), a real terms fall. Indeed, since the beginning of 2011 they have only 4 per cent. Misguided also because this doesn’t deal with the root problem; a lack of supply in the housing market. Put simply we need to build many more houses, for rent and home-ownership,

Steerpike Steerpike

The strange case of the missing novelist

Mr Steerpike was last night invited to the launch of Esme Kerr’s debut novel at Daunt’s in Holland Park. The author herself was nowhere to be seen. The organisers of the launch, journalists Emily Bearn and Claudia Fitzherbert, were as uncertain as Mr S as to Kerr’s whereabouts. ‘She’s definitely here somewhere. Look there she is,’ proclaimed Fitzherbert, pointing to Bearn who was also scanning the room for the elusive Esme. Mr Steerpike suspected some rum goings-on. Despite Kerr’s mysterious absence, the party was a great success. Several stalwarts of this parish attended: former Spectator editor Alexander Chancellor, journalist Mary Killen and biographer Piers Paul Read. The Glass Bird Girl is

Douglas Murray

Gerry Adams’s arrest is astonishing

In one sense the arrest of Gerry Adams for questioning in relation to the murder of Jean McConville is not a surprise. On the other hand it is astonishing. I cannot think how many times over the years the connection between Adams and the McConville case – appalling even by the standards trawled during the Troubles – has been raised. Yet, as the years have gone on, the possibility that Adams would ever actually answer questions on the murder seemed ever more remote. Adams has always denied any involvement in this crime, and has offered the police his assistance in their inquiries. Adams presented himself at a police station yesterday

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Britain’s masculinity crisis and Osborne’s Foreign Secretary aspirations

Is the British male in serious trouble? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington Diane Abbott discusses the topic of this week’s Spectator cover feature with Isabel Hardman. Why are boys written off more frequently than girls? Are males in trouble because females are doing better? And is it now more difficult to grow up as a young boy or girl? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also discuss why George Osborne wants to take William Hague’s job and be the next Foreign Secretary. Does he risk lowering his profile and getting entangled in the sticky business of renegotiating our relationship with

Matt Ridley

E-cigarettes are making tobacco obsolete. So why ban them?

If somebody invented a pill that could cure a disease that kills five million people a year worldwide, 100,000 of them in this country, the medical powers that be would surely encourage it, pay for it, perhaps even make it compulsory. They certainly would not stand in its way. A relentless stream of data from around the world is showing that e-cigarettes are robbing tobacco companies of today’s customers — and cancer wards of their future patients. In Britain alone two million now use these devices regularly. In study after study, scientists are finding e-cigarettes to be effective at helping people quit, to show no signs of luring non-smokers into tobacco

Fleur Adcock

Mnemonic

Nothing I write will be as durable as the rhyme for remembering the genders of third declension nouns, stuck in my head ever since Miss Garai’s Latin class. Masculini generis I used to fancy I shared it with generations of English schoolboys, the colonial servant dispensing justice under a tree in the African bush, are the nouns that end in -nis the wakeful subaltern in the trenches before the Somme; but now I discover the rhyme was originally German, as was Miss Garai. The vision shifts: and mensis, sanguis, orbis, fons, the solar topeed official sits not in Nigeria, but in Kamerun; the soldier is on the other side of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Save the male! Britain’s crisis of masculinity

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_1_May_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Diane Abbott and Isabel Hardman discuss the crisis of the British male” startat=48] Listen [/audioplayer]Last week saw another victory in the battle for equal pay. Workers in Swansea are now looking forward to receiving around £750,000 in back pay after the university that employs them decided to close the gender pay gap. Vive la révolution! The only unusual thing about this case was that the workers in question were men, not women. The male cleaners, plumbers and carpenters at the University of Wales, Trinity St David, had discovered that they earned around £4,000 less than female colleagues. The idea of women having a rotten deal has become so

Mark Palmer

My mother’s passport to the Antibes good life

My mother always said she wanted to ‘die tidy’. But I never imagined she would file everything away quite so neatly as she did. One drawer in her desk was given over to travel. It included a little Hermès box containing a leather docket given to her by Hotel-Du-Cap-Eden-Roc in Cap d’Antibes after she and my father spent their honeymoon there in 1950. It was a passport to the hotel, allowing them to go as day guests whenever they wanted for the rest of their lives. Which is pretty much what they did. They would spend two weeks every year in a B&B in St Jean Cap Ferrat and enjoy

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

May Wine Club I

We’re thinking ahead with this offer, with summer firmly in our sights. Think of barbecues, picnics by the river, summer fêtes and lazy days on the beach. And think of red wine. Chilled. I’ve never understood our obsession for serving red wines at room temperature or even warmer. The habit started long before the days of central heating — what was room temperature then would be considered jolly parky now. Of course, big, butch, bold reds need a bit of coaxing to open out and shake off their tannin. But this can be taken to extremes. Only recently I was served an uncomfortably warm Aussie Shiraz that had been well

Roger Alton Roger Alton

What’s right with Saracens — and José Mourinho’s Chelsea

It’s hard to love Saracens rugby club — their centre is called Bosch, a word that also describes their bulldozing style of play — but you have to admire the demolition job they did on Clermont Auvergne in the semi-finals of the Heineken Cup. The flamboyant French side, free-runners to a man, had 68 per cent of possession, 64 per cent of territory and yet were tackled into impotence. Clermont limped off the Twickenham turf, stuffed 46–6. The English club play Toulon, the defending champions, in the final in Cardiff on 24 May and again I will be supporting the French team, not just  because this will be the last

Lucy Vickery

I’m a non-believer

In Competition No. 2845 you were invited to provide a hymn for atheists. This excellent, and topical, competition was suggested by John Whitworth, in response to the growth of organised atheism. Hymns do not feature at all at the Sunday Assembly, an atheist church founded last year in London. Instead the congregation sings along, in evangelical style, to pop songs by the likes of the Pointer Sisters, Stevie Wonder and Daft Punk. Perhaps they might feel inspired, by one of the entries below, to change their tune. Honourable mentions go to Sid Field, George Simmers, Barbara Smoker, Nick Grace, Richard Kelly and Samuel Johnson. The bonus fiver is Rob Stuart’s

Andrew Neil

Andrew Neil: Letter from Australia

No rest for the wicked. We touch down before dawn in Sydney after a 22-hour flight and by 7 a.m. I’m live on radio 2GB with Alan Jones. I’m aware talk radio is big in Australia — as you’d expect in a country full of refreshingly forthright people — and Mr Jones’s breakfast show is one of the biggest. Predictably, talk turns to the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Aussie commentators are a bit sheepish about it all. Only 15 years ago, supposedly informed opinion, on the left and the right, confidently predicted that Australia would be a 21st-century republic. They were confounded — disgusted, even — when

Matthew Bell

Guns, gays and the Queen – a former bishop reminisces

The bishopric of Bath and Wells comes with more bear-traps than most. For one thing, there’s the baby-eating. Ever since Blackadder told Baldrick he was being chased for a debt by the ‘baby–eating Bishop of Bath and Wells’, the image has stuck. When the last incumbent, Peter Price, made his first visit to the House of Lords, accompanied by his five-week-old granddaughter, the Bishop of Southwark remarked: ‘I see the bishop has brought his own lunch.’ The present incumbent, who was elected in March, and will be formally enthroned in June, has suffered a worse indignity. Peter Hancock is to become the first appointee not to live in the Bishop’s

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Beyoncé is a conservative icon

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_1_May_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson and Freddy Gray whether Beyoncé is a conservative icon” startat=1050] Listen [/audioplayer]When Time pictured an underwear-clad pop star on its cover, hailing her as one of the world’s most influential people, it looked like a crass sales ploy. But in Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, they had more of a point than they seemed to realise. Time had asked Sheryl Sandberg, the head of Facebook, to praise the singer for joining various do-gooding campaigns — but this is the least of her achievements. Beyoncé’s real potency lies in her status as a poster girl for a new conservative counter-revolution taking place among the young. It may seem, from a