Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 27 March 2014

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that inheritance tax ‘shouldn’t be paid by people who’ve worked hard and saved and who bought a family house’ and that this would be addressed in the Conservative manifesto. Two opinion polls after the Budget, by Survation for the Mail on Sunday and by YouGov for the Sunday Times, had put Labour one percentage point ahead of the Conservatives. Nineteen Labour movement figures wrote to the Guardian warning the party not to hope to win the election on the basis of Tory unpopularity. The rate of inflation fell from 1.9 to 1.7 per cent, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, or from

Toby Young Toby Young

Lessons from Tina Brown on the art of failing upwards

Shortly after I started working at Vanity Fair in the mid-1990s, I suggested to my boss Graydon Carter that I write an article about the number of New York society types who were bankrupt. Not morally bankrupt, but up to their eyeballs in debt. ‘Let’s get a team of researchers to go through the financials of everyone on the guest list of the annual costume ball at the Met,’ I suggested. ‘We could publish a list, like the Forbes 400, but the exact opposite: America’s most indebted billionaires.’ Graydon didn’t go for it, and not just because he was worried about its impact on his social life. ‘Like who?’ he

Dot Wordsworth

When did we stop ‘tossing’ coins?

What kind of scientists do school inspectors not need to be? ‘Inspectors don’t need to be rocket scientists.’ For what must we make sure that the school inspection regime is fit? ‘We make sure that the school inspection regime is fit for purpose.’ In what manner do we need an independent schools regulator to inspect all schools? ‘We need an independent schools regulator that inspects all schools freely.’ Apart from freely, is there another manner in which we need an independent schools regulator to inspect all schools? ‘We need an independent schools regulator that inspects all schools freely and fairly.’ I don’t really mean to make fun of Jonathan Simons’s remarks on his excellent report

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What can I do about guests who don’t know how to wash up properly?

Q. I have three spare bedrooms in London and I welcome friends to come and stay. Unfortunately, some of these frequent visitors seem never to have been taught how to wash up. They think they are being helpful by seizing on things that are too big for the machine, running the hot tap continuously over them without a plug in the sink, and then leaving these sudsy pans and serving dishes to dry on the draining board. I find the waste of water maddening, ditto the lack of rinsing. How do I get people to adopt the traditional two-sinks method without seeming queeny? — Name withheld, London SW3 A. Confuse

Doc

2155: Poor Billy’s left out

The unclued lights (two must be paired) are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer.   Across 10   Details from Britain forged (4) 12   Colour of monster coming to grips with awfully vile demise, almost (10, two words) 14   Mother isn’t me or her, we’re told (3) 15   Offering a sleep before dance (8) 17   Trousers covering pants (5) 18   On the throne, expecting to be beheaded (7) 19   Quiet Lett disturbed Jewish community in Eastern Europe (6) 22   False tears affected Zulu (6) 24   Country is popular returning help (5) 26   Support from Labour leader on committee (9) 29   The French greeting and farewell (5) 31   Scots hungry for source of

Doc

to 2152: T20

Each letter of each solution and each unclued light has to be represented in the grid by its numerical position in the alphabet — the title, T = 20, indicated this transposition. ACROSS: 1 SEVEN 6 Peal 12 Certain 13 SIX 14 Dagger 15 Begorra 16 Vola 20 Bob 22 Betel 23 Kae 24 Dusk 26 Waifs 30 Ria 31 Bevue 34 Lea 36 Black 38 Emures 39 Elchee 40 Bled 41 HUNDRED 42 Dicey 43 Duomi DOWN: 2 Isabel 3 Wye 4 Elève 5 Regan 6 Joy 7 EIGHT 8 Nahe 9 THOUSAND 10 FOURTEEN 11 Subact 17 Ebb 18 Lob 19 Oracle 21 Edit 25 Salem 27 Ob 28 Ileal 29 Kasha 32 TWO

Steerpike Steerpike

Finally, after 118 years, The Daily Mail masters irony

The Daily Mail has been holding habitués of the corridors of power to account for so long, it has decided that it deserves a corridor of its own. The Editors Hallway has just been unveiled in Northcliffe House, home of DMGT. It’s a sight to behold, complete with a Vegas-style lobby, pomegranate White Company candles and an all-male line-up of editors since the 19th century. There’s even a picture of Mrs T in the ladies loo. Our only question is: if this is a hallway belonging to the editors, shouldn’t there be an apostrophe? Perhaps it’s an ironic joke about the Mail’s rigorous editing standards.

Sebastian Payne

Introducing The Spectator’s mobile-friendly website

Ways to read the Spectator are evolving all the time and we’re today delighted to introduce a tablet- and smartphone-friendly version of our website. In technical terms, we’ve moved to a responsive design that automatically reconfigures itself for whatever device you’re reading it on — be it a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer. In non-technical terms, we’ll now be a lot easier to read on your iPhone, your tablet and everything else besides. Given than half of you now read us on some kind of mobile device, we hope you’ll notice the difference. The Guardian and BBC now both work in this way, and we agree with them this is the future

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Atos leaves disability test contract early: but will it change anything?

The Work and Pensions department has this morning announced that Atos, the provider of the Work Capability Assessments which determine whether a benefit claimant is fit for work, is leaving its contract early. The company, which had been underperforming on the contract for a while, was supposed to carry out the WCA until August 2015, but has made a ‘substantial financial settlement’ to DWP. Mike Penning has emphasised this in his reaction to the announcement, saying: ‘I am pleased to confirm that Atos will not receive a single penny of compensation from the taxpayer for the early termination of their contract, quite the contrary, Atos has made a substantial financial

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Alex Salmond is not a Nazi. He’s not even a Fascist.

Every so often you come across an article so bizarre it forces you to re-examine long-held certainties on a subject about which you happen to be tolerably well-informed. This year that’s Scotland and her independence referendum and this time the article in question is Simon Winder’s epistle in the latest edition of Standpoint. Having duly re-examined everything I conclude that it is the maddest article I’ve read this year. So bonkers – really, not too strong a term – that you wonder what the magazine’s editors were thinking when they agreed to publish it. They have every right to do so, of course, and publication does not equal endorsement. But

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Reforming Islam, Ed Miliband on the rocks and teaching French

Can Islam ever be reformed and reclaimed from the fanatics? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Quilliam Foundation’s founder Maajid Nawaz argues it most certainly can. Discussing this week’s cover feature with Freddy Gray, Maajid questions why the British media thinks there is only one strain of thought in Islam. How does seeking out a singular ‘Muslim opinion’ lead to a spiral towards regressive conservatism? How can the vocal reformers make a difference when they are frequently outnumbered? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also discuss whether Ed Miliband’s luck has run out. Labour’s lacklustre response to the budget appears to have put Miliband on the back foot, but

Christopher Howse

The right way to see Madrid

I got Madrid utterly wrong for quite a long time. It’s a lovely city to walk in, and I thought it was idealistic and innocent, like Don Quixote. But its strength is the easy-going tricksiness of a Sancho Panza. It is a little like Toledo or Seville in the picaresque 17th century. I’ve only been robbed once, not violently, but it should have been more, so foolishly trusting was I, leaving my bag unattended or my jacket on the back of a chair. Not that Madrid is dangerous. You can saunter southwards from the marvellous Museo Sorolla (the house of the striking Sargent-like painter, stuffed with his canvases) in Paseo

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The engagement-ring theory of property bubbles

Google ‘the bread market’ and you get 135,000 hits, mostly from specialist food industry websites. Google ‘the property market’, however, and you get over 180 million. ‘The financial markets’ nets you 282 million. Seen like this, it’s unsurprising that capitalism has a reputational problem. The likelihood that the word ‘market’ is attached to any area of commercial activity is in direct proportion to the degree to which that category is seriously messed up. The idea that all ‘markets’ are effectively the same is perhaps one of the stupidest economic errors of the past 50 years. For a start, asset markets are not like other markets. As John Kay explains, writing in

Bruce Anderson

What Quique Dacosta knows that Picasso didn’t

Chefs have a problem. Think of much of the best food you have ever eaten. Caviar, English native oysters, sashimi, foie gras, truffles, jamon iberico, grouse, golden plover, properly hung Scotch beef; Stilton, the great soft cheeses: all have one point in common. They require minimal intervention from the kitchen. With the assistance of one female sous-chef, even I could roast a grouse. The chef would come into his own over pudding, and indeed with Welsh rarebit, but one can understand why this does not provide enough outlet for creativity. There are always the great French bourgeois dishes, which few of us eat often enough. Navarin of lamb, blanquette de

Irshad Manji

It’s time to reclaim Islam from the fanatics. Here’s how

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_27_March_2014.mp3″ title=”Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz discusses reforming Islam with Freddy Gray” startat=41] Listen [/audioplayer]I am not a moderate Muslim, I am a reformist. Rooting out corrupt practices can never be an act of mere moderation. Restoring integrity, or wholeness, is always a radical act. It transcends notions of left and right, emphasising the need to think independently. In Islam, independent thought has a strong history, not that you’d know it from the news about bombings, beheadings and bloodshed. ‘Jihad’ has become part of the West’s vocabulary and with good reason. But there is a lesser-known term in Islam — one that has the capacity to change the world for good. The

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

An ex-fascist or two isn’t the BBC’s problem. Its boss class is

We live in a recriminatory age, one in which we are only ever a step away from the cringing, self-abnegating apology. Take the case of BBC Newsnight’s latest appointee, as economics editor, a chap called Duncan Weldon. Duncan is doing the tail between the legs thing right now, desperately attempting to excise part of his past in case it puts paid to his promising career in a fusillade of political accusations and an appalled reaction from the general public. The problem is, in his younger days, it seems Duncan worked as an adviser for the deputy leader of the Labour party, Harriet Harperson. ‘It is embarrassing. I was young and

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Please stop trying to raise my awareness

I wish people would stop trying to raise my awareness. I can’t so much as surf the web or stroll a high street these days without being accosted by one of the aware, who is always hellbent on making me as aware as he is, usually about some disease or, if you’re really lucky, the rifeness of child abuse. The army of the aware are everywhere, covered from head to toe in awareness ribbons, their arms weighted down by awareness bracelets, their aware brains bulging with scary stats about Aids, rape, breast cancer or boozing that they are desperate to impart to us, the blissfully unaware. These awareness-raisers seem to

Lucy Vickery

De haut en bas | 27 March 2014

In Competition 2840 you were invited to provide an extract from the autobiography of a modern-day celebrity, ghostwritten by a literary great. Where would Jordan’s literary ambitions have been without the creative input of Rebecca Farnworth? And how many chapters would Wayne Rooney have managed without the guiding genius of Hunter Davies? Behind many a bestselling biography is an invisible man or woman, the unsung hero who has done most of the work but gets virtually none of the credit. There were some inspired pairings: Charles Dickens and Jamie Oliver; Charlotte Brontë and Susan Boyle; Stephen Fry and Samuel Johnson. Commendations to C.J. Gleed, Noel Petty and Josh Ekroy. The

John McTernan

Why Simon Stevens – more radical than most Tories – may save the NHS

In a valedictory interview, Sir David Nicholson was quite frank about the state of the health service that he has run for the last eight years. ‘In its current form,’ he declared, ‘the NHS is unsustainable.’ It is hard to imagine Simon Stevens, who takes over as NHS England chief executive this week, having to say that when he leaves. His friends know him as an experienced reformer, a policy expert and a radical. His CV causes some suspicion in Tory circles — he is a former adviser to Tony Blair (I’m also guilty in that respect) and was a co-author of the last Labour government’s health reforms — but