Society

Thursday

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Hedonistic? No, today’s gay men are civic-minded – and conservative

A gay friend phones over the New Year break. A lovely chap (let us call him Richard) and long retired, he has done well and made money over the years. Richard has called to tell me how he is spending it. I know that in the past he had helped the gay lobbying organisation Stonewall; and that in memory of his late civil partner he had helped endow a local state school in need of funds. Now, he tells me, he has bought a house for a young friend and his partner: someone who helped Richard during the low time after his bereavement. ‘There was no way they could find

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Mugabe envy in Scotland

Who owns Scotland? The people who most commonly ask this question believe that the land has been wrested from ordinary Scots by evil lairds and rich foreigners (by which they chiefly mean the English). Now the Scottish government is bringing out a report on how to correct this alleged injustice. It may recommend extending community ‘right to buy’ powers and allowing tenants to buy their holdings even if the owners do not want to sell.  This would have the unintended effect of ending all new tenancies. But the SNP’s misunderstanding of the situation is even more radical than that. It believes that big Scottish landowners are rich because they own

Peter Mckay

Peter McKay’s diary: The Old Etonian David Cameron should have been

David Cameron gives Old Etonians a bad name. Critics deplore his Old Etonian-ness,  his Lord Snooty Factor.  Childish, but it’s an uncomplicated prejudice which can be freely expressed in our otherwise rigidly policed public discourse.  Is there an OE who might rescue the school’s reputation? There is:  Rory Stewart, 40, Tory MP for Penrith.  Known in some quarters as ‘Florence of Belgravia’ because of his expertise in Arabic affairs, he is famous for walking 6,000 miles through Afghanistan in two years and for writing two bestselling books about working there and Iraq. And, says the Guardian – of all papers – he is ‘hugely appealing: self-deprecating, funny, open, curious and

The Spectator

Welfare wars

George Osborne is refreshingly uninterested in his public image, believing that he will be judged by the success (or otherwise) of his economic policies. So when the Chancellor pops up to give a speech, he spends little time trying to mask his underlying aim — which is usually to sock it to Ed Balls, his opposite number. He is a Chancellor-cum-strategist who weighs every policy for the damage it could inflict upon his opponents. And on the issue of welfare, he sees an opportunity to strike. Introducing a benefits cap has been the single toughest policy introduced by this coalition government. It is also the most popular with the public,

Tiggy Salt

Gardens for all seasons

Winter garden visiting is a solitary pastime, lending itself to the misanthrope, and is highly recommended. When it’s so cold not even your dog wants to come with you, seize the moment, spurred on by the smug promise of self-improvement. Unfortunately, many of the best garden gates are closed during winter and can only be imagined or glimpsed by chance; see Hatfield in the film Orlando, with Tilda Swinton in the title role; her blanched androgyny majestically amplified by the frosted maze and standardised Quercus ilex of this great garden through which he/she runs. There are other possibilities, however; Painswick Rococo Garden in Gloucestershire is a gem, championed for its

Lucinda Lambton

A girl, a train and a miniature pistol: how I met the Everly Brothers

I was drifting in and out of sleep last week, listening to the news, when suddenly eight words — at first sounding no different from the general run — slammed into my senses. ‘Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers is dead.’ For the first time I knew how it felt when ‘the earth stood still’. One of the two brightest flames of my youth had been extinguished. I was friends with both Phil and Don Everly for some 45 years and it was, to be sure, a dazzling friendship. Beat this for its beginnings: it was 1960 and we met at midnight, boarding the Flying Scotsman at King’s Cross, surrounded

Theodore Dalrymple

Don’t tax sugar – it doesn’t make you fat. Gluttony does

If there is one characteristic that accounts for the deep unattractiveness of the modern British, it is their lack of self-control. It is not merely that they lack such self-control as they scream their obscenities in the street, eat everywhere they go, and leave litter behind them: it is that they are actively opposed to self-control on grounds of health and safety. They are convinced that self-control is the enemy of self-expression, without which their existences would be poisoned as if by an unopened abscess. Therefore the notion, increasingly propounded in the press and elsewhere, that sugar is an addictive substance will be music to their ears — or rather

Mark Steyn

Global warming’s glorious ship of fools

Yes, yes, just to get the obligatory ‘of courses’ out of the way up front: of course ‘weather’ is not the same as ‘climate’; and of course the thickest iciest ice on record could well be evidence of ‘global warming’, just as 40-and-sunny and a 35-below blizzard and 12 degrees and partly cloudy with occasional showers are all apparently manifestations of ‘climate change’; and of course the global warm-mongers are entirely sincere in their belief that the massive carbon footprint of their rescue operation can be offset by the planting of wall-to-wall trees the length and breadth of Australia, Britain, America and continental Europe. But still: you’d have to have

William Astor

William Astor: My father, his swimming pool and the Profumo scandal

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_9_January_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Richard Davenport-Hines discusses the Profumo affair’s enduring appeal”] Listen [/audioplayer]Christine Keeler and Jack Profumo might never have met in the swimming pool at Cliveden if it had not been for a filly called Ambiguity. As children, growing up at Cliveden, we all swam in the Thames. In the summer, the river was cold, dark and full of sludge, but my grandmother Nancy Astor, a devout Christian Scientist, thought it good for us. Then Ambiguity, my father’s filly, won the Oaks and with the prize money a heated swimming pool was built — and the rest, as they say, is history. Or Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatrical version of history,

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: Ovid on selfies

A ‘meme’ is ‘an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture, often by mimicry’. If selfies, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, tweets and all the other means of drawing attention to oneself are anything to go by, rampant narcissism (derived from the mythical figure Narcissus) is the current, dominant meme. The Roman poet Ovid’s version of the Narcissus story captures the dark consequences. Narcissus is a beautiful baby, and his mother Liriope asks the prophet Teiresias if he will enjoy a long life. ‘Only if he never knows himself’, comes the paradoxical reply — for such ignorance is usually disastrous (cf. Oedipus). Narcissus grows up, lusted after

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Kensington answers back to Sebastian Faulks 

Pirates and Tories Sir: Daniel Hannan is himself a pirate, masquerading as a Conservative MEP (‘Here come the pirates!’, 4 January). Oddly, since he’s fighting an election against it in May, he found nothing to criticise in Ukip, while attacking the European People’s Party, who are not standing in the south-east of England. He’s certainly right that we should not lump all protest parties in Europe together, though on weak ground in suggesting there are no differences between the mainstream EU parties. What did surprise me, though, was his description of the Front National as ‘essentially constitutional’. So he’d be confident that, were the Front National to gain power in

Raymond Keene

Different paths

Daniel Johnson, Dominic Lawson and Tim Congdon all had the potential to become chess masters. However, all three chose alternative routes, establishing their reputations in the fields of journalism, politics and economics. Daniel once held Kasparov to a draw in a simultaneous display and was instrumental in staging Nigel Short’s challenge to Kasparov in 1993. Dominic was a key player in rescuing Kasparov’s appearance in the 1983 world championship cycle and continues to compete in league and county chess. Meanwhile, Professor Tim Congdon is active in internet chess and can include a victory in the southern counties junior championship among his laurels. This week, some extracts by Tim while in future columns I

Raymond Keene

No. 296

White to play. This position is a variation from Congdon–‘Heinsius’, online game 2014. White has a ferocious attack and now needs to land the killer blow. How can he achieve this? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 14 January or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7681 3773. The winner will be the first correct answer out of a hat, and each week I shall be offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 … Qf3 Last week’s winner Ray Fisher, Buxton, Derbyshire

Alexander Chancellor

Alexander Chancellor: The Chinese must save the cigar from extinction

In Dorchester during the Christmas holiday I bought a two-slice electric toaster at Currys. It was a nice little toaster that worked very well when I got it home. And it cost only £4.50, which turned out to be little more than half the price of a packet of Marlboro cigarettes. It’s some years since I gave up smoking; but at my peak I smoked three packets of Marlboros a day, which now would cost the same as more than five two-slice electric toasters. Or, put another way, with the money I have saved from giving up smoking I could buy nearly 2,000 electric toasters a year. I could by

Robin Oakley

How jockeys play dirty

At Christmas a friend from CNN sent me the story of a US officer on a European train. Searching for a seat, he found one occupied by a miniature poodle and asked its French female owner if she would put the dog on her lap. She not only refused but also remarked loudly as he moved on, ‘God spare us from these bloody Americans who think they own the whole world.’ Ten minutes later, the visibly weary American returned to say that there was no seat vacant on the entire train. Again he requested politely that madame move her dog. Again she refused, this time snarling, ‘Won’t somebody protect me

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 9 January 2014

First up, HNY to one and all and especially my regular reader (no, not you mummy) John Hinde, who wrote me a charming email very politely pointing out the absurdity of one of my columns. I am so with you John — it was ridiculous — but it happened! Secondly, congrats to my good friend Simon, the talented Mr Gillis. Simon has some great Teams wins under his belt — Gold Cup, Iceland twice — but, as he was the first to admit, Pairs tournaments had always eluded him. Until now. He and Espen Erichsen, playing at the London Year End, romped home to take the coveted Open Pairs title.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What should I do when my dinner guests dive for their iPads?

Q. We had our son’s fiancée and her family to stay recently. After dinner, expecting conversation, we were shocked to see them all slumped in our drawing room staring at their ‘tablets’ and, I presume, playing on the internet. What should my wife and I have done? I was tempted to do the crossword or read a book but this seemed rude. — C.T., Dorsoduro, Italy A. You would have done well to turn the discourtesy to your own advantage — namely to use it as a tool to find out more about your son’s prospective in-laws. Acting daft, you might have said, ‘Oh what fun! Are we all going

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 9 January 2014

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made it clear in a speech that he intended to cut £25 billion after the next election, with about half of the savings coming from cuts in welfare payments. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister, said that the means proposed were ‘unrealistic and unfair’ and showed that the Conservatives wanted to ‘remorselessly pare back the state for ideological reasons’. Nick Clegg told the Commons that official estimates suggest that more than 1,500 Syrians had entered Britain last year through the asylum system. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said that Mr Clegg had ‘a very important ceremonial function as David Cameron’s lapdog-cum-prophylactic

Dumpynose

2144: Leonids

1D is the title of a work minus a word that is suggested by three further unclued lights. Other unclued lights include the person to whom the word refers, who is addressed in the work as ‘9’ (three words, one hyphened), and the addresser and his servant, both of whom are in disguise.   Across   1    Pricking pain has put out pint-size person (5) 6    Fashionable neckwear available for sale (7, two words) 11    Odd drop of arabica can’t top an afters (10, two words) 13    English form following story about bitumen (9) 16    ‘Groovy’ divorcée with active manner (7) 17    American Red Cross treats fatty deposits (7) 18