Society

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

What it’s like to drink a 118-year-old wine

Marcher country, the Jura lies to the east of Burgundy and the contrast is marked. Burgundy: the very name is redolent of opulence. The architecture, the courtliness, the great wines: the aristocratic civilisation of Burgundy is a dance to the cornucopia of nature. Among the rocks and hills and gorges of the Jura, nature is less generous: livelihoods harder wrought. But as so often in European history, adversity has been the nursery of triumph. The Jura produces a famous wine, vin jaune. Until this week, I had hardly tasted it. That has now been rectified, in a spectacular manner. Those who try to write about wine often talk of terroir,

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

My mansion tax solution: hit rich foreigners. But no one else

I am surprised no more attention has been given to Martin Vander Weyer’s suggestion in The Spectator two weeks ago that a mansion tax should be levied on those buyers who pay no other UK tax. Why has it taken so long for anyone to raise this idea? Where tax paid against income should be set against tax paid on property? Let’s consider this question in psychological terms. Assume that you are eager to buy a particular house but someone else decides he wants to live there too. He is twice as rich as you are and so comfortably outbids you. Whatever the other person’s moral worth, you know two

Peter Jones

Notes on…Classic cruising

We arrive at the tiny Greek island of Sikinos on a blustery day, making landing rather difficult. Is there transport to take us to the extraordinary, now deconsecrated, perhaps 6th-century church of Episkopi inside a 3rd century AD Roman mausoleum/temple? The mayor appears: yes, we can use the island’s one bus, and off we go to the magnificent site miles from nowhere. A bonus too: the tiny 14th-century monastery next door is being restored, wall paintings and all. Back to the harbour via a vineyard to taste the local wine — the mayor has his chums — and by now a storm has set in. At the third attempt the

Douglas Murray

Richard Dawkins interview: ‘I have a certain love for the Anglican tradition’

‘You owe me an apology,’ Richard Dawkins informs me. It is a bright Oxford morning and we are sitting in his home. His wife has just made me coffee and I have met their new puppies. I am here to discuss a new book of his, but he is smarting from a disobliging reference to him in a recent one of mine. That, and an earlier encounter I wrote about here, have clearly rankled. I try a very limited apology. But it does strike me that Dawkins is more easily bruised than one might have imagined. I wonder if it has anything to do with the deluge of criticism he

Anne Applebaum

Time for our leaders to stop talking about ‘justice’ in Syria if we can’t or won’t enforce it

‘It’s about chemical weapons. Their use is wrong and the world shouldn’t stand idly by.’ — David Cameron, 27 August ‘The chemical massacre in Damascus cannot and must not go unpunished.’ — François Hollande, 30 August ‘We lead with the belief that right makes might, not the other way around.’ — Barack Obama, 31 August In their speech, in their manner and in their choice of language, the American President, the French President and the British Prime Minister have been impeccably clear about their motivations for military intervention in Syria. They don’t want to use force for economic gain. They aren’t in this for national interest. Strictly speaking, they aren’t moved

Clarissa Tan

The ideal death show

I am in a yurt, talking about death. Everyone is seated in a circle, and I am the next-to-last person to share. The last of the summer sun is shining through the entrance. At one end is a display coffin of biodegradable willow — there’s also tea and coffee, and coffin-shaped biscuits with skeleton-shaped icing. ‘I am a reporter,’ I say. ‘I’ve come to cover this event. But don’t worry, I won’t report what you share in this yurt. Also, I have cancer. I have been in treatment for one year, but now the treatment is over. I take one day at a time.’ There is silence, then hugs. I

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The RSPB is fighting for wind turbines. The birds can fend for themselves

The RSPB has come out against fracking and urged the government to ‘rethink its shale gas policies’. And of course the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds would know. After all when your skill set ranges from identifying Little Brown Jobs through your binoculars at 10,000 yards all the way to differentiating a Greater Spotted Woodpecker from a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker merely by the sound of its drumming beak, clearly it goes without saying that your insights into the merits of hydraulic fracturing and the minutiae of Britain’s energy economy deserve to be taken very seriously indeed. No, no I jest. About the first bit, anyway. It would, of

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The reassuring stupidity of John Kerry

The Syrian rebels who liberated the mountain village of Maaloula apparently immediately set about converting the predominantly Christian population to Islam, using the gently persuasive techniques we have come to associate with this dynamic and expanding religion. ‘Allahu Akbar! Either you will convert to Islam or you will be beheaded,’ rebels allegedly told some villagers. Other residents were simply shot dead without all the onerous conversion palaver. It is said that the accents of the rebel soldiers were many things — Chechen, Tunisian, Moroccan, etc — but certainly not Syrian. It was further reported that, once again, the rebels were drawn from one or another al-Qa’eda franchise; as John O’Sullivan

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Welcome back, TSB: your founder’s spirit is alive and well and living in Airdrie

A big hello to the revived Trustee Savings Bank — the spin-off of 631 Lloyds branches that were going to be sold to the Co-operative Bank to fulfil EU conditions for the bailout of Lloyds after its catastrophic takeover of HBOS. The new entity starts life with 4.6 million personal and small-business customers, a clean balance sheet, no investment banking arm and no foreign skeletons in its cupboard. That all sounds promising, but those of us who have long argued for a break-up of mega-banks and a return to relationship-driven high-street finance will watch closely to see whether the new TSB’s slogan, ‘Welcome back to local banking’, turns out to

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Boring politicians are a threat to democracy. That means you, Rachel Reeves

I’ve never met the woman that the Newsnight editor Ian Katz this week accidentally described as ‘boring, snoring Rachel Reeves’, so for all I know, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury might be an absolute riot. Although actually, writing that, it occurs to me that maybe I have and she was just too boring for me to remember. Perhaps we sat next to each other at some sort of function, and had a fun chat about, ooh, fiscal prudence in a post-OBR paradigm, which involved her talking and me going ‘Mmmm’, and left her thinking, ‘He seems nice, I wonder if we’ll be friends?’ as she walked dreamily to

Lucy Vickery

Genesis | 12 September 2013

In Competition 2814 you were invited to describe how a great writer stumbled upon an idea that he or she later put to good use. Thanks to Messrs Allgar and Moore, Brians both, for suggesting that I challenge competitors to imagine the unlikely circumstances in which the seeds of great literary works were sown. I enjoyed Chris O’Carroll’s tale of the genesis of that famous stage direction ‘Exit pursued by a bear’ and John O’Byrne’s account of Samuel Beckett waiting with his mother for a bus that never comes. Stephen Walsh finds the origins of Hemingway’s spare, muscular prose in the classroom. The winners take £25 each. Lydia Shaxberd earns

Michael Bayley

Building a Bridge

I didn’t even have to say: No need to explain, I understand. It was in his look — Look after your mother — it said. A bridge of light between our eyes, fainter than glass. And I thought, it’s taken forty years to build this bridge, how it had to be invisible to cross over it.

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

The worrying ‘hyper-inflation’ of human rights

There is a term which ought to be in better use – ‘human rights inflation’. This is the means by which the currency of ‘human rights’ – which used to mean things like ‘the right to life’ – becomes, thanks to the addition of endless spurious additional demands, severely undermined. The latest example of this trend has come to light this morning thanks to a Brazilian far-leftist who claims to be working as a rapporteur for the United Nations. As listeners to the Today programme will know (about 2 hours 37 minutes in here) according to Raquel Rolnik the latest inalienable human right is apparently the ‘right to a spare bedroom.’

Sebastian Payne

Patrick McLoughlin: we don’t need HS2 for speed

Finally, an HS2 argument from the government that isn’t entirely based on speculative forecasts or political positioning. The transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin has given a speech at the Institution of Civil Engineers this morning, taking on HS2’s growing number of critics. Of course, it wouldn’t be a transport speech without some economic forecasts. The Department for Transport have released a new report from KPMG, suggesting the line will lead to a £15 billion annual boost to the economy. But the overall theme is about making the HS2 debate about capacity: ‘The reason we need HS2 isn’t for its speed…the benefits of faster journeys are easy to explain. But the main

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The lobbying bill is a pernicious attack on freedom. All good men (and women) should oppose it.

Sometimes, you know, I come close to despair. These are the times when you think the Reverend I.M Jolly was right. About everything. I mean, you could read Benedict Brogan’s column in today’s Telegraph and think that with friends like these the free press – to say nothing of the freedoms of the ordinary citizen – have no need for enemies. To begin with, the headline is not encouraging. Shining a light on the shadowy figures who shape our politics. It’s just a little too close to the sort of thing you might find in a BNP newsletter. But perhaps, you may think, as is so often the case the headline is a

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Ian Katz was right the first time. And Rachel Reeves was being boring on purpose

I’ve never met the woman that the Newsnight editor Ian Katz last night accidentally described as ‘boring, snoring Rachel Reeves’, so for all I know, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury might be an absolute riot. Although actually, writing that, it occurs to me that maybe I have and she was just too boring for me to remember. Perhaps we sat next to each other at some sort of function, and had a fun chat about, ooh, fiscal prudence in a post-OBR paradigm, which involved her talking and me going ‘Mmmm’, and left her thinking, ‘He seems nice, I wonder if we’ll be friends?’ as she walked dreamily to

Ed West Ed West

Some people are feminine – get over it

In the latest victory against sexism, Toys ‘R’ Us is to stop labelling its products as being for ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ after pressure from campaigners, joining such shops as Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Boots, Harrods and Hamleys . In its report the Huffington Post quoted a woman who sells engineering toys aimed at girls, who hopes to show it’s not just a ‘niche’ but rather they can ‘prove convention wrong’ by making it more mass market. But what is wrong with being a niche market? One of the wonderful benefits of free-market capitalism is that it allows niches to flourish, so that people who once would have been forced into uncomfortable roles can

Steerpike Steerpike

The curse of Newsnight strikes again

Poor Ian Katz. Just days into his new job as editor of Newsnight and he’s already in hot water. Accidentally panning a guest behind their back is hardly the most dignified of starts. Mr Steerpike would love to know who this was really meant to be seen by rather than Katz’s thousands of followers: While Rachel Reeves is undoubtedly tedious, it’s hardly a good idea to actually say it. Katz’s former Guardian colleagues will no doubt be happy to see him enjoying his new outlet. So what are the repercussions of the blunder? Not great if the reaction of Labour’s attack dog Michael Dugher is anything to go by: ‘Good luck

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The flammability of dwarves

An Aussie rules footballer was apparently in trouble for having set fire to a dwarf who had been booked to entertain the team at an end of season party. Clinton Jones saw the diminutive Blake Johnston capering around and, being a half-wit, couldn’t resist applying a gas lighter to his backside. Whooooof, went the dwarf. Quite rightly Jones has been carpeted by bosses and forced to pay compensation. Too few people understand that dwarves are highly flammable – and some will actually explode if exposed to a naked flame. If you are being entertained by a dwarf it is a good idea to spray them with a fine mist of

Saturday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator literary competition No. 2816: Let’s twist

This week we are in Roald Dahl territory. You are invited to submit a short story of up to 150 words with an ingenious twist at the end. Please email entries, marked Competition 2816, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 18 September. Here are the results of the latest competition, in which competitors were invited to submit an application in verse, from the poet of their choice, for the position of poet laureate.