Society

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Sir Brian’s PR offensive continues

Sir Brian Leveson, who has ascended from his inquiry podium to President of the Queen’s Bench Division and Chairman of the Sentencing Council, seems to be getting a taste for public appearances. Last week he frustratingly stonewalled two parliamentary committees who had the temerity to ask for some post-publication thoughts on his report into the press, saying ‘I am a serving judge. It would be absolutely inappropriate for me to come back into the question of my report or regulation of the Press.’ A parliamentarian, Philip Davies, called him a ‘berk’ in consequence. Mr S has heard a few of the good judge’s learned friends express a similar view over the years.

The Spectator

Transcript: John Major calls for an emergency tax on energy companies

Sir John Major told a Westminster lunch this afternoon that the government should impose an emergency tax upon the energy companies to help families keep warm this winter. Here is a transcript of what the former Conservative Prime Minister said: I think when Ed Miliband made his suggestions about energy some weeks ago, I think his heart was in the right place but his head had gone walkabout. But he did touch on an issue that’s very important. The private sector is something the Conservative party supports, but when the private sector goes wrong, or behaves badly, I think it’s entirely right to make changes and put it right. Governments

Sebastian Payne

Finally, an end to health tourism in Britain?

‘When this paper reported a senior surgeon’s warning that health tourism could be costing the NHS “billions”‘, begins today’s leader in the Daily Mail on the government’s efforts to clamp down on treating foreign nationals. That’s one (rather cheeky) way of putting it. Another way is ‘When this newspaper reported a piece that appeared in The Spectator and made it a cover’. For our subscribers, it was that familiar feeling of déjà lu — when you read in the newspapers something you first saw in our pages. But the problem of NHS tourism, which Prof J Meirion Thomas exposed, is at last being addressed. Dr Thomas’ original Spectator article appeared in

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Why do the Saudis think they can lecture the United Nations about human rights?

A curious lack of prominence, this week, given over to the news that Saudi Arabia has rejected the chance of a two-year seat on the UN Security Council. Mainly, the Saudis are miffed that nobody has bombed Syria yet. According to the Saudi Foreign Ministry, this inaction sanctions  “the mechanisms of action and double standards existing in the Security Council [which] prevent it from performing its duties and assuming its responsibilities towards preserving international peace and security… The failure of the Security Council to make the Middle East a free zone of all weapons of mass destruction…or to prevent any country in the region from possessing nuclear weapons is [more] irrefutable evidence

Monday

Douglas Murray

This is no time to prosecute the perpetrators of ‘Bloody Sunday’

The front-page of yesterday’s Sunday Times carried the news that up to 20 retired members of the British Armed forces are likely to be taken in for questioning in relation to the deaths of 30th January 1972, known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. Some readers will know that I have taken a great interest in this case and have written a book which I don’t think spares many details on what specific soldiers of 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, among others, did that day. In certain cases – including that of at least one soldier who is still alive (‘Soldier F’) – I do not hesitate to call what they did

Steerpike Steerpike

Who is Natalie Rowe’s ‘Joe’?

The only question on lips this morning: Who is Joe? This mysterious character lurks on the pages of a new book by Natalie Rowe, a former prostitute and dominatrix who was once photographed with George Osborne. Rowe will only confirm that ‘Joe’ was ‘a young politician’ when she knew him and that he became a minister. It has been made very clear that ‘Joe’ is not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so who is he? ‘There was a spark of attraction ­between us. We once had a snog at one of my parties and, as we chatted, he told me he’d never had a black girl before. Not because he didn’t want

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Three cheers for the board at West Ham

What a pleasure it is to bring you a good news story this morning, something uplifting. On Saturday afternoon, West Ham entertained Manchester City, but a substantial number of City’s ticket allocation was not taken up. So the West Ham board, which includes the lovely Karen Brady, decided to give the spare tickets, free of charge, to some “locals” who were not usually habituated to visiting the ground each week. The “locals” took up the offer and came along to Upton Park where they dutifully cheered for Manchester City and entertained regular supporters by dropping to their knees for prayers at half time. You can only imagine how delighted the

Sunday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

A 1960s memo to Daily Mail journalists on how to behave

A friend has exhumed instructions issued to Daily Mail journalists by their editor, Mike Randall, in the mid-1960s, about how to behave (below). The first three items read: ‘1. No member of Daily Mail staff intrudes or is called upon to intrude into private lives where no public interest is involved. 2. No ordinary member of the public is lured, coerced or in any way pressed by a Daily Mail representative into giving an interview or picture which he is clearly unwilling to give. 3. It remains our duty at all times to expose the fraud and reveal the mountebank wherever the public interest is involved.’ This is a good deal crisper than Leveson, but it

Saturday

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Shakespeare does Dallas

Spectator literary competition No. 2822 This week’s challenge is to submit an extract from a scene from a contemporary soap opera (TV or radio) as Shakespeare might have written it. Please email entries, of up to 16 lines, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 30 October. Here are the results of this week’s challenge, in which competitors were invited to write a poem either in free verse mocking rhymed, metrical verse or in conventional verse mocking free verse.

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why politicians shouldn’t say ‘should’

David Cameron is currently trying to work out what his position on jumpers is after Number 10 was forced to issue an amazing clarification this afternoon. A spokesman said: ‘To be clear, it is entirely false to suggest the PM would advise people they should wear jumpers to stay warm. Any suggestion to the contrary is mischief-making. The Prime Minister would point people to a range of things being done to help people with their fuel bills, such as legislating to put everyone on the best tariff for them. He believes Labour’s “price freeze” policy is a con – and certainly would not advise people on what they should wear.’

Ed West Ed West

Real feminists stand up for women

As Edmund Burke wrote: ‘Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend.’ Testify, brother – and if our lawmakers have no manners, then we are really up a creek. As Spectator columnist James Forsyth noticed yesterday: ‘Quite remarkable that no MP has offered Jo Swinson, who is seven months pregnant, a seat. Really shocking manners and decency.’ Swinson didn’t help matters when, according to the Mail, she said it would have been ‘quite sexist’ to suggest she was not capable of standing. I wonder how damaging that sort of attitude is to feminism in general? One of the persistent grumbles I hear

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Norman Geras: Rest in peace, comrade

I was shocked this morning to log on to Twitter and learn that Norman Geras had died. I can think of few political writers, who have influenced me more comprehensively. Whenever I faced a difficult moral question, I would at some point think ‘ah, what is Norm saying about this,’ go to his blog and see that Norm had found a way through. Last year Norm’s colleagues Stephen de Wijze and Eve Garrard published a collection of essays in Norm’s honour. I was flattered when they asked me to write about Norm’s dual life as Manchester University’s Emeritus Professor of Politics and one of the first writers to embrace the

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 17 October 2013

A fat lot of good Sir: Max Pemberton is right that obesity is a terrible problem in western society (‘The battle of the bulge’, 12 October). But it is not helped by doctors. He seems to think that eating fat makes you fat: ‘While people back then were slimmer, they ate fattier foods.’ He then appears surprised that despite ‘eating better now’ and having access to more gyms and ‘working out more’ (which is arguable), we are not as slim as our predecessors. The plague of obesity seems to have started about 40 years ago, when scientists, funded by margarine manufacturers, came up with the brilliant wheeze that eating animal

The Spectator

Should ‘Union Jack’ just be used at sea?

Union dispute Pedants suffered a blow as the chief vexillologist of the Flag Institute declared that the Union Jack and Union Flag are interchangeable terms, the latter being just as correct on land as it is at sea. Here are both sides of the argument: evidence for ‘union jack’ being correct only at sea — A ‘jack’ is an old term for the bow flag of a vessel, and was in use before the Union Jack came into being. — A proclamation by King Charles I in 1634 referred only to the ‘Union Flag’. — The royal proclamation on 1801 which added the cross of St Patrick also used only the

Peter Jones

Gaddafi and the greatest sex tyrants in classical history

A new book about Colonel Gaddafi goes into shocking detail about his monstrous sexual appetites. He used rape as a political weapon and instrument of blackmail. Viagra was on constant supply for himself and his soldiers. His harem travelled with him under the guise of ‘delegations’ or ‘journalists’ (‘Hi, girls,’ Tony Blair greeted them). It was ever thus with tyrants. Herodotus (5th century bc) reports a conversation about the best form of rule between three Persians plotting to overthrow the government. Otanes attacks the single ruler, arguing that, being subject to no institutional control, he can indulge his wishes as he sees fit and this makes temptation irresistible. The result

Toby Young Toby Young

Toby Young: Am I in denial about turning 50?

By the time you read this I’ll be 50. A couple of years ago, when President Obama passed this milestone, I wrote a piece for the Telegraph about how much I was dreading it. But now it’s finally happening, I can’t think what all the fuss was about. Turns out it’s a bit like being mugged: more terrifying in the imagination than reality. It’s possible that I’m in denial. According to a study carried out by Warwick University and Dartmouth College, involving more than two million people, turning 50 is a low point. ‘One in five women and one in six men in this country suffer from depression at this

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Gordon Ramsay’s violently unsexy new restaurant shows he’s near the end

The Union Street Café is in a dismal, dingy part of London; dismal dingy Southwark. Southwark, in fact, is almost charismatically dingy, a land of despairing streets and brick arches and railway tracks heading suicidally for southern suburbs. Even the churches (small, brown, bricked, almost bricked-up) look apologetic, as if they know they have failed. But it is here, on the junction of Union Street and Great Suffolk Street, that Gordon Ramsay, the second most charismatic of the original celebrity chefs — after Marco Pierre White, now selling stock cubes to old ladies with his swiftly receding sexual charisma — has built his new restaurant. It is his tenth in

Dot Wordsworth

Word of the Week: Does it matter who uses the N-word?

The BBC is to broadcast what is now referred to as the ‘C-word’ in a drama about Dylan Thomas. ‘It was in an actual letter by Dylan Thomas,’ the screenwriter Andrew Davies said at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, ‘and the word was being used in a tender and affectionate way. We won that battle.’ No doubt any word can be used in a tender and affectionate way. A fortnight ago, BBC Radio 4 devoted a whole programme to what the title called the ‘N-word’. The suggestion was made that nigger is offensive even when used by blacks. The poet Dean Atta, who had published a volume of verse called I

Raymond Keene

Maecenas

Andrew Paulson, an American who lives in London, has been responsible for a remarkable chess revolution over the past year. He commissioned a YouGov study which showed that more than 600 million people worldwide regularly play chess. Paulson proceeded to raise sponsorship funds to stage two of the best chess tournaments ever held in London — and all within a matter of months. These were the London Grand Prix and the Candidates qualifier, to determine the challenger for the world title match which starts in a few weeks. Almost every grandmaster from the current elite — Carlsen, Kramnik, Svidler, Ivanchuk, Gelfand — was present in one or both of these

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What do I do when the pizzas arrive at the opening of my art show?

Q. I spent a week in a house party abroad, with an elderly and extremely polite friend of mine and his wife among my fellow guests. Our hostess really pulled out the stops for us — I have never been so well looked after in my life. While I was exchanging emails with her after the holiday, it emerged that she had not received a thank-you letter from our mutual friend, which was very odd as he is punctilious and always writes very good B&Bs at once. Three weeks later I was at a party with the couple in question and I revealed that our hostess was hurt that she had