Society

Thursday

Max Pemberton

Obesity is not a disease

‘Well, what diets have you tried so far?’ asked the GP, flicking through the patient’s notes. I was an innocent trainee doctor on my general practice placement at the time and watched the interaction carefully, sensing a row was about to ensue. ‘Look, I don’t want to go on a diet, I want you to prescribe me these,’ snapped the patient, bringing out a neatly folded page she had torn out of a magazine. The GP, rolling his eyes at me, took the paper but didn’t read it. I suspected he’d read it before. This was yet another example of what’s becoming a very British epidemic: obesity being self-diagnosed as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

James Forsyth: Why hung parliaments are here to stay

Reshuffles are meant to demonstrate the power of a leader, to show that they are in command of their party. But what Ed Miliband, David Cameron and Nick Clegg all revealed this week was not their strengths but their fears. It was clear that Ed Miliband’s great worry is that in 2015 Labour will look like it is offering a replay of its last stint in government. In policy terms, his answer has been to make clear where he wants to break with the New Labour consensus. First, there were his frequent acts of contrition on immigration, then his conference pledge to freeze energy prices, by law, if elected. In

Lucy Vickery

Literary merger

In Competition 2818 you were asked to merge two literary classics and provide a synopsis of the new title. You obviously had great fun with this one. Frank Osen came up with Pollyanna Karenina: ‘A girl from New England is so relentlessly upbeat about her affair with a Russian aristocrat that he throws himself under a passing train’; and A Dance to the Music of Time Management for Dummies: ‘This deluxe boxed set includes many helpful organising tips that will have you breezing through the 12-novel series in only a few hours.’ Mae Scanlan’s pun-packed blend of Henry Gray and Dorian Gray made me laugh, as did Sylvia Fairley’s Life

Simon Hoggart

October Wine Club | 10 October 2013

An offer made by FromVineyardsDirect is always exciting, which is why FVD is one of our bestselling merchants. Their list is short, but selected with immense care. And they also have terrific tastings which are more like parties, sometimes in private houses of distinction, sometimes in public buildings which you want to get your toes inside, such as the Italian ambassador’s residence. These prices are not discounted, though FVD claims that their policy of buying direct from the growers keeps costs very low, and I do have to say that — without poring over their spreadsheets — what you get for your money cannot be questioned. Take the Bascand Riesling

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The real reason for rotten online reviews on TripAdvisor

‘Sorry, I’d love to go the pub this evening, but I have to go out. It’s my wife’s wedding anniversary.’ This Freudian slip was uttered by one of my colleagues a few years ago. It sprang into mind when I was casually browsing reviews of restaurants and hotels on TripAdvisor. I always head for the negative reviews first. Not for what they tell you about the venue, but for what they unintendedly reveal about the reviewer. Sarcastic quotation marks and periphrasis are always a bit of a give-away: ‘…there was a floating rubber object in the toilet bowl!!! After complaining at reception we were given another room and a full

Bruce Anderson

Treasures from a lost domaine

René Engel must have been a wonderful man. He studied wine-making before fighting in the trenches during the first world war, and spending some time in German captivity. He then went home to run — and improve — the family domaine in Vosne-Romanée. In those days, most Burgundian growers still thought of themselves as farmers who made wine. Few aspired to the glamour enjoyed by their counterparts in Bordeaux. Their viniculture was instinctive, traditional — and sometimes improvised. Pinot Noir is not an easy grape. Left to itself, especially if there is a poor summer, it can produce a thin liquid. So the Burgundians occasionally helped it along. Those wonderful

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Going off-piste in Val D’Isere

First things first. Yes, Val d’Isère does have a reputation for being expensive — and it is, especially if you’re planning on eating out and embracing the après ski every night. But no matter what anyone says, you can’t argue with the fact that the skiing is fantastic. Combined with its neighbour, Tignes, there’s a total of 330km of piste to explore, with plenty of steep red and blue runs that are perfect for intermediate and advanced skiers. One of the most frequent complaints about skiing in Val is getting home at the end of the day. Almost every route down to the main town is a challenge, even if

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle: Is Hugh Grant a pawn of the mad metropolitan left?

It is a peculiar alliance, when you think of it, which wishes to bring to an end 300 years of press freedom in this country. The handsome actor Hugh Grant would rather the press didn’t find out about him being ‘noshed’, as I believe the term has it, by a prostitute on some Los Angeles freeway. I can understand that, even if I do not think he has the right to make that call, given the image he adopts to sell himself to the public. The absolutist metro liberal left, meanwhile, would have no doubt -whatsoever who was the victim in that particular scenario: the nosher, not the noshee. Grant should

Simon Jenkins

Simon Jenkins’s notebook: Why a wind farm will never be as beautiful as a railway viaduct

Until I plotted a book on England’s best views I had not realised how much people cared. Ask them to nominate a favourite church or house or even town and they will casually suggest a few. Ask for a view and you delve deep. A view is personal, intimate. It is not a landscape but the experience of a landscape. Many suggested places where they had fallen in love or found consolation. A number said simply, ‘The view from the end of my garden.’ Rejecting such a choice for ‘England’s best views’ could be a personal slight. That may be why Hazlitt advised his readers always to walk the countryside

Daniel McCarthy

Obamacare? Not in the least

   Washington, DC On or around 17 October, the United States will stop paying its bills. The US Treasury will reach the limit of the debt it can legally issue — the ‘debt ceiling’ — and unless Barack Obama and Republicans in the House of Representatives come to an agreement, the US will stand on the brink of default. How did Obama get us into this mess? More importantly, can he get us out before the country (if not the world) plummets into crisis? The answer to the first question might surprise you: Obama is not an adroit politician. Good at winning votes, yes — not only better than the

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Less sex please, we’re British

Jeer if you will, but I was shocked by the latest Bridget Jones book, Mad About the Boy. I was shocked by the sex. No, honestly. Compared with its predecessors, including a one-off series about how Bridget got pregnant but wasn’t sure by whom, this latest book ratchets up the raunch quite markedly. Granted, Bridget is having it off with a boy of 29 (to her 51), but there weren’t any passages from her previous diaries like this: ‘Oh God. What was I thinking having sex all night? The whole makeup/breakup thing somehow whipped Roxster and me up into a sexual frenzy and neither of us could stay asleep. Was

James Delingpole James Delingpole

James Delingpole: I don’t automatically support Piers Morgan. So why should women automatically support Julia Gillard?

I’ve been racking my brains to think what I might have in common with Kim Jong Un and Piers Morgan. But apart from owning a spectacularly tiny penis, I simply cannot think. Certainly, when Kim is getting it in the neck for having one of his ex-girlfriends executed by firing squad to please his wife, or whenever Morgan is being criticised for being just the worst thing ever, I never find myself seized with some sudden hormonal urge to rush to their defence on account of the fact that we’re all part of the Brotherhood. Maybe, though, we’re missing a trick. Maybe we chaps of the world could enjoy so

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Matthew Parris: dangerous when sober

In his Times notebook today, Matthew Parris fires off a warning: don’t mess with me when I’m sober. On The World Tonight last Wednesday, he reveals, he had not had his customary evening drink, and was therefore sharper than usual towards the BBC panel. Drink mellows him, you see. Sobriety has the opposite effect. Which sets us up nicely for the forthcoming Spectator ‘STOP HS2!” debate, which will pit Matthew, who supports High Speed Rail, against Nigel Farage, who doesn’t. Where Matthew calms when mixed with alcohol, Farage notoriously becomes more vociferous with each pint. The Spectator Events team has assured me that Matthew will be kept dry until the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory cost of living drive begins in earnest

At their autumn conference, the Tories managed to get the last word in on the cost of living debate by explaining that you can’t just talk about living standards while not having a proper plan for the economy. This was all very well and good and the party leadership was confident that this was an easy sell to voters who already trust them more on the economy and continue to blame Labour. But many were worried that without the sort of retail offer that Labour had made at its conference, the Tories still wouldn’t cut through. George Osborne’s fuel duty freeze announcement in his speech was the start of what

Tuesday

The Spectator

Melanie McDonagh: This is why our abortion laws are a joke

There’s been much chatter today about Keir Starmer’s declaration that it was right not to prosecute doctors who authorised abortions that were requested because of the gender of the foetus. You won’t read a better piece on the subject than the article by our new regular blogger Melanie McDonagh. She describes the full implications of Mr Starmer’s thinking: ‘As Mr Starmer made clear it’s possible for doctors to authorise an abortion without actually ever having seen the woman concerned. On this basis, pretty well any abortion is justified, on the basis that any pregnancy, carried to term, would be worse for the mental or physical health of the mother than not

Philip Delves-Broughton

America is not facing a debt crisis. Why pretend otherwise?

The maths of America’s financial problems are fairly simple. Every year the federal government spends more than it brings in so must borrow to fill the gap. This is fine when you’re young and healthy, with great prospects and you are borrowing to invest. But one day your lenders look at you and realise you’re not young and growing any more. You’re middle-aged and knackered. You are borrowing simply to spend and time is running out for you to pay back your debts. It’s an ugly moment for anyone, especially the most powerful country in the world. There are economists like Paul Krugman who argue that America is not like

Ed West Ed West

Do we really need to turn the mentally ill into victims?

Public wrath has finally moved from the Daily Mail, and to the Sun over its splash yesterday on the mentally ill. It’s deemed especially offensive because this is apparently Mental Health Awareness Week. For some time now mental illness has been becoming the new victimhood du jour, and among the reasons is that mental illness is so spectral and ambiguous that lots of people can join in (especially journalists). Laurie Penny wrote that it was unfair to use stereotypes about mad axe man because: ‘Like a lot of people, I sometimes get depressed and anxious. On precisely none of these occasions have I flown into a murderous rage and stabbed

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Britain’s abortion laws are inherently absurd

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, yesterday declared that it was right not to prosecute doctors who authorised abortions which, according to a Telegraph investigation, were requested because of the gender of the foetus. It seems that the women mentioned more than one reason for the abortions so it wasn’t possible to isolate the gender selection element from the other factors. ‘The only basis for a prosecution would be that although we could not prove these doctors authorised a gender-specific abortion, they did not carry out a sufficiently robust assessment of the risks,’ he said. And just what might a ‘robust’ assessment of risk amount to? As Mr Starmer made clear it’s

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sorry, Privy Council – press freedom was never yours to reject

The Queen need not bother attending Wednesday’s meeting of the Privy Council: the decision over press regulation has already been taken according to BBC Newsnight. And it has leaked. An octet of MPs has decided to reject the newspapers’ attempt to preserve press freedom (or self-regulation) and defer until 30 October  judgment on the politicians’ rival plan for press regulation. Here’s the audio:- listen to ‘Newsnight on Privy Council’s press regulation decision 7 Oct 13’ on Audioboo