Society

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sir David Nicholson to go: but will it change the culture at the top of the NHS?

Health Service Journal has a great scoop this afternoon that NHS boss Sir David Nicholson will retire in March 2014. The man who was in charge of the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust when the serious failings in care took place had long been considered a busted flush, but his departure seems to be set for a great deal later than those pushing for it had hoped. I’ve spoken to Conservative MP Charlotte Leslie, who has long been after Nicholson’s scalp. She says: ‘I don’t think it’s soon enough and he should go immediately. If you want to oversee a massive culture change from the bullying and stifling of whistleblowers, then you

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Hunt attacks Labour for A&E crisis

Andy Burnham summoned Jeremy Hunt to the Commons this afternoon for a shouty hour about who loves the NHS more. The Health Secretary’s answer to Labour’s urgent question on the government’s plans for changes to the GP contract and the crisis in Accident and Emergency departments was largely a direct attack on decisions the opposition took when it was in government. He decried Labour’s ‘disastrous changes to the GP contract’ which had led to a significant rise in the number of patients visiting A&E, and ‘the disastrous failure of Labour’s IT contract’. He also told Burnham that his government had failed to address the disconnect between social care and the

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Writers in a state of fear

A State of Fear, Joseph Clyde’s new thriller*, stands out for many reasons. Thrillers only work if they are thrilling, and Clyde’s description of the search for the terrorist who planted a dirty bomb in central London keeps the reader fascinated. The best thrillers are more than just page-turners, however, and Clyde presents a convincing picture of what Britain could look like after law and order breaks down and the economy collapses. Like all dystopian novelists, he takes conflicts in the present and imagines how they will play out in his imagined future. Today’s sectarian divisions and the failure of Britain to deal with them, or even admit they exist,

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

A point of order, Your Royal Highness

The Duke of Cambridge joined forces with Prince Harry this morning to open Tedworth House Recovery Centre, the military hospital run by Help for Heroes. All power to the duke’s elbow, but one line jarred. William, rather tellingly, told the assembled top brass and troops that ‘even journalists’ had helped to promote the organisation and fund-raise for this vital facility. He went on to crack a joke at the expense of the tabloids. The duke’s disdain for the media is well documented, and justifiable in some cases. But Help for Heroes has had huge assistance from those same tabloids at which William was sneering from the podium. Fundraising, publicity, coverage

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Britain can now afford to send a man into space. Pity we can’t afford a proper navy

HMS Ark Royal leaves Portsmouth for Turkey today to be dismantled and sold for scrap; the Harrier jets she once carried are being sold to the Americans for spare parts. She’s being decommissioned early as we can’t afford to keep her now. Times are tough, and hard choices need to be made. The same bulletin had, as its preceding item, news that the coalition government has decided it can now afford to spend £16 million of the money it’s borrowing to send an astronaut into the EU’s space station. The Labour government deemed this unaffordable in the boom years, but the well-informed BBC report explained how thinking has changed:- “For

Friday

Douglas Murray

Some anti-fascists are very fascistic

Nigel Farage has just met one of the most fascinating aspects of modern politics. He was surrounded in Edinburgh by left-wing ‘anti-fascists’ shouting ‘Racist scum. Go back to England’. The same mob also screamed ‘scum’ repeatedly at the top of their voice until they made him leave. This is probably the best demonstration so far of something which has gone un-remarked upon for too long. Among the closest thing we have to fascists in modern Britain are people who call themselves ‘anti-fascists’. Not all people who call themselves ‘anti-fascist’, thank goodness. But a sizable portion.  If you ever see these people in action you will notice that they behave in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ministers aren’t just preparing for Coalition divorce, they’re organising arguments with their partners too

Reports today that the Conservatives are wargaming end-of-Coalition scenarios in the event of the Lib Dems leaving early won’t come as a surprise, given the bickering over the past few weeks on snooping, childcare and Europe. But in the interim, ministers are also trying to work out how both parties can practise a sensible differentiation policy without appearing to squabble endlessly for another two years. Nick Clegg spoke about the need for sausage machine government before Christmas, with a call for honesty about the difference between the two parties on policies as they were being developed. He has annoyed Theresa May something rotten by sticking to that principle on the

Thursday

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Tanya Gold reviews STK London

STK is a steakhouse at the bottom of the ME Hotel on the Aldwych. (This is a real name for a real hotel. The cult of individualism has finally reached its apogee in the hotel sense, and, if you are curious, it looks like a piece of St Tropez that fell off and hit the Embankment.) The restaurant itself looks like a love ball, or a stupid person’s idea of what is sexy, or Hugh Hefner’s personal imago. It is dark and made of MDF in varying degrees of glisten and smear; if STK were a movie it would be Showgirls, in which the protagonist writhes like a dolphin in

Susan Hill Susan Hill

Susan Hill’s diary: The joy of fountain pens, the frustration of GP appointments

I bet you remember your first fountain pen. Mine was a Conway Stewart with marbled barrel, I had it for starting Big School and I used to polish it. That trusty pen lasted until A-levels finally broke its back and after that I slipped down the primrose ballpoint path to slovenly writing. I never used a typewriter — too noisy, so I hand-wrote my books until the almost-silent laptop seduced me down another slithery slope. But I still hand-write when I need to take my time — books can be divided, like Americans, into fast ones and slow ones. Recently, a friend told me he had gone back to a

Dot Wordsworth

Grocery

Was Margaret Thatcher brought up in a grocery? I wouldn’t say so. The Americans would. I’d call her father’s shop in Grantham a grocer’s. He sold grocery. Yet I saw the Times refer to ‘her father’s grocery store’, which sounds doubly American. It’s not just Margaret Thatcher. The Daily Mail referred to Prince Harry befriending a woman ‘who worked in a grocery store near Eton’. The Americans have been calling a grocer’s a grocery for some time, and a baker’s a bakery. Frances Trollope, the novelist’s mother, noticed it in her Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), and a decade later Dickens wrote of the Americans’ ‘Bakery’, ‘Grocery’, and ‘Bookbindery’. I

Andrew Lambirth

Painting begins at 90 – celebration of Jeffrey Camp, Anthony Eyton and Patrick George

The year 1923 was a good one for British artists, witnessing the birth of three painters who became friends and whose work epitomises a rich strand of realism in the native tradition. Jeffery Camp was born at Oulton Broad in Suffolk, and studied at Lowestoft and Ipswich Art Schools before going to Edinburgh College of Art in 1941. Anthony Eyton was born in Teddington, Middlesex, and attended the Department of Fine Art at the University of Reading for a term, studying under Professor Anthony Betts. He served five years in the army before continuing his education at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (1947–51). Patrick George was born in Manchester,

The Spectator

Letters | 16 May 2013

The other side of fracking Sir: Peter Lilley’s article on fracking (‘The only way is shale’, 11 May) is right to outline the role that shale can play in addressing Britain’s energy crisis, creating jobs, and generating tax revenues. But he is guilty of several errors and omissions. First, he ignores the concerns of local communities in opposing drilling and extraction. Second, he fails to address questions around methane leakage which are concerning US legislators and executive agencies. Third, he does not set out a role for carbon capture and storage technology, which would reduce the carbon emissions of shale. Fourth, he fails to acknowledge the body of evidence which

Taki

The secret to enjoying the Great Gatsby film? Forget there was ever a book – and enjoy the entertainment.

New York At an art shindig on Park Avenue, I spotted Baz Luhrmann, the director of the latest and very noisy version of The Great Gatsby. A charming man, I was told, just before I was shocked — shocked à la Captain Renault — to hear the dwarfish mayor of the Big Bagel suggest an honorary American citizenship for — you’ll never guess — that Russian son-of-a-bitch Roman Abramovich. Too bad I didn’t have my American passport with me, because I would have thrown it at him and told him to keep it. I can understand why some broken-down English toffs need to kiss the Abramovich behind because they mistakenly

Jeremy Clarke

Low life: The art of filling out form ESA50

‘Can you manage to plan, start and finish daily tasks?’ said a panic-stricken Simon, reading aloud from the Department of Work and Pensions ESA50 Limited Capability for Work form. He was struggling with Section 2, which was inviting him to describe his ‘mental, cognitive and intellectual functions’ by answering questions furnished with multiple choice answers such as ‘Never’, ‘Sometimes’ or ‘It varies’. While you and I have been enjoying the sight of the political class changing direction like a shoal of spooked sardines, hundreds of thousands of ordinary British people on disability benefits have had only one thing on their minds — form ESA50. Simon has got himself into a

The Spectator

Barometer | 16 May 2013

The first filibuster A bill for an in-out referendum on the EU seems doomed to be killed off by a ‘filibuster’ — a campaign by opponents to keep on talking until it runs out of time. — The filibuster is often assumed to be an invention of Westminster, yet its first recorded use was in the Roman senate in 60 BC, by Cato the Younger against an attempt by private contractors to renegotiate deals for government work. — The publicani were businessmen who bid for the right to collect taxes in the provinces on behalf of Rome. Many, however, got their sums wrong and were losing money. Cato was having

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 16 May 2013

If you are a regular reader of this column — do I have a regular reader who did not actually give birth to me? — you may remember that a couple of weeks ago no one could have felt sorrier for themselves than moi. We had been knocked out of every competition you could think of and a few you couldn’t. Well, I have one thing to say to you, my regular reader: a good moan helps! Last weekend we trouped off to Stratford-upon-Avon, more in hope than expectation, to play Britain’s Premier Congress, the Schapiro Spring Foursomes. We plodded on. And on. And on. And finally we won! As

Melissa Kite

Real life: the taming of a shrewish mare

One of my favourite things to do is to visit the field where Tara, my bad-tempered chestnut hunter is retired because there, I know, I will find like-minded company. We are two obstreperous mares together. Never happy to concede defeat on the smallest of issues where a long, arduous battle might get us absolutely nowhere, we are two of a kind. When I bought her more than ten years ago, the friend who spotted her in Horse and Hound and went with me to try her out warned me: ‘You’re quite alike. I’m not sure if that will always be a good thing.’ She was right. Tara could handstand with

Alexander Chancellor

Long life: While I won’t vote for the EU withdrawal, part of me hopes the quitters will win

I sometimes think that, by the time I die, my entire life will have been blighted by sterile, unresolved arguments about Europe. I have to admit that the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 made little impression on me at the time; but I was only 11 years old, Britain wasn’t involved in it, and I had no idea in any case what it was all about. It was, of course, the precursor to the European Economic Community, created in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome; but by then I was 17 and thought it sounded a very good idea, for its main purpose appeared to

Raymond Keene

Fire and ice

Sergei Karjakin stormed into an early lead with 4/4 in the elite tournament at Stavanger in Norway, which finishes on Saturday 18 May. Karjakin also triumphed in a blitz tournament (four minutes per player per game) preceding the main event, the results of which were used to determine pairings for the competition proper. Leading scores in this speed event were: Karjakin 61/2/9; Anand, Carlsen and Nakamura 6. Here is the game which Karjakin won against Carlsen in the blitz event.   Karjakin-Carlsen: Norway Masters Blitz 2013; Philidor Defence   1 e4 d6 2 d4 Nf6 3 Nc3 e5 4 Nf3 Nbd7 5 Bc4 Be7 6 0-0 A tempting alternative is 6 Bxf7+

Toby Young Toby Young

The thrill of the chase

I was in my garden office on Monday afternoon when I heard a loud noise behind me, as if someone had jumped over the back fence. Seconds later, a strange man walked past the window. I emerged gingerly from my office and found myself face to face with a giant. At first glance, he looked like a basketball player: mixed race, about 6ft 5, in his mid-twenties and built like an athlete. ‘Can I help you?’ I asked. Instead of replying, he vaulted on to the roof of my tool shed and dropped down into my neighbour’s garden. I ran up to the house, told my wife to call the