Society

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is David Cameron about to drop minimum alcohol pricing?

James Chapman reports today that plans for a minimum unit price for alcohol are set to be dropped. This is welcome news. The policy always promised to simply drive up the price of drink, penalising all drinkers, while doing little about public drunkenness or binge drinking. The Mail says that the plan has fallen out of favour because of the government’s new emphasis on the cost of living. It is dawning on everyone that that hugely increasing the price of people’s pleasures at a time of falling real incomes is not a sensible political move. Although, the question remains of whether David Cameron will be prepared to fully abandon a

Friday

Charlotte Leslie

Why David Nicholson must go

As the Mid-Staffs tragedy unfurls, it becomes more and more apparent that contrary to the insistence of former Labour Ministers and Prime Ministers, this was not an isolated case, but an appalling example of problems evident throughout the NHS. Indeed, back in 2008, the then Labour Government received reports from respected international health consultants warning of a culture of fear and compliance within the NHS; a place where the emphasis was on ‘hitting the targets, but missing the point’ and patient safety came second to presenting a set of statistics suitable for dispatch-box delivery. Ironically, these reports had been commissioned to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the NHS, but far

Alex Massie Alex Massie

If David Cameron is serious about losing the next election he’ll cuddle-up to UKIP

OK. Remember this: by-elections are always liable to be interpreted too keenly. Elections often fought on local issues then have their results scrutinised as though the election was a miniature general election. It isn’t. People who should know better this morning are forgetting that. You know what else matters? The candidate. They matter much more at a by-election than they do in a general election. The Tory candidate Maria Hutchings might have won Eastleigh in a general election. But a by-election brings greater scrutiny. A good number of voters are minded to pick the best candidate. I suspect few of those voters endorsed Ms Hutchings. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems chose

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Eastleigh by-election live blog

12am: The word from the count is the Liberal Democrats have held Eastleigh. Intriguingly, the Liberal Democrats think UKIP have taken second. Labour appear set for a poor fourth. If the Tories have come third with the Lib Dems holding the seat, David Cameron’s Tory critics will have a field-day tomorrow. 12.20am A source at the count tells Coffee House that UKIP appear to have won more votes today than any other party. But the Liberal Democrats will win thanks to their huge lead on postal votes 12.50am Tim Farron is trying to play down expectations. But revealingly he says that a Lib Dem win would be a game changer

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Sacrificial rite

Rudolph Spielmann, a contemporary of Rubinstein, Reti, Alekhine and Capablanca, can be seen as the Romantic equivalent to a further great master of the 1920s, Aron Nimzowitsch. Whereas Nimzowitsch made his literary reputation with his book of chess strategy, My System, Spielmann entrusted his thoughts on the right way to play chess in his parallel tome, The Art of Sacrifice. The ideal in Spielmann’s eyes was to play the opening like a book, the middlegame like a magician, and the endgame like a machine. Spielmann believed that the power of sacrifice lay not necessarily in its soundness, but in its ability to daze and confuse the opponent. In the foreword

Raymond Keene

No. 255

Black to play. This position is from Sjoholm-Spielmann, Kalmar 1941. How did Black swiftly decimate the white kingside?  Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 5 March 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 Rxg7 Last week’s winner Jeremy Hart, Yatton, Somerset

The Spectator

Letters | 28 February 2013

Healing the world Sir: We most warmly commend the courage of Professor Meirion Thomas (‘The next NHS scandal’, 23 February) in lifting the lid on the appalling abuse of the NHS by foreign visitors. It has been going on for years but has been covered up by the culture of fear that has pervaded that organisation. We stand ready to support the professor in parliament if that should prove necessary. Regrettably, the present position is even worse than he described. The relevant quango (the Primary Care Commissioning group) issued instructions last July that GPs must accept an application for registration from any foreign visitor who is here for more than

Griff Rhys Jones

Griff Rhys Jones: Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army

Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army, with Griff Rhys Jones, is on BBC2 at 9pm on Sunday, 7th July. I have spent a week with old, old men, interviewing veterans who served with the West African regiments in Burma in the 1940s. It’s for a television programme about my father’s war. The young men who were shipped off to the Far East are nonagenarians now and, black or white, universally charming and calm: unhurried, unflappable and brimming with patient good humour. At first, I thought that that’s what must happen as you approach your own centenary. But then I realised it might be the other way round. Perhaps this

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 28 February 2013

Q. I would like to return the hospitality of a senior member of the royal family but my wife insists that an invitation is not expected and would only embarrass as we could not match the standards. Meanwhile I have heard that a friend of a friend of a friend has had this senior royal to stay, more than once, in very modest converted farm buildings in the West Country. What do you recommend? — Name and address withheld A. You need not issue a direct invitation — just a strongly hinting overture that he would be more than welcome. If and when top royals want to come and stay

Taki

High life | 28 February 2013

‘I was distressed to learn of some of your current problems and wanted to send you a word of encouragement. Since the time Bob Tyrrell introduced us a few years ago, I have been one of your admirers…’ This letter, dated 23 January 1985, was addressed to me and was signed by Richard Nixon. I had it framed and it hangs in my office. The only other letter hanging next to it is from Sir Denis Thatcher, after he and the Lady visited me in Switzerland. Nixon and Thatcher, two vastly misunderstood leaders who one day will be seen rightly as giants among the midgets who preceded and followed them.

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 28 February 2013

Neil Clark’s wonderful piece three weeks ago, ‘Running out of sweeties’ (The Spectator, 16 February), has lingered in my mind. He pointed to a type of Englishness characterised by kindness, eccentricity and a complete absence of malice, which used to be known, he said, as ‘sweet’. Like rare and delicate flowers, our nation’s sweeties are facing extinction, he claimed, in the harsher economic and social climate. These holy innocents see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and are always the first to volunteer, yet today’s rigorously equal society allows them no room. Sad. I’ve known sweeties from all walks of life. There used to be more in the

Melissa Kite

Real life | 28 February 2013

Two pedantic nerds should not be allowed to come together in a small space. In any case, the guy who runs quiz night at The Black Swan and I have a history of locking horns. On Halloween, we had a terrible row about Greek semantics. He asked, ‘What animal would you turn into if you were suffering from lycanthropy?’ I wrote down ‘wolf’ and assured my team that we were on firm ground as I happened to be an avid reader of period horror stories. But when it came to the marking, the pub quiz compère said the answer was ‘werewolf’ and that we couldn’t have a point for writing

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 28 February 2013

Eight years ago I was in Rome for The Spectator to write a piece about the election of a new pope after the death of John-Paul II. Within two days, and after only four ballots, some wispy white smoke emerged from the little chimney on the roof of the Sistine chapel. The College of Cardinals had made its decision and chosen the German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to be the 265th occupant of the throne of St Peter. He was already 78 years old and said to be longing for speedy retirement from his taxing job as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the oldest of the

Robin Oakley

Determined force

Racing for me is all about hope, although the Irish training wizard Mick O’Toole did once declare, ‘Racing is a game of make-believe. If people didn’t have horses they thought were better than they really were, National Hunt racing would collapse.’ Two weeks ago, on a snowy morning in Stow-on-the-Wold, I was trying to keep up with David Bridgwater, as much of an action man as a trainer as he was when pumping home winners in the saddle. We bumped up to the gallops with a group of owners to watch wife Lucy, jockey Tommy Phelan and conditional Jake Hodson put a few of the inmates of Wyck Hill Farm

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 28 February 2013

Like most children, I was often told: ‘Count the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.’ I was strangely transfixed by the idea — as though, through some strange alchemy, coins could turn into notes all by themselves if you just waited long enough. But I never did; I couldn’t resist spending my pocket money on penny chews every Saturday. In adulthood, however, I often find myself thinking how useful the saying is in relation to bridge, reconfigured as: look after the part-scores and the games will look after themselves. Like many players, I struggle to stay focused when playing in low-level contracts: I’m far more interested in games

Dot Wordsworth

Contamination

A shrouded skull flanked by serpents above a tureen inscribed with the words, ‘There is death in the pot’ (2 Kings 4:40), ornaments the title page of A Treatise on the Adulterations of Food by Frederick Accum (1820). Accum details hair-raising additions to food in the pursuit of profit, not just alum to bread but lead pigments to anchovy sauce and laurel berries to custard (which made three little children in Yorkshire fall insensible for ten hours, and lucky to survive). Alum is a mineral otherwise used as a styptic. Three decades on, Tennyson in Maud wrote: ‘Chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread /

Toby Young Toby Young

The daily I miss every day

Not a day passes in which I don’t regret firing Irena. She was my ‘daily’ from 1991 to 2004. I don’t think I could have asked for anyone better qualified. Until she came to work for me she had been a professor of geology at a Russian university, but she lost her job when the Soviet Union collapsed and became an economic migrant. In spite of this setback, she never displayed any bitterness. On the contrary, she was remarkably stoical — something to do with the Russian soul, no doubt. Her only shortcoming was that she never called me by my correct name. She’d misheard me when I first introduced myself

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 28 February 2013

Home Moody’s reduced Britain’s credit rating from AAA to AA1. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: ‘Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.’ Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the bank of England, was outvoted on its Monetary Policy Committee when he proposed more quantitative easing in February. Paul Tucker, the deputy governor, said that negative interest rates should be considered. Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27, and Ashik Ali, 27, from Birmingham, were found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of plotting to recruit a team of six or eight suicide bombers to carry out a spectacular bombing campaign. Birmingham

Peter Jones

Aristotle on public relations

So many people’s reputation is under threat these days — from bankers to cardinals to the Lib Dem peer Lord Rennard — that one imagines reputation management agencies, online or otherwise, are doing terrific business. The ancients got there more than two millennia ago. Greeks regularly expressed their desire to be virtuous in terms of being ‘seen’ to be so, as if there were no point in virtue per se unless people knew about it. One law-court speaker puts it like this: ‘What is at stake for me is not simply to recover a large sum of money, but to avoid being thought to have dishonestly coveted what was not

The Spectator

Little Britain

The foreign news pages read increasingly like some terrible satire on western military decline. Two years ago French and British forces, with the help of the US Navy, managed to help Libyan rebels topple Colonel Gaddafi. This year, the French needed British support to go to war against some tribesmen in Mali. It was a successful operation, but the ‘Timbuktu Freed’ headline rather summed up the extent of European military power today. The French have only two drone aircraft (the Americans have hundreds) and had to drop concrete bombs on Tripoli when they ran low on real ones. As the foreign policy rhetoric of our media and political leadership grows,