Society

Thursday

Julie Bindel

Sorry, but Parliament is full of sex pests

The news is dominated by tales of ‘sexual misconduct’ by men in positions of power, and nowhere is the smell of sleaze as strong as in Westminster. Our politicians work in a building formally known as a ‘palace’ where they are often treated like kings — and, occasionally, behave like them. Even more occasionally, the rest of the world catches a glimpse of what is going on. There has always been a certain tolerance of sexual misbehaviour, which is more often the subject of jokes than outrage. One Tory minister is teased by his colleagues for blowing his parliamentary staff budget on hiring a beautiful researcher, only to find her

Bruce Anderson

The tastes of temptation

There ought to be a wise adage: ‘If invited to do good works, always procrastinate. A better offer is bound to turn up.’ About a month ago, the phone rang. Would I attend the Oxford vs Cambridge wine tasting, sponsored by Pol Roger, which would also include a wine hacks vs wine trade contest? Festivities were to continue over lunch. The likelihood of a wooden spoon did not deter me. I was joyously accepting, when a horrible thought occurred. I checked the diary. My forebodings were justified. I was already engaged, to speak at the King’s School, Bruton. There was one possible solution: do both. Get thee behind me, Satan.

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Stop shouting at Hilary Mantel – there are real outrages to address

It started the other week, when David Cameron was in India. Although it started like a bout of malaria starts, so I suppose the more precise term would be ‘recurred’. There he is in Amritsar, touring the site of a massacre, possibly in that hat. And all Britain wants to know is what he thinks about what Hilary Mantel thinks about the Duchess of Cambridge. What, I thought to myself, the hell is wrong with us? It’s a pretty expansive ‘us’, this, and it includes Cameron himself. ‘Actually, I haven’t read it,’ he should have said when asked, thousands of miles away, about an essay in the London Review of Books,

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Spending isn’t the answer. But how do we explain that?

One of the things I love about being a classical liberal is that I’m always on the right side of every argument. I’m pro: freedom, jobs, self-determination, cheap energy, higher living standards, academic excellence, property rights, an even better future, Michael Gove MP, wine, women, song. (So long as the song is not by Maroon 5 or Bruno Mars.) And I’m anti: arbitrary authority, nanny-statism, money-printing, tyranny, despair, almost all war, poverty, prohibition, disease, squalor, uncleaned-up dog poo, meddling busybodies, crap capital projects based on massive lies (that means you HS2!), corrupt officials, civil war, totalitarianism, hyperinflation, injustice, Tim Yeo MP. Yet you’d scarcely guess this to read some of

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why aren’t more people unemployed?

An unfamiliar noise floats over the town; an insistent, one-note metallic drone. Tracked to its source, it turns out to come from a sawmill in a hidden wooded valley a quarter of a mile from my house. Abandoned for the past year, the mill has suddenly come back to life. It is emitting great plumes of steam as well as a multi-decibel industrial racket. And men are working there — I can see only two or three, but still they constitute another little piece of the great employment puzzle. An uptick in demand for sawn timber matches reports of increased levels of activity in the construction and housebuilding sector. Sure

Olivia Cole

The staircase too scary for Bruce Willis, and other Oscar party stories

From a wedding to an awards ceremony, no self-respecting Los Angeles beano can take place without endless fixtures around the main event. The Oscars barely get a look in between a clutch of warm-ups and afterparties. The Friday night (Oscar night being Sunday) is traditionally the preserve of the agents, the most high-profile of whom throw open the doors of their Hollywood homes to their clients — and no one else. It was a rarity, then, that at the party given by the super-agent Ari Emanuel, stars (‘Talent’, in the argot) schmoozed and ate macaroni cheese with a certain number of the not-so-famous (‘civilians’). Marooned somewhere between Dustin Hoffman and

Deborah Ross

Secrets and lies | 28 February 2013

After a succession of epic films including three hours of watching Cloud Atlas disappear up its own bottom — if you are going to disappear up your own bottom, at least make it snappy — along comes this crisp and confident thriller which demands you only appreciate it for what it is: a crisp and confident thriller. It’s set in the vastly wealthy world of Bernie Madoff-style hedge funds but, although it could easily have slipped into some kind of essay about money being the root of all evil, or how the rich bastards who crashed the economy keep getting away with murder (perhaps literally, in this instance), this has

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Sex, lies and the next Pope

In a corner of the Sistine Chapel, below Michelangelo’s hell, is a door to the little chamber they call ‘the room of tears’. Some painter-decorators are in there, frantically doing the place up. That’s because, in a matter of days, a new Pope will be led into the room. According to tradition, at that moment, as he first contemplates the magnitude of his role, he will weep. A myth, you might think. But we can be sure that the next Supreme Pontiff — whoever he is — will have plenty to sob about. Since Benedict XVI’s resignation two weeks ago, each day seems to have brought yet more bad news.

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Hailo matters more than HS2 – but we just can’t see it

One of Britain’s exam boards was attacked last year for a question in a GCSE religious studies examination: ‘Explain briefly why some people are prejudiced against Jews.’ Is this really a theological question? Or does it belong in biology? Or psychology? Or economics? The Canadian evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate devotes a few pages to the issue of prejudice, including not only anti-Semitism but also hostility towards trading groups and intermediaries everywhere: from Chinese shopkeepers in Malaysia to Armenians, the Gujaratis and Chettiars in India and Korean store-owners in the United States. Pinker partly attributes this to what economists call ‘the physical fallacy’. We have evolved an

Simon Hoggart

March Wine Club | 28 February 2013

An excellent selection of European wines this week from Private Cellar, the first-rate East Anglian merchants who sell loads of fine, established wines but always keep an eye open for less expensive bottles which often are as good, if not better, than their more famous neighbours. And with the pound down against the euro yet again — why can’t it go back up to €1.50, where God intended? — we do need to keep an eye on prices. Many growers are happy to keep them down to hold on to the market, but they can’t hold out for ever. To encourage you, Private Cellar have discounted almost all of them, in some

Hugh Cecil

The art of deception

Max Beerbohm, dandy, cartoonist and penetrating drama critic, was par excellence the observer of the glittering English period that stretched from the 1890s to the death of Edward VII, poking unsparing but mainly good-humoured fun at the peculiarities of its political and cultural leaders: Swinburne, Asquith, Lloyd George, Chesterton, Kipling and the King among them. At the same time he was himself part of the scene, the master of a carefully cultivated style. His fellow critic Desmond MacCarthy once wrote of him: I remember walking one night down Piccadilly behind that high-hat with its deep mourning band. It was then perched above a very long dark top-coat with an astrakhan

Lucy Vickery

Voyagers

In Competition No. 2786 you were invited to submit a feature for a travel supplement as it might have been written by a well-known novelist, living or dead.   Derek Morgan’s George Orwell is in Paris and insufficiently down-and-out: ‘Although I would have preferred to haul my suitcase on foot from Gare du Nord, a taxi whisked me to Place des Vosges and my nearby four-star hotel with its sickeningly servile staff.’ I also liked Johannes Kerkhoven’s Cannery Row-inspired take on the Argentinian city of Tilcara, and Adrian Fry’s evocation of a Spanish ghost town filtered through Ballard’s dystopian lens. It was a cracking entry. Congratulations all round. The winners

Wednesday

Ewen Stewart

The Bank of England panics and misses the point

Wonders never cease. I awoke this morning to hear that the Deputy Governor, Paul Tucker, had announced that consideration should be given to the Bank of England setting negative interest rates. Whatever next? Anyone who had seen our current fiscal and monetary predicament, outlined in detail in my Centre for Policy Studies report today, is certainly likely to feel bemused. By international standards British monetary and fiscal policy has been extreme. Interest rates, at 0.5 per cent, are already at their lowest rate in the 300 plus year history of the Bank. The fiscal deficit, at over 8 per cent of GDP, is far worse than during the 1970s crisis

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The ‘bedroom tax’ shows Downing Street does need a Damian McBride character

MPs are debating that Cut With the Awkward Name, the Under-occupation of Social Housing: Housing Benefit Entitlement, also known by its opponents as the ‘bedroom tax’, this afternoon. I’ve already posted about some of the problems that this policy might throw up, however well-intentioned, but there’s also an important political point here. When I talk to Tory MPs about this cut, some of them accept that there are problems with specific cases, and with the number of smaller homes that are actually available for people to move into (interestingly, one housing association has reclassified its properties so tenants can avoid being eligible for the cut), but what exercises them more

Tuesday

Eamonn Butler

The government must cut or even scrap capital gains tax

When economists get things wrong– something rather easy, given the nature of their subject – they should admit that they got them wrong. Well, the Adam Smith Institute got it wrong. Two years ago we predicted that, if Vince Cable got his way and capital gains tax rates were increased to match income tax rates – up from 18 per cent to 40 per cent or even 50 per cent – the Treasury would not make anything out of it, and would actually lose £2.48bn in revenue. In the event, CGT was not raised to 40 per cent or 50 per cent. But it was raised to 28 per cent

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Keith O’Brien’s resignation is no good thing. But it might be good for the Catholic church

The downfall of Cardinal Keith O’Brien could not have been more complete if it had been orchestrated by Stonewall, which, if you recall, awarded him Bigot of the Year for his opposition to gay marriage. Actually, the one surprise is that it wasn’t Stonewall that brought him down, but three Scottish priests, and one ex-priest, courtesy of The Observer.  The most senior Catholic cleric in Britain, the most forthright opponent of gay marriage; quite a scalp for secularists, gay rights activists and indeed for some Catholics of a liberal persuasion. One Catholic academic, when he heard the news, observed that this marked the end of the Church’s authority on matters

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Are British Doctors Paid Too Much?

I knew that British doctors are well-paid but unti I saw, via Kevin Drum, this chart I had no idea they were so much better-paid than most of their peers in the western world.  This is culled from a 2004 OECD report (Pdf) and all figures are in PPP-adjusted dollars. Of course, doctors received significant pay increases during the Blair years. Specialists were not treated as kindly as (well-trained) GPs but even their wages increased by more than 30% in real terms. Which is fine. The constituency demanding pay cuts for doctors is very small. Nevertheless, these charts (which are not, I think, outdated in any significant sense) are worth

Douglas Murray

Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s prayers

As the late Christopher Hitchens used to say of the most vociferous, gay-obsessed clergy: ‘I have a rule of thumb for such clerics and have never known it to fail: Set your watch and sit back, and pretty soon they will be found sprawling lustily on the floor of the men’s room.’ In Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s case it was not on the floor of the men’s room but – if the stories of several former young novices are true – in late-night prayer sessions that His Eminence brought himself low. This is allegedly the same Keith O’Brien who was the author of last year’s tumescent comparison of civil marriage equality

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

What Pippa did next

It seems that Pippa Middleton has developed a taste for column writing. After an excellent outing in this magazine’s Christmas double issue, the world’s most famous younger sister has signed up for Waitrose’s inhouse food periodical. ‘Pippa’s Friday Night Feasts’ will begin in April’s edition of Waitrose Kitchen magazine. The column will make up for the fact that Ms. Middleton’s planned follow-ups to her book, Celebrate, were scrapped for some strange reason. Panic over for the ever entrepreneurial Middleton family.