Society

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.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will the UK keep its AA1 rating until 2015?

Labour has been granted an urgent question in the Commons on the loss of the AAA credit rating this afternoon, and we can expect George Osborne to reiterate his comments over the weekend that this downgrade was a ‘clear message that Britain cannot let up in dealing with its debts’. But will he suggest that the UK can hold onto the AA1 status that it now holds with Moody’s until the end of this Parliament? Announcing the downgrade, the agency said it didn’t expect any changes in the rating over the next 12-18 months. But it added: ‘However, downward pressure on the rating could arise if government policies were unable

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Brave, the Oscars and the Scottish Cringe.

Hurrah for Brave, the little movie that could! And did! All Scotland salutes her Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Another triumph for the plucky underdogs at Disney-Pixar. That, at any rate, is the Scottish government’s view. This “Scottish film” (according to the SNP’s official twitter feed) is another example of Caledonian excellence. Only pedants and churls – of which the country possesses no shortage – can fail to be stirred by the movie’s victory in a minor Oscar category. Well, of course, there’s nothing wrong with liking Brave – a perfectly decent movie – and nothing wrong with preferring it to animated movies you most probably have not seen. But, really,

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Strange things a’happening in Eastleigh

Apologies for my absence – had a week’s holiday, somewhere distant from thunderstorms and snow. Coming back last night on an Oman Airlines flight, in cattle class, the air stewardess trolley babe asked me which of the two set hot meals of stewed shit I would prefer. I told her that I didn’t really fancy either, please could I just have some cheese and crackers? She replied, and I quote: ‘There is cheese and biscuits in the first class and business class sections, but not for people like you.’ So, Eastleigh, then – and what an appalling showing by Labour, if the polls are to be believed. It is true

Sunday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

An Almighty diary clash?

Will the arrival of a new Pope clash with the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury on March 21? The mere possibility has caused real anxiety among Church officials. If Pope Benedict does not issue a Motu Proprio bringing forward the date – he is still expected to – the conclave will not begin until March 15. The nightmare scenario, then, is that the conclave ends – and the world watches as a new Pontiff emerges on the balcony of St Peter’s – on the day of Archbishop Welby’s installation. The story would push the Anglican celebration way off the global news agenda. The cheerier news, for ecumenists at

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Britain lost its AAA rating

Even the pessimistic analysts had given Britain until September to lose its AAA rating. That it has happened now, before the Budget, shows just how fast things are moving. Moody’s has tonight downgraded Britan from AAA to AA1 and has also told us why. Don’t expect economic hell to break loose as a result: these ratings tend to follow, rather than lead, the markets. But this is politically devastating for George Osborne, given that he has asked us to judge him by the preservation of this rating (and made it a manifesto pledge). So what went wrong? 1. The markets now doubt that Osborne has a credible debt strategy. The

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Take the Vatican ‘Gay Mafia’ talk with a pinch of holy salt – for now

A rather feverish mood around the Vatican today: La Repubblica’s sensational splash suggesting that Pope Benedict XVI was pushed out by a ‘gay mafia’ within the Church hierarchy has set Latin tongues wagging. Lurid whispers about sex and bribery abound. The theory – given wind by Benedict’s Ash Wednesday statement that opposition ‘mars the face of the church’ – is that the Pope was so appalled by the findings of the top secret 300-page dossier he commissioned into the ‘Vatileaks’ scandal, he decided he couldn’t go on. It’s all rather intoxicatingly Italian, even if it sounds a bit too much like a pastiche to be true. More sober voices point out

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Five key points from the Pollard Review evidence on Newsnight and Jimmy Savile

There are over 3,000 pages of evidence in the cache of transcripts, emails, statements and texts for the Pollard Review released by the BBC today. Some of the interviews covered familiar old ground, such as Jeremy Paxman telling the inquiry that it was ‘common gossip that Jimmy Savile liked, you know, young – it was always assumed to be girls’. But there are other points which are worth noting from today’s release. There may well be others: some of the evidence, as the pictures below show, was heavily redacted. 1. Newsnight was poorly resourced This was a problem referred to by many of those who gave evidence to the inquiry.

Jonathan Jones

Tinkering with tax isn’t enough

Should the 10p tax rate be brought back? Should the top rate be higher, or lower? Can the personal allowance be raised further? Is a mansion tax a good idea? Should the fuel duty rise be scrapped? These are the questions that are rearing their heads again — as they do every six months or so, in the run up to a budget or autumn statement. The problem is that they are all considered — in so far as they’re considered at all — in isolation. We focus on one aspect of the tax system, fiddle with it a little, then move on to another. And, as Institute for Fiscal Studies

Douglas Murray

What if the terrorists were Jews?

‘Would you say the same thing about Jews? Gays? Or any other minority?’ This is one of the witless questions asked of anyone who writes about Islamic extremism.  And it is a fascinating point in a way, taking in – as it does – everything other than the facts. Yesterday another radical Muslim cell in the UK was found guilty of terrorism offences. Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali had hoped to carry out a wave of suicide bombings in Britain which would have exceeded 7/7 and rivalled 9/11 in terms of impact and casualties. They were radical Islamists, inspired by radical Islamist preachers and had travelled to Pakistan

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Censor’s black pencil hovers over BBC’s Jimmy Savile review transcripts

The BBC has released its (redacted) transcripts and other evidence from the Pollard Review, which examined the decision to drop Newsnight’s Jimmy Savile investigation. There are thousands of pages of evidence, which you can read here, some with large sections which have fallen foul to the censor’s black pencil, even though Jeremy Paxman in particular had made clear that he wanted his interview transcript published in full. We’ll bring you further details of the key transcripts throughout the afternoon, but one of the interesting observations from Paxman’s transcript is this on the effect of pared-down resources on Newsnight: ‘Newsnight, particularly in view of the – of the huge resource cuts

Liz Truss

Our brightest children are falling behind their peers in other countries

Today’s jobs market is highly competitive and globalised. It is no longer enough simply to see if we are doing better than we did last year, or the year before, or 10 years ago. Far better to judge how we are doing against other countries – for our young people will be fighting for jobs against their peers from Singapore and China, from Canada and the US, from Sweden and Slovenia.That is why I such set stock by international league tables, and of analysis of them. We see how we compare against others – and we discover who we must learn from. So it is enormously worrying when respected researchers

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Duchamp/Cage

The Bride and the Bachelors is an impressive exhibition of the work of Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and related artists which is on at London’s Barbican Centre until 9 June. Cage learnt chess in order to communicate with Duchamp without asking crass questions. Other artists, notably Max Ernst, Picabia, Calder and Man Ray also took up chess, impressed by Duchamp’s abilities. Duchamp was a master player at chess whereas the others were mere dabblers in comparison. Marcel Duchamp was arguably the most influential artist of the 20th century, more so than Dalí, Picasso or Matisse. In 1923 he began to concentrate on chess rather than art and he came close

Raymond Keene

No. 254

White to play. This position is a variation from Duchamp-Feigins, Folkestone 1933. Can you spot White’s most accurate continuation of the attack? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 26 February 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 Nh7 Last week’s winner Chris Adams, Berwyn, Llangollen

Peter Jones

Hacks vs spads

A senior civil servant in the Department of Education, having lost a case for ‘bullying’ brought against its special advisers, took her grievance to a tribunal and was promptly awarded an out-of-court settlement of £25,000. Hacks on a Sunday newspaper were jubilant, devoting three pieces to it: it must have been bullying after all, the Department was out of control, will no one rid us of these turbulent Spads, and so on. But were they right? The greatest of Roman historians, Tacitus (ad 56-117), was well aware how hard it was to get solid information. Though an insider himself — consul and provincial governor — time and again he found himself up

Taki

High life | 21 February 2013

Gstaad The Alps are aglow as never before. A record snowfall and an abundance of sun have turned the region into a postcard of long ago. From afar, that is. Up close the cranes are ever-present, although during the season building is verboten . For the past few years I’ve been meeting three Greek childhood friends once a week for lunch in a nearby inn. We drink Swiss white wine, eat trout straight out of the tiny pool they’re kept in, and talk. They are Aleko Goulandris, my oldest friend — we met in 1945 — Karolos Fix, a German Greek who arrived in that tortured land along with my

The Spectator

Letters | 21 February 2013

Benedictions Sir: John O’Sullivan’s summary of Pope Benedict XVI’s ‘extraordinary contribution’ to Catholic thought was masterful (‘Benedict’s reformation’, 16 February) — and how interesting that the Pontiff’s writings and speeches have helped create a new ‘Catholic atheist’ movement. It is a shame, however, that O’Sullivan didn’t mention another area in which Benedict has challenged western ideas: his repeated denunciation of ‘unregulated financial capitalism’ as a threat to world peace. Adam Smith would have agreed with him. I hope that O’Sullivan’s omission was not ideological blindness as to the nasty side of free markets. Camille De La Chesnais Yorkshire Sir: Charles Moore writes that Benedict XVI’s memoirs, if he writes them,

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 21 February 2013

Last week I drove an elderly car-less neighbour to the city hospital to visit her ailing husband. I was glad to oblige because I hadn’t visited a city for a while and I planned to do a bit of shopping while I waited. I dropped the old girl outside this hideous edifice on the outskirts, and, as I am on a health and fitness phase of my headlong descent into the grave, I went first for a swim at the leisure centre. One lane only of the pool was open for public swimming; the rest were devoted to school kids’ swimming lessons. This one lane was narrow as public swimming

Melissa Kite

Real life | 21 February 2013

The new rabbit is turning into a bit of a slob. The other day I caught her trying to order a takeaway. I had opened the rabbit enclosure to let the two bunnies run around the kitchen and when I came back a few hours later, there were no fewer than 18 takeaway menus scattered across the floor. They had been tucked away at the back of a shelf but Wendy Pink had pulled them all out and was sitting among them perusing, by which I mean she was very deliberately picking up a menu from the pile, setting it to one side, looking down at it for a few

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 21 February 2013

People are quite often pilloried for saying the opposite of what they actually said. I have read Hilary Mantel’s London Review of Books lecture, and she is quite clearly not attacking the Duchess of Cambridge, but criticising what it is that people try to turn royal women into. When she speaks of the Duchess as ‘a jointed doll on which certain rags were hung’, or ‘the spindles of her limbs’ being ‘hand-turned and gloss-varnished’, she is talking about what the media and public opinion want of her. She discusses appearance, and offers no opinion about the young woman’s reality. She is sympathising with a female predicament, and she does the