Society

Friday

Time’s up for the NHS monopoly

Is it time we faced up to the fact that the NHS itself is the reason for the continuous stream of scandals? It’s not just the Mid Staffs Foundation Trust, or the ‘Nicholson Challenge’ or ‘the reforms’, or ‘the culture’. The NHS suffers from systemic faults. Above all, the regular flow of defects and failures is what you would expect from a command-and-control regime that has a monopoly. It’s not as though making this claim is new. The last Labour Government recognized the structural flaws in the NHS nearly a decade ago. The NHS Improvement Plan of 2004 specifically denounced monopoly: There would be ‘contestability … so that patients and

Thursday

Peter Jones

Stoicism at the doctor’s

It has been proposed that, to deal with certain sorts of emotional problems for which we go to the doctor, we should be given an improving book to read. Quite right too, the Stoic would reply. ‘Stoicism’ derives from the Greek stoa, the portico in Athens where from 300 BC its inventor Zeno (a Cypriot) taught it. Its main principle is caught in Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ with its ‘motion and a spirit that impels/All thinking things, all objects of all thought,/And rolls through all things’. The argument was based on the idea that (i) in a sense the universe was God, and God was the universe, (ii) the divine element

The Spectator

Letters | 7 February 2013

Respect the RSPCA Sir: You ask whether the RSPCA has ‘gone feral’ (‘The RSPCA’s secret war’, 2 February)? The answer is ‘no’. Since its founding, the society has promoted kindness to and respect for animals. We have done so through education, good science and campaigns to change the law to protect animals from cruelty. But laws only count if they are effectively enforced. Some of your readers may assert that the police should do this work. On many occasions they do so, often working closely with our trained inspectorate. However, operational realities and pressure on police resources mean that human welfare tends to rank higher than that of animals. Should

Taki

High life | 7 February 2013

Gstaad  Sir Roger Moore told the Sunday Telegraph that he enjoys the slow pace of life in Switzerland. As do I. One cannot have too much of a snowy peak under a blue sky, any more than one can have too much of Schubert. Looking out from my bedroom window, all I can see are pine forests, rock cliffs and snow, not a bad scene for the winter blues. Yes, Nature has been degraded, with chalets being built ever higher in the mountains, but old N can take it. After a heavy snowfall everything is still, greed takes a back seat, and the only sounds one hears are those of

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 7 February 2013

I’ve been to Mali. Oh, yes. We went overland from the east, 23 of us in the back of a Bedford truck, via the Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. And even after that succession of astonishing countries, Mali stood out as having a unique flavour of its own. The first intimation that we ain’t seen nothing yet came at the border. Border crossings were usually surprising or infuriating, one way or another. At the one between Niger and Mali, the Malian authorities surprised us by stipulating an extraordinary condition of entry. This was that we must take on board our truck a representative of the Mali tourist board who would

Melissa Kite

Real life | 7 February 2013

Throwing oneself at the feet of the transport secretary at a posh lunch is not a dignified thing to do. I realise that. But since my parents found out that the HS2 rail link is going past the end of their garden — though just a few metres far enough to mean they won’t get compensation — I have not been feeling very dignified. And before some Lib Dem blogger reports me to the Standards Commissioner for lobbying, I didn’t lobby. I begged. On my knees. There’s a difference. Poor Patrick McLoughlin didn’t know where to put himself. There he was, having a perfectly nice time at the Savoy, when

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 7 February 2013

This is a big week for gays on both sides of the Atlantic. By the time you read this, the House of Commons will have voted to permit gay marriage, despite an angry revolt by a large number of Tory MPs; and in Texas the Boy Scouts of America may also have voted (less certainly) to lift its ban on ‘open or avowed’ homosexuals joining the youth movement. In both cases, the reforms are being presented as reflecting popular enthusiasm for ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’ and tolerance of diversity (little evidence though there may be of this) while at the same time showing tolerance of people lacking such enlightenment. So in

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 7 February 2013

Max, my adorable son-in-law, knew early on he was not cut out for a life of academia. Nevertheless he fearlessly sat an A-level, after which, exhausted, he went on holiday. On the day the results were due, he phoned his doting mother and asked her to open the letter when it came and tell him the good news. ‘Max,’ she said excitedly, ‘You’ve got a U! What does it mean?’ ‘U means Unbelievable, Mum,’ he told her, whereupon she almost burst with pride! In the recent TGR’s Auction Pairs, the very academic Barry Myers came a strong third playing with Turkey’s Mustafa Cem Tokay, whom he met an hour before

Toby Young Toby Young

Taking on cattle raiders with a Macbook Pro

One of my reasons for coming to Kenya was to visit Tango Maus, the farm of Spectator ‘Wild life’ columnist Aidan Hartley. I’ve read so much about this mystical place —the skirmishes with the local elephant population, the troublesome livestock, the Gunga Din-like farm manager — that I was dying to see it. And having spent last weekend there, I’m happy to say it doesn’t disappoint. First, there’s the drive. When Aidan describes the farm as ‘remote’ he’s not exaggerating. I don’t think I’ve ever travelled through more inhospitable terrain. The last part was the worst — a 100-mile crawl along a track that’s so threadbare it frequently disappears altogether.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 February 2013

Home  The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill was given its second reading in the Commons by 400 votes to 175. Of Conservative MPs, 127 voted for it, and 136 against. David Cameron, who did not attend the debate, called the result ‘an important step forward’. The bill does not apply to Scotland, which has its own plans, or to Northern Ireland, which does not. A provision of the bill prohibits the Church of England and the Church in Wales from conducting same-sex weddings, which are against canon law (itself part of English law). On the day of the confirmation of his election as Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin

Piers Paul-Read

Diary – 7 February 2013

In a recent exchange of emails, my Member of Parliament, Mr Andy Slaughter, told me he intended to vote in favour of same-sex marriage. No doubt by now he has done so. He said he believed it to be an extension of human rights. I replied that, just as there can be reductio ad absurdum, so there can perhaps be extensio ad absurdum, but I am not sure that my Latin is correct. Anyway, MPs do not to have to reply to replies. Indeed, I feel slightly sorry for Andy Slaughter, bombarded not just by letters and emails protesting against same-sex marriage, but some of the million postcards distributed through

Raymond Keene

Rock solid | 7 February 2013

The Gibraltar Masters, where I was last week, has been won by a quartet consisting of Vitiugov, Short, Sandipan and Vachier Lagrave. In the final knockout to determine who would receive the £20,000 first prize, Nigel Short lost out narrowly to Vitiugov. In my opinion, the British grandmaster’s display of fighting spirit after an early loss would have justified his winning top honours for a fourth time. Here is a sample of his uncompromising play.   Short-Nieto: Gibraltar Masters, Caleta 2013; Ruy Lopez   1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 Nd4 Named after the 19th-century English master Henry Bird, this knight sortie is strategically suspect but rich in

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 7 February 2013

Q. I understand that a free version of Eton will be opening in a village near Windsor next year. One of my boys is already at School, but for financial reasons I would like to get him moved across if the educational and aspirational standards at Freeton are the same. How do I get his name on the list? Obviously I do not wish to ask School for advice. —Name and address withheld A. The school you refer to is to be called Holyport College, not Freeton. It opens in September 2014 and is entirely funded by Eton College, to help state-style pupils enjoy some of the inspirational teaching given

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Tanya Gold reviews Maxim’s, Paris

Maxim’s! The very name is drool from Maurice Chevalier’s lips, as he perved around Gigi and sang, ‘Thank heaven for little girls/ And hebephilia generally.’ Myths sprout up around Maxim’s, which was always, in restaurant terms, a kind of Prince Michael of Kent with sex appeal. The female customers were so overdressed in 1913 according to Jean Cocteau that taking their clothes off was ‘like moving house’. Ho Chi Minh was apparently a bus boy, so the food at Maxim’s and the communist revolution in North Vietnam are obviously connected — although exactly how I cannot say. Maxim’s is off the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotine stood. This

Raymond Keene

No. 252

White to play. This position is from Adams-Ehlvest, Gibraltar 2013. White’s next essentially destroyed the black position. What was it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 12 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 … Rf4 (planning … Bxf3+)   Last week’s winner Ian Johnson, Cambridge

Dot Wordsworth

Vulnerable

‘I’m a vulnerable adult,’ said my husband when I asked him why he was shouting the other morning. He had spilt some water from the hot kettle on his slippered foot. Unlike Achilles, his vulnerability extends beyond the pedal extremities. But I shouldn’t like it to be thought that he was making fun of anyone who is called vulnerable. Their numbers seem to be growing. When that policewoman was jailed last week for talking to the News of the World, the judge said he would have put her down for three years had she not been in the process of adopting a ‘vulnerable child’. I thought all little children were

The Spectator

The defender of faith

If the secret of success is to follow failure, then Justin Welby has had the perfect start as Archbishop of Canterbury. He was appointed at a time when the Church of England’s efforts to reach a conclusion on women bishops have collapsed and when its pews were emptying at the fastest rate in recorded history. It has fallen to a former oil company executive, a softly spoken Old Etonian with an unusual appetite for danger, to move to Lambeth Palace. His mission is not to run the church, but to save it. By some measures, Britain is the least religious country in the developed world. Some 64 per cent of

Doc

2099: Lover’s Knot

The unclued lights are presented in the form of the Lover’s Knots below. Each ‘Knot’ can be unravelled into two words which are connected only for the purposes of this puzzle. These are then to be entered in the grid, always as pairs of consecutive lights.   LOVER’S KNOT CLUES a) A thin bride b) Bach ate tenderloins c) Clara’s feminine d) Islander’s mural e) Norse warfare   Across 1 Fractures both bits – a betrayal (13, three words) 9 Redhead notices extremists (4) 11 0 and O (for instance) sent between the unclued lights? (10, two words) 12 Cheesy saint at river through Biggleswade (4) 14 A chart brought