Society

Thursday

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 31 January 2013

Once you’ve made a fool of yourself in public often enough, you pretty much stop minding. At least, that’s my experience of playing bridge on Vugraph (which is broadcast online, for all to watch). These days, all major national and international tournaments are shown online, so there’s no getting away from it; but you quickly learn that every player — even the best — makes blunders under pressure. That’s my excuse, anyway — in case you saw any of the action from the England women’s bridge trials last weekend. I was lucky enough to be partnering Sally Brock, so despite some egregious mistakes we finished second (Jane Moore and Gillian

The Spectator

Letters | 31 January 2013

Reforming criminal justice Sir: Crime continues to fall under this government and is now at its lowest level since the crime survey began in 1982. But we can’t be complacent. We still see too many of the same faces going round and round the criminal justice system, as Theodore Dalrymple notes in his article ‘The rehabilitation game’ (26 January). We are already addressing the problems Dalrymple describes. We are changing the law so every community sentence will include punishment and introducing satellite tagging to keep a much closer eye on persistent and high-risk offenders. I am looking at the use of cautions. We shouldn’t remove the right for the police

Toby Young Toby Young

Kenyan highways

Before setting off for Kenya, where I’m spending six weeks helping The Spectator’s ‘Wild life’ columnist, Aidan Hartley, set up a school, I worried about the safety of my family. Would I be exposing my wife and four children to danger? I’d heard a lot of horror stories about violent crimes committed against the white population, up to and including murder. No, it was too irresponsible. I simply couldn’t leave them in Acton. OK, I’m exaggerating. The murder rate in Nairobbery is higher than London. But the house we’ve rented on the Ridgemount Estate in the Rift Valley feels a lot safer than our house in west London. Not only

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 January 2013

Home Britain decided to send 40 ‘military advisers’ to Mali, 70 more with an RAF Sentinel surveillance aircraft and 20 with a C17 transport plane, and 200 to neighbouring states in a training role; Britain was ‘keen’, according to Downing Street, to aid France there. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited Algeria. The British economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to the Office for National Statistics, meaning that there was no growth at all last year. The FTSE 100 share index went above the 6,300 mark for the first time since May 2008. Qatari Diar, the property arm of the emirate of Qatar,

The Spectator

Bad care

When the letters ‘NHS’ appeared to the world above the dancing nurses at the Olympic opening ceremony, many in Britain will have imagined two darker words hovering alongside: ‘Mid Staffs’. Few of those affected will have been able to forget what now seems to be one of the greatest scandals in the history of British health care. Its horrific details will be laid out in full next week when Robert Francis QC publishes his report into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. What we already know about the level of care at the Trust is shocking — and goes far beyond patients left in soiled bedclothes. There was the case of the

Dumpynose

2098: Song IX

Four unclued lights might justly sing ‘4D/18/13’ (five words in total). A relevant pair of clued lights must be shaded.   Across 10    European secretes strange smeary enzyme (10) 11    Botanical description half recorded by child (6) 12    Big browser nibbled wood sorrel for pudding (7) 14    Welshman that is backing Nauru (5) 15     Fruit from classy old bush, bishop plucked (4) 16    Simple creature almost in a frenzy with English scholar (6) 23    Ancient inhabitant’s aim to be active (7) 24    An abrupt farewell from 6? (4) 25    Animals, pen in Peebles repelled (4) 27    Vessel rocks with man in (7) 29    Lumpy daughter emitted awful loud sound

Dumpynose

2095: Getting around | 31 January 2013

The unclued lights are alcoholic drinks, and thus might be included, if one was getting a round in. First prize David Heath, Elston, Newark Runners-up Mrs J. Vernalls, Thame, Oxfordshire; David Jenkinson, Matlock, Derbyshire

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Shapps aide delivers next blow in BBC cuts row

Eric Pickles has been at war with the BBC over the way it reports council cuts for a while now. But today the battle took on a new front following the corporation’s reporting of a report on council tax benefit cuts. This morning the Beeb picked up on a report from the Resolution Foundation which warned council tax bills for the poorest families could rise by as much as £600. The way the story, which you can read online here, was reported has angered Jake Berry, PPS to Grant Shapps, sufficiently to fire off an angry letter to BBC director of News Helen Boaden. The letter, which I’ve seen this

The Spectator

Has the RSPCA become a different species?

Is the RSPCA morphing from animal welfare charity into an animal rights group? In this week’s Spectator, Melissa Kite writes that following the charity’s successful prosecution of the Heythrop hunt, its chief executive Gavin Grant now has his sights set on the racing industry: Buoyed by the success of his prosecution of the Heythrop hunt, I am reliably informed, he has set his sights on the racing industry next. ‘His modus operandi for these big campaigns is to target high-profile events and people,’ a well-placed veterinary expert told me. ‘So you won’t see him having a go at Badminton, where horses also get injured, because it’s not a household event.

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Cold comfort | 31 January 2013

  An emergency shelter funded by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has been opened to offer a lifeline to rough sleepers in the capital whenever three consecutive nights of freezing temperature are predicted. Mr Johnson said: ‘This shelter will offer a vital lifeline when temperatures tumble to sub-zero levels and rough sleepers risk losing their lives in the cold.’ Just how and why Dave and his mother, Nancy, came to be sleeping outside, in the corner of a car park, is too complicated and surreal a story to explain. But what you need to know is that there’s no easy solution to their problem, and sleeping rough in itself

Melissa Kite

Does the RSPCA think it’s the FBI?

Imagine what would happen if J. Edgar Hoover, founder of the FBI, were running the RSPCA. It sounds ridiculous, I know. But suspend your disbelief for a second, and suppose that a crusading individual convinced of his destiny to conduct a campaign against wrong-doing had turned the nation’s favourite animal charity into a quasi-official investigations unit, targeting those people and institutions he personally disapproved of. He might then seek to publicise the most dramatic or controversial cases of animal neglect and cruelty in order to generate headlines. He might, for example, use intelligence gleaned from investigators tracking fox hunters in a particularly genteel part of the country in order to

Mark Greaves

Two months as a monk

Kieran Viljoen’s life sounds like a parable. Not long ago, back in South Africa, he spent his days in the depths of the ocean searching for diamonds. But for the past two months he has been living the life of a Benedictine monk. He is one of two interns at Quarr Abbey, a monastery on the Isle of Wight. The internship scheme, the first of its kind, is billed as an abridged gap-year experience: two months of living, praying and working alongside the monks. When I arrive, the scheme has just finished. Kieran, 23, and Michael Edwards, 26, from Liverpool, are leaving the next day. That evening the monks are

Julie Bindel

Why even Amsterdam doesn’t want legal brothels

Do you remember the rather brilliant comedy sketch featuring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse in which they played laid-back police officers in Amsterdam, bragging that they no longer have to deal with the crime of murder in the Netherlands since the Dutch legalised it? Don’t laugh too hard. In 2000 the Dutch government decided to make it even easier for pimps, traffickers and punters by legalising the already massive and highly visible brothel trade. Their logic was as simple as it was deceptive: to make things safer for everyone. Make it a job like any other. Once the women were liberated from the underworld, the crooks, drug dealers and people

Peter Phillips

Changing habits

The question of who is going to buy EMI Classics has arisen once again in the past few days with the collapse of HMV. This followed on from the collapse of Comet, Jessops and Blockbuster, the film rental chain — all indicative of a fundamental shift in our purchasing habits. A spokesman for HMV, while delivering the bad news, characterised this shift as ‘seismic’, going on to opine that ‘it is quite heartbreaking to see all those great brands disappearing from the high street’. Whose heart was being broken was not made clear, since presumably we are all getting what we want by other means, but it is interesting that

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Women only

A triple thick dose of chicklit at Hampstead. Amelia Bullmore’s good-natured comedy has three girls sharing a student house in 1983. Those were the days. Back then we received ‘grants’ to attend university, i.e., we were paid to look occupied, like job-seekers and politicians. I’m glad to report that Bullmore accurately evokes the culture and language of the time. Just a couple of blunders. We didn’t say ‘PJs’ to mean pyjamas. And ‘what is she like?’, to express affectionate exasperation, didn’t arrive till the 1990s. The girls don’t smoke, nor do they mention Greenham, which is odd, but the play wishes to focus on their emotional and professional development. The

Bruce Anderson

A reason to like Ted Heath

My reference to Taylor’s ’55 elicited a number of communications about the glories of old port — and one on a less glorious veteran: old Edward Heath. When the Tory Conference was in Bournemouth, Le Grand Epicier would always bid a group of admirers to dine in the Close at Salisbury. In those days, Ted had an unofficial PPS, whose job was to humour him into being slightly less curmudgeonly. In the late Eighties, that thankless post was held by my old friend Rob Hughes. To enliven the dinner and mitigate the sycophancy, he invited me. I am sure that Ted was as surprised by my arrival as I was

Lucy Vickery

Supersize me

In Competition No. 2782 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of fatness. Thanks to John Whitworth for this magnificent and timely topic. What better, at this self-flagellatory time of year, than a celebration of the consequences of festive excesses? My heart went out to Basil Ransome-Davies, who bemoans the metamorphosis of Sophie Dahl from plushly plump to fashionably slender: But farewell to the Rubens plumpness Sophie used to flaunt, For fashion’s sake now traded for the skeletally gaunt. And I enjoyed Charles Curran’s entry, which finishes with this rousing couplet: Three cheers for every man with XL trousers! We’ll never join the calorie-counting grousers! The prizewinners below

Simon Hoggart

February Wine Club | 31 January 2013

Our new offer comes — this always sounds like a misprint — from  FromVineyardsDirect, the terrifically popular wine merchants which sells vast quantities of wine to Spectator readers. And no wonder; their list is fairly short but impeccably selected. They track down delectable wines and buy them directly from the people who make them, which means their prices are very good too. They are especially adept at finding declassified bottles: overproduction from famous vineyards which can’t, because of strict French wine laws, be sold under their real names. They’re not the absolute cream of the crop, but they come very close, for a fraction of the price. There’s one in