Society

Friday

Roger Alton Roger Alton

2013: A year of sporting gloriously

This journal’s gongs are, rightly, recognised the world over, and justly so of course. Sadly, however, this column’s Sporting Awards, which would normally be presented around this time of year, have had to be cancelled because they were all going to Laura Trott. The problem with 2012 was that you could either enjoy the greatest sporting year in the history of mankind, or you could have a job, but you couldn’t possibly do both. But if you were considering full-time employment next year, forget it. For a start, it will be the ultimate  anti-Pom year Down Under, with a Lions tour and back to back Ashes. Bring them on. It’s

Victoria Lane

Aeolian joys

It’s 5 a.m., a splashy grey dawn, and we’re out of here on easyJet. Palermo is another world of heat and brightness but we’re not stopping; at the port we board a catamaran which churns its way towards the Aeolian islands, the volcanic archipelago off the north-east corner of Sicily. The islands are named after Aeolus, son of Zeus and god of the four winds, but there was scarcely a whisper of a breeze in the two weeks we were there. We had all sorts of plans, to island-hop, go to the hot mud baths on Vulcano, visit the black sand beaches of Stromboli and climb its volcano by night,

Petronella Wyatt

Amalfi: This blessed plot

This is not an article about hedonism. Oh, no. The Amalfi coast may be the favoured historical playground of the bad and the beautiful — from Tiberius to Sophia Loren and Gwyneth Paltrow — but my theme is one of culture. What is it about this rocky stretch of southwest Italy that has drawn such disparate artistes as Wagner, D.H. Lawrence, Turner, John Steinbeck and Gore Vidal? Oh, heck, you win. Let’s have some hedonism first. I am sitting, bubbling nicely, in a Jacuzzi that, through the picture window beside it, looks over the town as it runs down to the sea. The Jacuzzi, in my marbled bathroom in Positano’s

Lucy Vickery

Excuse me

In Competition No. 2777 you were invited to take inspiration from pupils at a Cambridge school who may escape punishment for minor offences if they can come up with a quick and clever excuse. Juliet Walker showed impressive ingenuity: ‘Yes, I did have my pet rat in my pocket, and I’m sorry if he frightened Miss, but she talks about “living history” and I’m just recreating the conditions in the trenches.’ As did Mark Ambrose: ‘The blankness on the paper is my answer to the existential problem posed by Sartre in the question.’ A skilful bending of the truth was called for here rather than outright outlandish lies. Could do

Peter Phillips

Musical rivalries

Donald Greig’s first novel is a fluent knitting together of three distinct worlds: American musical academia, London professional singing and the life of a 15th-century composer. It is also something of a whodunnit, involving secret codes in combustible medieval manuscripts alongside skullduggery between some very famous historical characters. If this sounds like a remake of The Name of the Rose, it is a lot funnier. Greig is at pains to say that all the musicologists he knows are genuinely effective people, but one would be forgiven for doubting it if his main character is anything to go by. Over-earnest academics are sitting targets, of course, but the fall and rise

Thursday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The winter fuel payment silliness continues

On the subject of welfare, while the Lords debates whether a disabled person who can walk further than the length of a cricket pitch is allowed help with their transport costs, a minister has rather neatly highlighted the mess another part of the welfare state has ended up in. Nick Hurd told the Telegraph that he would ‘congratulate’ pensioners who donated their winter fuel payment to charity. He said: ‘The government is going to stick to its commitments. But if people take their own decisions that they want to use [the money] for good, of course, as minister for charity, I would support, congratulate and encourage them.’ When I last

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Government could face another welfare rebellion in the Lords

Remember those rebellions in the Lords on welfare earlier this year? Well, the fight hasn’t disappeared entirely from the Upper Chamber. Secondary legislation filling in the detail of the Welfare Reform Act is the new battleground, and I understand another uprising could be on the cards over regulations affecting disabled people. Baroness Thomas of Winchester, who regularly cropped up on the Naughty List last year when peers revolted on the welfare reform primary legislation, is calling on the Government to think again about its regulations for the mobility component of the Personal Independence Payment, the benefit replacing the Disability Living Allowance. A last minute change to the regulations means that only

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

High Court judge: Gay marriage is ‘wrong policy’

Sir Paul Coleridge’s intervention in today’s Times (£) on gay marriage has ensured the debate won’t go quiet after various angry Christmas Day sermons. The High Court Judge tells the paper that introducing weddings for same-sex couples is the ‘wrong policy’, adding: ‘So much energy and time has been put into this debate for 0.1 per cent of the population, when we have a crisis of family breakdown. ‘It’s gratifying that marriage in any context is centre stage… but it [gay marriage] is a minority issue. We need a much more focused position by the Government on the importance of marriage.’ Coleridge does have a point that while the government

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Michael Gove: why I won’t allow profit-seeking schools (yet).

Why aren’t there more free schools? Halfway through this coalition government and we have just 72; we’d need 400 opening a year simply to keep pace with population growth. When I interviewed Michael Gove for our Christmas double issue, I asked him about all this. I didn’t put it in the magazine as this is a rather technical issue, but I thought some Coffee Housers may be interested. Gove said he expected free school project to follow Moore’s Law of semiconductors (ie, capacity doubling every two years). Under this government, within a year of legislation passing, you’ve got a couple of dozen schools established and a year later, like Moore’s

The Spectator

Washing up is therapeutic and dishwashers are socialist

It’s Boxing Day. Your kitchen worktops are groaning under piles of plates, roasting dishes, pans and champagne glasses. If you’re struggling to persuade anyone in your house to fill the sink with hot soapy water, you should first hand them a copy of Mark Mason’s piece in the Christmas issue of the Spectator, ‘The tao of washing up’. Mark writes that washing up is ‘therapeutic’, a ‘Zen-like state where troubles disappear and inspiration thrives’, threatened only by ‘evil’ dishwashers. He also details how to get the most satisfaction from a session at the sink: Like all truly noble endeavours, washing up has time-honoured rituals. ‘Washing as you cook’ is a

Tuesday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Happy Christmas | 25 December 2012

A merry Christmas to all of you; the sane and the troubled, the humorous and the witless, the rural and the urban, the autodidacts and the monomaniacal, the easy-going and the psychotic, the borderline fascists and the Stalinist libtard bien pensants. And all the others, the many I’ve missed. I wish you all a lovely Christmas and a new year which brings forth things which make you sort of, you know, happy. And so this morning, d’you know what? I really did this. Thing is, it’s all there was available that hadn’t been earmarked for family lunches or suppers or snacks for the bloody kids. So I did it. I

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Guns and tinsel: Christmas 1940

White Christmas, a wartime Christmas no1, sold an distinctly American vision of yuletide bliss. The below video shows what Britain was going through a the same time: short Christmas trees being sold, because tall ones could not fit into the air raid shelters. Toy shops still open, selling Spitfires while dust gathers on the models of the Maginot Line forts, which proves so useless against German attack. Church bells were silent that year; if any rang, it would have been a signal that the invader had come. Watching this video each Christmas has become a tradition chez Nelson. My in-laws grew up in war-torn Czechoslovakia where life was even worse

Clarissa Tan

Christmas story: Forever Christmas

Once upon a time, in a land so far away they had heard neither of Google nor of the iPhone 5, there lived a Queen so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her. Her eyes were as clear as a mountain lake, her skin as white as milk, her hair as golden as, well, gold. This Queen ruled over a land of perpetual Winter—indeed, of perpetual Christmas. The snow fell at opportune times, when everyone was prepared for it and felt ready to shovel, and it blanketed everything prettily, from the fir trees on the hilltops to the thatched roofs in the valleys. The snow was just right, too,

Monday

The Spectator

The man behind the Alpha Course

Christmas is one of the few times of year when those unaccustomed to attending church feel prompted to join their local congregation for a few carols. But what will they find when they walk through those church doors? In the Christmas issue of the Spectator, Damian Thompson profiles Nicky Gumbel, vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton. HTB pioneered the Alpha Course, which has now been taken by 20 million people across the world, both in the Anglican and Catholic churches. Thompson also visits HTB, writing: At the 11.30 service at HTB last Sunday, the Christian rock anthems were performed by professional musicians. They sounded nothing like the disgusting racket of ‘folk

Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn on ‘White Christmas,’ the original Christmas no1

Some songs are hits — Number One for a couple of weeks. Some songs are standards — they endure decade after decade. And a few very rare songs reach way beyond either category, to embed themselves so deeply in the collective consciousness they become part of the soundtrack of society. They start off the same as all the other numbers — written for a show or a movie, a singer or an event — but they float free of the writer, they outlast the singer, transcend the movie, change the event. There were a couple of what we now think of as seasonal standards that predated Irving Berlin’s entry into

Saturday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Christmas Quiz 2012! – Spectator Blogs

It’s that time of year again! I’m away to Jura for Christmas tomorrow so posting – indeed internet access – is likely to be light. I trust all readers will enjoy a splendid Christmas. Best wishes to you all. To tide you over, here’s this year’s edition of my now annual Christmas Quiz. As with previous editions – 2009, 2010 and 2011 – it’s not meant to be simple but there’s more glory in attempting it without recourse to Mr Google. Answers will be published in the New Year but are also available on request (alexmassieATgmail.com). You might also catch me on twitter (@alexmassie) where you can ask for hints

Friday

Martin Bright

The Dalkey Archive Press responds

Following my last post about the Dalkey Archive Press advert for unpaid interns I received an email from publisher John O’Brien. I think it sheds some interesting light on the issue so here it is in full: ‘What started out as an announcement of two hires and then hoped-for interns who would become hires (putting aside my “characteristics” sections, if you can), all internships are on hold and will quite likely not resume. We are deluged with requests (paid or unpaid) for internships, and usually take on more than we can properly handle because people are rather desperate to get the experience, without which they cannot get the first door

Julius Bourke

It is NOT the time to talk about mental illness

Of all the online reactions to the Newtown horror, the most disturbing was probably the blog post written by Liza Long, the mother of a 13-year-old boy with an autistic spectrum disorder, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder – highly intelligent but given to unpredictable aggression and violent threats. The post is called ‘I am Adam Lanza’s mother’ and its message is discomforting to say the least. Long suspects that her own son is, like Adam Lanza, a potential school massacrist. She thinks he should be incarcerated. ‘It is time to talk about mental illness,’ she concludes. Inevitably, the blog went ‘viral’. Even more inevitably, there was a backlash.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

No, Mr Bond, I expect you to settle out of court

Right now, there are about 60 assorted cases of people trying to sue Britain’s intelligence services. Is that because our spies are unusually wicked, cavalier or brutal? Or because they may be caught in a legal trap with the laser beam of the human rights lobby moving ever-closer to their vitals? I argue the latter in my Telegraph column today, effectively a defence of what is wrongly described as ‘secret courts’. For some years now, a game of British spy-catching has been going on. The rules are simple. Say a bomb goes off in Pakistan this Christmas and the police round up suspects with their, ahem, usual care and attention.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith doesn’t support a welfare cash card

Those nasty Tories, they’re at it again. Now they’re trying to stigmatise benefit claimants by giving them special welfare cash cards so they can’t buy booze or cigarettes with their child benefit. That Dickensian Iain Duncan Smith was talking about the value of such a card on the lunchtime news, and has caused a bit of an uproar. Except they’re not planning to do anything of the sort. I’ve just spoken to a source close to the Work and Pensions Secretary, who has completely refuted the idea that he’s going to bring a card in. The only hint he was making was that some vulnerable claimants such as people struggling