Society

Monday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The Mandelson Mephistopheles Effect

It has to be another example of The Mandelson Mephistopheles Effect. One by one, all of Peter’s friends have cosmic awfulness visited upon them – the latest being the millionaire Nat Rothschild. His mining company is in trouble and he’s been forced to resign from its board; one unnamed city broker said he would never be trusted in the square mile again. Nat was a friend of Pete’s. Much as was Oleg Deripaska who, soon after he made Peter’s acquaintance, was subjected to allegations of money laundering in Spain, which he denies, and a whopping lawsuit over here. Then there’s Peter’s earlier mate, Geoffrey Robinson, who had to resign his

Saturday

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Red Ed’s sponsored walk

At Prime Minister’s Questions this week, David Cameron referred to today’s TUC rally as the ‘most expensive sponsored walk in history’, a joke that the Tories have now taken one step further. Ahead of Ed Miliband’s speech to marchers at tomorrow’s anti-cuts demo in central London the Conservatives have launched Red Ed’s Sponsored Walk, a satirical fundraising site for Ed’s charity walk, with all proceeds going – somewhat unsurprisingly – to the Labour party. His online sponsors currently include Unite, GMB and Unite, who’ve ‘sponsored’ Ed to the total price of £12.4 million, accompanied by threatening messages such as ‘Don’t let us down Ed’ and ‘Remember who got you your job’.

Robert Halfon MP

Trade unions are capitalist, community-minded, and Conservative

Last week there were reports that Unite were going to be offering unemployed people a chance to join their trade union for as little as 50p a week. In doing so, they would be offered services such as  legal support and education facilities. Instead of welcoming this as a brilliant Big Society idea to help the jobless, some Conservatives indulged in their traditional union-bashing – making no distinction between the politics of Len McCluskey and the services that were being offered to vulnerable people. The principle behind this idea is something that every Conservative should support. The more help that can be offered to those without work, the better. I wish

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: No 10 advised to punish land hoarders

Though the government’s planning reforms will make it easier for developments supported by local communities to gain planning permission, one of the big blockages in the system is made up of developers themselves. The government is becoming increasingly aware of this, and one ministerial aide close to housing policy has come up with a solution. Jake Berry, who has worked as PPS to Grant Shapps since November 2010, has written a paper for Number 10, which Coffee House has had exclusive sight of. It argues that developers who land bank sites with planning permission should be penalised for doing so. There are currently 250,000 units with permission for residential development

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Standing up for Charles Moore’s ‘why does no-one stick up for Jimmy Savile’ piece

Getting into arguments with people on the internet about selective quoting is generally a waste of time. But sometimes the intellectual dishonesty is such that one can’t help but respond. Political Scrapbook ran a post yesterday headlined ‘EX-CHAIRMAN OF POLICY EXCHANGE SAYS SAVILE SHOULD KEEP HIS KNIGHTHOOD’, though the headline now seems to have changed. It quotes Charles Moore thus: ‘Isn’t there a single, solitary person who will maintain that Savile devoted himself to charity work for good reasons as well as bad? … Sir Jimmy should keep his knighthood.’ This is not a mis-quote. Strictly, it is accurate. But it does seem to be almost deliberately missing the point

Jonathan Jones

Austerity latest: borrowing STILL higher

Today’s borrowing figures show that the government has borrowed £2.6 billion more so far this fiscal year than it did in the same six months last year*, allowing Labour to continue to claim that the deficit is rising. This is, of course, embarrassing to a Chancellor who defines himself by deficit reduction — but, all things considered, it’s probably better news than Team Osborne were expecting. Last month’s figures showed that borrowing in April to August 2012 was £10.6 billion higher than in the same period of 2011*, so this month’s release is in fact a marked improvement. It shows that September borrowing was £0.7 billion lower this year than last, and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

MPs slam FSA’s ‘serious misjudgement’ on RBS

The Treasury Select Committee has published a stinging report this morning on the failings of the Financial Services Authority’s oversight of RBS. The MPs on the committee was unimpressed, concluding that the FSA could and should have intervened in the bank’s takeover of ABN Amro. Its members believe the regulator should have stopped the takeover, and they criticise the FSA for failing to investigate the failure. The report says: ‘In December 2010 the FSA initially felt that a 298-word statement about RBS’s failure was explanation enough. This reflects serious flaws in the culture and governance of the regulator. It also reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of its duty to account for

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 18 October 2012

Testing faith Sir: I can sympathise with Melissa Kite’s concern over her friend’s apparently unconsidered marital conversion (‘Till faith do us part’, 13 October), but I wonder whether her panic at the idea of thousands of secular or nominal Christians converting for love is justified. Yes, it is easy to become a Muslim, while an adult wishing to convert to Christianity or Judaism must demonstrate knowledge and commitment before full acceptance into the new faith community. Sometimes those who convert too hastily or when under pressure come to regret it later. But Islam does not require Christian or Jewish women — as ‘People of the Book’ — to convert if

Raymond Keene

Magnificat

Magnus Carlsen has won the elite tournament split between Sao Paulo, Brazil and Bilbao, Spain ahead of a squad of top grandmasters, including the world champion Viswanathan Anand. Using the 3 for a win, 1 for a draw and nothing for a loss system, the final scores were as follows: Carlsen and Caruana 17, Aronian 11, Karjakin 10, Anand 9 and Vallejo Pons 6. The tie-break between Magnus and rising star Fabiano Caruana was broken by two rapidplay games, both of which ended in Carlsen’s favour. Worthy of note was the feeble performance by world champion Anand, who failed to win a single game and finished near the bottom of

Raymond Keene

No. 240

White to play. This position is a variation from Vallejo Pons-Aronian, Sao Paulo/Bilbao 2012. White needs an accurate move to continue the attack. What is it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 23 October 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 Qg4+ Last week’s winner John Samson, Edinburgh

Taki

High life | 18 October 2012

New York It’s a black-and-white 1939 oldie starring Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden, in his first film. She is thin, ballsy, bawdy and beautiful, and talks with a Brooklyn accent. He’s tall, very good-looking, a professional boxer whose real love is playing the violin. His name is Joe Bonaparte. Joe and Babs are on the roof of one of those art deco high risers that gave New York the glamour of no other place on earth. Gershwin’s syncopation can be heard in the distance while the two look down on the people going about their business. It’s night and the stars are out. Babs wants Joe to keep boxing and

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 18 October 2012

The film started ten minutes ago, says the man as he hands us our prebooked tickets. Another young man shows us down the stairs and through doors marked ‘Screen 2’ into darkness. There’s no light coming from the screen and it’s so dark in there I can’t see a thing. Fortunately the usher turns on one of those muffled torches and I slavishly follow his weak green light until it stops and hovers, presumably at the end of a row with vacant seats in it. By using his circle of light as a rough guide to where he is standing, then calculating from this where his ear might be, I

Melissa Kite

Real life | 18 October 2012

The roads seem to be rigged to detect particularly low grade offences nowadays. And when you’ve done nothing wrong at all, the police seem to get ferociously cross. I was once read the riot act by a bearded cop on a motorbike who banged on my window as I sat in gridlock on the Albert Embankment and told me that I was not paying sufficient attention to what was going on around me. When I asked what he would like me to do he didn’t seem to have any specific ideas; he just thought I didn’t look adequately focused. I pointed out that I had been sitting motionless for half

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 18 October 2012

I have just got back from a few days in Provence, staying with a friend in her delightful house in a hilltop village north of Avignon, where in-between eating and drinking, visiting markets, and going for walks in the autumn sun, I read Peter Paterson’s life of Lord George-Brown, who was Harold Wilson’s mercurial foreign secretary for a brief period in the 1960s. Peter Paterson was a good friend of mine who died last year; but while I had owned his book since it was published in 1993, I had to my shame never actually read it; so thinking it was about time that I did, I took it with

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 18 October 2012

I’ve just come back from Tessa and Stuart Wheeler’s stunning house, Dar Sinclair, in Tangier. It’s a lovely time of year to go: the sun was shining, the sea was warm, the souk was beckoning. But this was Stuart’s annual bridge week — so naturally we hardly stepped outdoors. The bridge gang included Andrew Robson (the ‘resident pro’), his partner Alexander Allfrey, and several seasoned Portland players like Patrick Lawrence, Bernard Teltcher and Giles Hargreaves. We discussed and analysed hands non-stop, even during meals, on car journeys and at the airport. What poor Tessa and her two non-bridge-playing guests made of us, I hate to think; but she assures me

Toby Young Toby Young

Dr Alexander’s afterlife

There was quite an important news story buried beneath all the post-match analysis from the party conferences. Apparently there really is life after death. Perhaps the reason this ‘news’ didn’t receive more coverage is because it’s not based on any startling new evidence. Rather, the claim has been made by a man called Eben Alexander who had one of those near-death experiences that cannot be explained by science. What’s startling about this particular experience is that Dr Eben Alexander III, to give him his full name, is a neurosurgeon. Not a scientist, exactly, but a man of science nevertheless. He describes himself as a Christian, but ‘more in name than

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 18 October 2012

Q. Is there a friendly way to cut short a telephone conversation? A certain woman always wants to talk at length even if I am only ringing to confirm that we will meet the next day for lunch. She becomes huffy if I suggest we leave all the catching up till then. — Name withheld, London W8 A. Why not put the ball in her court and let her be the one to cut short the chatter? Do this by ringing during an ad break of, say, Downton Abbey, saying, ‘I’m just ringing to confirm tomorrow at one.’ ‘Look forward to it,’ she will reply. ‘Shall we catch up then?’

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Evil empire

Opus has written its name in letters six foot high outside, which is such a screaming act of narcissistic self-doubt, I wish I’d thought of it myself. I put this down to Opus being in Birmingham, a city that is stuck in low to medium self-hatred. Its roads are mad, and think they are in Miami, and wander around pointlessly with eight lanes, looking for malls and gun shows and Charlton Heston but then they realise — still Birmingham. Opus is a ‘smart’ restaurant. I know this because a) it thinks pistachio is a good colour for things other than pistachio nuts, in this case, chairs, and b) Francis Maude

Dot Wordsworth

Kick-start

The kick-start and the first world war arrived in the same year. Despite talk of a ‘big bazooka’, the former is still currently favoured as the model for stimulating the economy. (A bazooka, by the way, was a second world war anti-tank rocket launcher, the name deriving from a sort of homemade trombone of the 1930s, itself dependent on the bazoo or mouth. In Tennessee in the 1870s, the phrase blowin’ his bazoo meant ‘braggadocchio or gasconade’). The mechanical kick-start got a motorcycle engine going. Yet the metaphor now often sounds as though it meant ‘push-start’, or ‘start a motor-vehicle by sending it downhill’. Kick-start just sounds more dynamic than

Robin Lane-Fox

Diary – 18 October 2012

In the October sunshine I have been watching the academic year’s new debtors unloading their electronic possessions from the cars of mothers with hair in 50 shades of grey. After nearly 40 years of teaching in Oxford, I am enraged that the undergraduates have been rebranded. They are now ‘consumers’ and from their first day they are being saddled with debt at a high commercial rate of interest, piling onto the capital sum they also owe. Not one of us has had the chance to vote on this mean-spirited reform. Unlike the vice chancellors and David Willetts, I live daily with the debtors at ground level. When consulted, more than