Society

Thursday

Dumpynose

2090: Precipitate

In September sadly we lost 15 (two words) and 12/19. The former produced the 29 of the 4-winning ‘1A/18/39’ (six words in all) while the latter made a successful 33 of the same name. Ignore an apostrophe.   Across 9 Woman hates me bareheaded? (4) 11 Sow in-house pig-men finally devoured (10) 14 Love goddess lives with hot matelot (6) 16 Teddy keeps field cropped and ploughed no more (5) 17 Has a go at time off and relaxes (5) 20 Group of moles amid row of spots (7) 21 Least prim Essexite almost reformed (7) 23 Ornamental tray of silver and gold (7) 24 Sailor immerses uniform in Canadian

Dumpynose

2087: Golden I

HIEROSOLYMITAN (1D) means ‘of or relating to Jerusalem’. 15, 18, 27, 35A, 38, 5 and 12 may all be preceded by the word ‘Jerusalem’. Title: cf. ‘Jerusalem the golden’ (hymn) First prize Catherine Stekly, Fowlmere, Royston, Herts Runners-up Alexia Dobbs, London SW1; Ben Stephenson, London SW12

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Tory MPs are reading Le Monde this morning

I’m told that we won’t get any indication of whether there’s a new EU budget proposal that will be able to command support until later this evening. Herman Van Rompuy is holding bilateral with all 27 EU leaders today and only after that will it be clear if the contours of a deal are in place. For his part, David Cameron intends to see — among other countries — the Swedes and the Dutch, who Downing Street regard as Britain’s most reliable allies in this budget negotiation. One thing that is helping Cameron with Tory MPs is the Le Monde front-page declaring ‘Europe is Britain’s hostage’. It is reassuring them

David Blackburn

Tony Hall appointed Director General of the BBC

It seems that Lord Patten has been reading the Spectator: Lord Hall, the BBC’s former director of news and the man who revolutionised the Royal Opera House, has been appointed Director General of the BBC, an appointment recommended by Tom Bower in last week’s Spectator Diary. The BBC Trust states that Lord Hall will take over in March. Hall is a hugely respected figure. Here’s what Tom Bower wrote about him last week: ‘To avoid chaos, Patten cannot be fired without the government naming his successor. Step forward Tony Hall, the Royal Opera House’s chief executive. Hall was a respected editor of flagship broadcasting who resigned as the director of BBC News in

Douglas Murray

Israel under siege

The dictators have fallen one by one. Several more look likely to fall soon, and few will miss them. But as popular revolutions approach their demise, something else has come along. In one country after another, the Muslim Brotherhood — the fundamentalist revolutionary Islamic party founded in 1920s Egypt — and other Islamist parties have used the ballot box for their own ends. After decades of repression and opposition, they have finally come to power. The era of the Islamists has begun, and as recent events in the Middle East have demonstrated, the world they create will not only look very different but be far more dangerous for Israel and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Backbench driver

The burdens of office can wear a man down. When Nick Herbert was the minister for policing and criminal justice, he looked exhausted; as if he was carrying the troubles of two departments on his shoulders. But having quit the government in the September reshuffle, he is relishing his newfound freedom. He says he can fit in an interview on Monday morning, between the bishop and his bank manager. Happy to come between God and Mammon, I stroll along to his office, which is still on the House of -Commons’s ministerial corridor. No longer limited by collective responsibility, he has much to say. Herbert’s first major intervention as an ex-minister

Bruce Anderson

In the colonel’s cellar

Like many soldiers, my old friend is a life-enhancing character. Whenever he phones up and says ‘Need your help’, one’s spirits rise. The help always seems to involve pleasure. This time was no exception. He was long on some young-ish wine, and wondered whether a few cases ought to be redeployed via the sale-room. In his comfortably stocked cellar, I reminded him that Andrew Lloyd Webber used to say ‘Goodnight, boys’ as he switched out the lights on his magnificent collection of Rhône. This had aroused ridicule — perhaps even a mention in Pseud’s Corner — but I could see the point. A great cellar is an epiphany. It almost

Aidan Hartley

Cooking for freedom

A few days before I met Ahmed Jama in Mogadishu, three Islamist gunmen from Al Shabaab — al-Qa’eda’s Somali branch — burst into his new restaurant wearing suicide bomb jackets. They sprayed the place with bullets and then detonated themselves. One bomber set himself off in the dining room itself, killing 20 of Ahmed’s customers. Standing in that room, watching Ahmed’s workmen clean up, I realised what the term ‘pink mist’ really means. The bomber’s solid body had expanded outwards into an aerosol cloud of human particles that now covered every square inch of ceiling, walls and floor. The workmen were using trowels and shovels to clean up. ‘They’re scrubbing

Sebastian Payne

The great British wind scam

Almost everybody agrees that wind turbines are ugly and inefficient. But you’d think that the government, if it must persist in subsidising renewable energy, would do everything it could to incentivise wind power producers to create as much energy as possible while keeping the aesthetic damage to a minimum. Astonishingly, it is doing the opposite. Inquiries by The Spectator have revealed a scam known as ‘de-rating’. Green businesses are modifying large turbines to make them less productive, because perverse government subsidies reward machines that produce less energy at nearly double the rate of more efficient ones. It’s extraordinarily profitable for a few beneficiaries, even if it clutters the countryside and

The Spectator

House of stars

The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards were held at the Savoy Hotel on Wednesday. Here are the winners: Newcomer of the year Andrea Leadsom (Con). For her work grilling bankers on the Treasury select committee and setting up the Fresh Start Group. Backbencher of the year Alistair Darling (Lab). His campaign for the Union has made Westminster more relevant in Scotland than at any time since -devolution. Campaigner of the year Andy Burnham (Lab). Our former ‘Minister to Watch’ did more than any other MP to press for the Hillsborough report, which gave parliament one of its most extraordinary moments. Inquisitor of the year Margaret Hodge (Lab). Her public accounts

Thomas W. Hodgkinson

Going overboard

What is it about islands that appeals to little men with big ideas? It’s Corfu I’m thinking about, primarily. Napoleon was obsessed with the place. Kaiser Wilhelm owned a summer palace here, the neoclassical Achilleion, where he installed a huge and hideous statue of Achilles. Can I add George Osborne to the list? Perhaps I’d better not. There’s a far better figure to complete the triumvirate, if that’s the phrase: the sly, off-kilter and phenomenally litigious founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. Last month, the Daily Telegraph ran an obituary of one John Forte, a former officer in the British Army, who had two claims to fame when it came

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

‘It’s mine, I spend it’: guessing the rapper’s thoughts about Obama’s fiscal cliff

The most stylish fellow passenger in Delta Air Lines’ business class cabin from Atlanta to Heathrow last week was a chap in shades and a hoodie with a couple of kilos of bling round his neck. Inquiries in the galley identified him as ‘2 Chainz’, a Georgia-born rapper whose real name is Tauheed Epps. I gathered he had invited the flight crew to call him Tad — and naturally I was keen to befriend him myself, but the Dracula’s-coffin configuration of Delta’s flatbeds made conversation all but impossible. So I was left trying to guess his thoughts on the issue of the ‘fiscal cliff’. That is the impending crisis in

Lucy Vickery

Rhyme time

In Competition No. 2773 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘On First Looking into a Rhyming Dictionary’. That class act Stanley J. Sharpless’s twist on Keats’ famous sonnet (which I found in E.O. Parrott’s How To Be Well-Versed in Poetry) was the inspiration for this assignment. Mr Sharpless begins: ‘How often have I searched for clever rhymes/ To ginger up some verse I’d scribbled down…’ And rounds off with this defiant couplet: ‘They tell me rhymes are out of fashion, now./ Who cares? I’ll go on rhyming, anyhow.’ Douglas G. Brown, David Silverman, Martin Parker and Ralph la Rosa shone in a large and varied entry but were

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The leftist case for joining a Pall Mall club

I recently met a friend at the RAC Club in Pall Mall. Leafing through their brochures, I noticed there was an entrance fee of £2,900 and an annual renewal fee of £1,265. Gosh, I thought, that’s expensive. Except it is and it isn’t. It is expensive when you compare it with other clubs. On the other hand, if you compare it to the cost of owning a second property, it’s a bargain. The council tax on a London weekend flat will be far more than £1,265 a year. And, however nice your flat, it is unlikely to have five full-sized -billiard tables, several squash courts, a swimming pool, a Turkish

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Within ten years, you’ll be buying cannabis at your off-licence

The first time I came across skunk cannabis was in an underground out-of-hours bar in Nottingham in 1997. I think I’ll leave that as ‘came across’, if it’s all the same to you. I might want to be prime minister one day, and it’s important to have my tenuous denials lined up in advance. More expensive than your regular cannabis, I remember, uh, people saying, with a stronger smell and a far -stronger effect. Which I noticed, obviously, from the behaviour of other people. As I studied them with clear, unreddened eyes, like an anthropologist. Yes. From then on, until I stopped moving in such circles, skunk was all there

Wednesday

David Blackburn

The Church of England is becoming a church in England

This morning’s newspapers (and indeed the airwaves) are full of apocalyptic predictions about the future of the Church of England. The failure of the General Synod to ordain women bishops has surprised plenty of bishops, many of whom express their ‘deep sadness’ about the affair to the (£) Times’ Ruth Gledhill. Yet the threat of schism on this issue is not wholly surprising, not least because the Anglican Church has rarely taken happily to reform. From the storms over Matthew Parker’s 39 Articles to this latest controversy, the C of E’s evolution has often been fractious. However, as a relatively faithful parishioner of the CofE, this affair does surprise me in

Tuesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Church of England rejects women bishops

Gulp. The General Synod of the Church of England has, against almost all expectations, rejected the ordination of women bishops. This seems to represent an early defeat for the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who earlier had called on his fellow Anglicans to ‘finish the job’ and accept reform. Secularists and liberals will be baffled – just how fuddy-duddy are those members of the Synod who voted it down? Somehow there still are enough conservative evangelicals and Anglo-Caths in the Synod who are uncomfortable with the measure as it was presented. The chief controversy, it seems, was over provisions for parishes who did not want a woman bishop in charge.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Suing Twitter for Libel is a Mug’s Game – Spectator Blogs

Rod Liddle asks a question of the kind one frequently sees raised by media types: [W]hy is [Lord McAlpine] not suing Twitter itself? It is not Philip Schofield who the peer is suing, but ITV. Surely, likewise, Twitter needs to take some responsibility for its output? If, unlike broadcasters, it has no legal responsibility for what is put out through its witless conduit, then surely there is less of a responsibility on the people who use it, too? On the face of it this seems a reasonable question. But it doesn’t take long to appreciate that it really isn’t and that, though doubtless well-intentioned, it doesn’t make a heap of