Society

Thursday

Peter Jones

Punishment and retribution

Prime Minister Cameron has argued that ‘retribution [against criminals] is not a dirty word’ and ‘punishment is what offenders both deserve and need’. Many ancients would have keenly agreed. Ancient Greeks argued that society was held together by systems of rewards and penalties, and revenge, recompense and deterrence were the main features of their penal thinking. In Homer’s epics (c.700 bc), for example, the hero demands recompense to restore any loss of status or wealth, see the offender squirm, advertise that he is squirming, and deter him from repeating the offence. Romans were in general less sophisticated. Deterrence featured marginally and correction was mentioned, but for the most part they

Toby Young Toby Young

Why are we still obsessed with class?

At a lunch party last Sunday with a group of journalists, the conversation inevitably turned to class and how this ancient English obsession has come to dominate the political news agenda. It’s now such a hot topic that the moment a member of the government does anything that can be construed as remotely snobbish — such as sit in a first-class carriage with a standard-class ticket — he is guaranteed to appear on the front pages the following day. For a leftie, the answer is obvious. We live in the most class-bound society in the developed world and this government of millionaires, led by a toffee-nosed public schoolboy, is determined

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 25 October 2012

Q. I work in a large open-plan office and one of my neighbours is driving me to distraction. She has a number of peculiar habits, but the real source of my ire is that she wears at least eight gold bangles on her right arm which jangle loudly every time she moves. Other people around us are aware of this constant noise, but none of us has ever raised the issue. Please help, Mary. — J.L.G., Biggar, Lanarkshire A. Why not pay out of your own pocket for a feng shui expert to examine the office Qi with a view to enhancing productivity? Ensure the report’s conclusions include the recommendation

Dot Wordsworth

Bumfodder

‘Look at all this bumf,’ said my husband, shaking some ‘guidance’ on how to fill in his tax return and sounding like someone out of Much Binding in the Marsh. I mentioned last week the New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, in its several Tribes, of Gypsies, Beggers, Thieves, Cheats, &c (1699), an anonymous work, attributed only to B.E., Gent. The Bodleian Library has republished it in a nice little edition under the title The First English Dictionary of Slang, but you can read it free online. Among its modern-sounding expressions is bumfodder. The Canting Crew might not yet have used the term bumf

Nick Robinson

Diary – 25 October 2012

I am standing in the courtyard of HMP Wormwood Scrubs with the Prime Minister. He’s there, or so I read, to convince the papers that his approach to law and order has moved from ‘hug a hoodie’ to ‘mug a hoodie’. I’m there to ask him not just about that but about why he let his Chief Whip stumble along wounded for so long; and to put to him suggestions from his own party that he and his ministers look, well, less than competent. Having batted away my questions with painful ease, the PM delivers a final blow as we film a couple of editing shots. With a mischievous smile

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 25 October 2012

Instead of looking at the BBC’s behaviour over the Jimmy Savile programme through the red mist of self-righteous hindsight, consider the editorial problem it presented at the time. You have already planned Christmas tribute programmes to one of your most popular contributors of the past 40 years (God knows why he was so popular, but that is the symptom of a wider cultural sickness). Then you hear that part of your empire is investigating child abuse allegations against him. You inquire, and find that, though highly alarming, the allegations do not constitute proof and are not clearly supported by other inquiries e.g. by the police. Obviously you cannot run both

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 25 October 2012

Home Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative chief whip, resigned, still denying that he referred to police as ‘plebs’ for refusing to allow him to cycle through the main gate to Downing Street three weeks ago. The Chancellor, George Osborne, was caught in a first-class carriage with a standard-class ticket. One of his aides paid £160 for an upgrade, saying that the Chancellor couldn’t possibly travel in standard class. The Prime Minister said that energy companies would be put under a duty to make sure that their customers were on the lowest-possible tariff, but the plan lasted only three hours. The working population rose by 212,000 to just under 30 million, the

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 25 October 2012

Somerset Maugham famously called Monte Carlo ‘a sunny place for shady people’. Today über sponsor Pierre Zimmermann has rather unexpectedly turned it into the bridge capital of the world. Last week he achieved another huge win for the principality by moving the world’s biggest money tournament, The Cavendish, from Las Vegas to Monaco for a week of thrilling tournaments that attracted over 100 of the best players from all over the world. The auction pairs event, generating a whopping €150,000 for the successful buyer, was won by astonishing Israeli Juniors Ron Schwarz and Lotan Fisher. But for me the pair of the tournament was the not very junior Philippe Cronier

The Spectator

Barometer | 25 October 2012

Electric dreams Manganese Bronze, the manufacturer of the most familiar model of London taxi, went into administration, putting a question mark over the black London cab. — Although they enjoy the status of a timeless icon, London cabs only became universally black after the second world war, while their less welcome signature, diesel fumes, only came in during the 1950s. Remarkably, the first non-horse-drawn London cab was in fact electrically powered. — Introduced by Walter C. Bersey in 1896, the cabs could achieve 12 mph and had a range of 15 miles. — The 12 cabs were withdrawn by 1900, however, on account of unreliability, not so much because of their batteries as their pneumatic

Columba

2086: Tufty

One unclued light, a term for any member of a group to which two unclued lights belong, can be divided into three words; each of these has two synonyms among the remaining unclued lights. Across 11 Last moment, still in terrible hole, hurt (12, two words) 12 Sandpiper needing energy in migration (5) 14 Children walk dog around (7) 16 Month in Spain, mostly quiet (4) 17 Greeting laws debarring united exodus (5) 22 Pay out, having arranged bus rides (8) 23 Country surrounded by sea with name for jellyfish (7) 24 Breeches king wears in accordance with custom (6) 25 Bloom in dish carried by old man (6) 27

Columba

2083: groundless

Unclued entries, when augmented by the letter that follows them in the grid, are all types of coffee or coffee bean.  The extra letter might be thought of as the coffee grounds. First prize Seamus McNeill, Belfast Runners-up Geoffrey Telfer, Shipley, W. Yorks; C.J. Ellis, Rochester

Douglas Murray

Jimmy Savile and the dangers of received wisdom

What does the Jimmy Savile case tell us about received wisdom? Over the last few weeks it has become clear that one of the most famous people in Britain was known by very many people to be an active, abusive paedophile. Many other people in broadcasting knew it. People in charities he was associated with knew it. People in hospitals he was associated with warned child patients about how to get around it. The person who founded Childline, no less, had heard about it. But nobody said or did anything. We are told that there were various reasons for this. Savile himself is said to have threatened that there would

Steerpike Steerpike

Rupert Murdoch bites his tongue

What happens when you get two elderly proprietors, one with a book to sell and the other with a Twitter account? Well, sadly, with Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch, the answer is a fairly one-sided fight. Black is enjoying both freedom and the airwaves at present by going on a PR megablitz for his new book, A Matter of Principle. He has called Sky’s Adam Boulton a ‘jackass’ and Jeremy Paxman a ‘priggish, gullible, British fool’. But Uncle Rupe got the worst of Black’s sharp tongue: ‘He’s a psychopath. Like Stalin, except that he doesn’t kill people. I’m not suggesting he’s a homicidal psychopath – he just severs people out

Sebastian Payne

Introducing the all-new Spectator iPad app

I’m delighted to launch today a brand new app for the Spectator on the iPad. We’ve redesigned the whole app from scratch to provide an easier, clearer and more elegant way to read the magazine digitally. Every Thursday morning, the latest issue will be automatically delivered straight to your tablet before it even hits the newsstand: To celebrate the launch, we’re offering a month’s free subscription to the Spectator. When you’ve downloaded the app, simply press Subscribe, choose one month and we’ll provide you access to the last six weeks of issues as well as the next four issues: As well as providing a better experience, you can now listen to each

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith’s latest welfare cut kite

It is strange that the government has chosen to trail a speech by Iain Duncan Smith on an issue popular with voters on the same day as good economic news. The Work and Pensions Secretary has already reached an agreement with Chancellor George Osborne that it is possible to cut a further £10 billion from the welfare bill (when he originally said he would block those cuts), and is now starting to prepare the ground for some of those cuts to take place. He knows that while the public supports further welfare cuts, the Lib Dems will not without a credible package which ensures the rich are paying more. One

Jonathan Jones

GDP is up 1% – give or take 0.7%

So it’s official: the UK economy grew by 1 per cent in the third quarter of 2012, according to the ONS’s preliminary estimate. That’s significantly better than the consensus forecasts. As all the politicking and pontificating begins, there are a few caveats worth keeping in mind:- 1. It’s just an estimate. As I showed yesterday, the margin of error in the ONS’s preliminary estimates is +/– 0.7 percentage points. That means Q3 growth could really turn out to have been anything from 0.3 per cent to 1.7 per cent. Still, we can be confident that the economy did return to growth in the quarter, ending the double-dip recession — though

Bruce Anderson

An Italian secret

A miserable day: grey, grizzling, drizzly — October going on February. Our host had reluctantly given up the crazy idea of lunch in the garden; the first guests helped him move the tables and chairs inside. It may have been an attempt to warm ourselves against winter, but the talk turned to Italy, further stimulated by someone spotting a copy of David Gilmour’s In Pursuit of Italy. In the event of your not having devoured it already, a treat awaits you. We agreed there is a basic distinction in the way that one thinks about Italy, and about France. Although there are vast differences between the French regions, there is

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Fryers vs phones

At her school interview, my daughter was asked to name the most important technology of the modern age. I’m proud to say she answered ‘sewerage’. Some historians now claim the washing machine was, in economic terms, a far more revolutionary innovation than the internet or the mobile phone: it was this which enabled women to enter the workforce. Yet in the past 30 years, aside from the microwave, progress in home appliances seems slow. Dyson’s washing machine went nowhere. In some ways this kind of innovation is difficult: few people replace their washing machine every two years as they do their mobile phones. In the kitchen, counter space is limited;