Society

Thursday

Howard Jacobson

Diary – 6 September 2012 | 6 September 2012

In Edinburgh to speak about my new novel Zoo Time at the book festival. I love it up here, watching the rain lashing the austere grey terraces, dodging the street clowns who don’t really belong in so serious a place, visiting the Victorian dead in the marvellously voluble Dean Cemetery (it’s the stones that do the speaking, not the dead), and enjoying the view of Fettes from the window of my hotel. Built in the grand Scots baronial style to educate orphans and the poor, Fettes looks more like a lunatic asylum than a school. If I had a telescope I believe I’d be able to spot Mrs Rochester roaming

The Spectator

Letters | 6 September 2012

Save our salmon Sir: On a Winston Churchill scholarship to discover what other North Atlantic host countries were doing for beleaguered salmon numbers in the 1990s, I found that the Canadian government considered hydroelectric schemes far less green than wind farms (‘Something’s fishy’, 1 September). The Canadian experience was that hydro units minced fish, interfered with the movement of migratory species, and often produced electricity in amounts well below original specification targets. On return to the UK, I looked closely at ‘my’ Scottish river, Carron Kyle of Sutherland. Water is abstracted from headwaters to feed turbines in a neighbouring catchment. The scheme built by the government is a complete barrier to

Doc

2079: Prepared for rain

One clued light is suitably dressed having taken notice of the title. By extension, all the unclued lights would be, if they took the same precaution (and would then be confirmed in Chambers). Ignore two accents. Across 7      US battle giving quiet backing to spring festival (6) 12    Dava Sobel’s novel is no short piece, we’re told (9) 15    Origin can be suspect? (9) 16    Half the introduction to treatise on larval limb (6) 20    Coastal dweller at valley within African city (7) 21    Male hawk’s clasp (6) 24    Tumour affected amaretto (8) 27    Dull, tangled vegetation (3) 28    Affinity with

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Draghi makes good on his promise: but will it save the euro?

David Cameron and François Hollande met this evening. As you would expect, they discussed the situation in the eurozone, which is currently looking a little more cheery than usual after Mario Draghi announced those long-awaited ‘whatever it takes’ measures which he believes will save the eurozone. In summary, this Outright Monetary Transactions scheme involves the European Central Bank buying up short-term debt from struggling economies. To stop this cash from the ECB becoming a substitute for economic reforms, a country wanting to apply for the OMT must have signed up to certain conditions with the European Financial Stability Facility or the European Stability Mechanism. Those conditions mean austerity policies, which the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

University Admissions Should Be a Matter of Discrimination – Spectator Blogs

Cristina Odone begins her latest oh-woe-is-Britain post most amusingly: Around the world, people have long envied Britain’s two institutions: the BBC and Oxbridge. Britons, however, (or some of them) are determined to destroy both. They are going about it in a brutal and obvious way, by lowering standards for both Auntie and the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The BBC abroad was a byword for beautifully written and brilliantly produced programmes such as “The World at War” and “Upstairs Downstairs”. But in its obsession with “diversity”, the Beeb has allowed standards to slip: comedies that aren’t funny (but don’t sound middle class) and reality shows that teach nothing but

Shiraz Maher

Save the Children and Osama bin Laden

Have Pakistani children been the unintended victims of last year’s mission by the United States to kill Osama bin Laden? It might seem a ridiculous question to pose, but it’s clear they are being made to bear the brunt of that decision by an increasingly paranoid official and clerical establishment. The latest manifestation of this was the decision by Pakistan’s intelligence services to order all foreign staff working for Save the Children out of country. They claim to have found evidence of the charity indirectly assisting the United States in its operation to kill Osama bin Laden last year – a claim the group vehemently denies. Save the Children is

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Bill Clinton: The Great Communicator on Top Form – Spectator Blogs

Barack Obama is a great orator  – something of which we shall doubtless be reminded tonight – but Bill Clinton is the greater communicator. His speech to the Democratic convention in Charlotte last night was a masterclass. The old boy’s still got it. Of course, it helps to be speaking in his new role – assumed upon the death of Edward Kennedy – as the party’s elder statesman. It’s easier to appear above the fray as a member of the ex-Presidents club. Most of the time, it invests you with extra gravitas. Even so, this was vintage Clinton, making by far the best – and most comprehensive – case for

Dear Mary

Britain can’t wait until 2015 for airport expansion

The Government has announced that it will appoint a bureaucrat to spend three years writing a report on the desperate and urgent shortage of air transport capacity in the south east of England. Meanwhile, Heathrow will continue to operate at over 98 per cent of capacity with no spare runways to pick up the slack when something goes wrong; Britain will continue to lack direct flights to countless Chinese metropolises; and the Chinese economy will continue to boom, swelling by an estimated 25 per cent by the time Howard Davies has finished pondering the issues in 2015. We can’t wait that long and the solution is obvious. The immediate need

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Revealed: the richer sex

The cover story of the new Spectator is one of the most startling we have run for a while. Last year, Liza Mundy wrote a book called The Richer Sex showing how women would become the biggest earners in most American households within a generation. She has now studied the British data and found that the trend here is even more advanced. It’s not about equality. Women born after 1985 have not just ‘caught up’ with men, but are overtaking them. But while we Brits tend to joke about this, and talk about being ‘pursewhipped,’ the Americans are taking it seriously and understanding how it is changing society forever. This

John Sutherland

Bloomsbury’s twin powerhouses

Rosemary Ashton has always been fascinated by the ways in which ideas ‘materialise’. Her first book, The German Idea, tracked the subtle filaments of Germanism in 19th-century British culture. In this, her latest book, she anatomises an area of London where more formative ideas have been conceived, and brought to fruition, than in any other of the metropolitan villages. Covent Garden is theatrical (and, bits of it, louche), Soho is bohemian (even more louche), Kensington is a home to science. In Bloomsbury it is the ‘march of mind’ that gives WC1 its distinctive character. Ashton sees Bloomsbury as a constellation of ‘progressive institutions’ — intellectual structures which have been as

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

False idols | 6 September 2012

It is widely agreed that 9/11 had a silver lining: that frightening day prodded us into thinking about religion, into taking it seriously. It nudged us away from our embarrassed evasion and forced us to admit that religion is a huge cultural and political force, even in Britain. It helped to bury the myth that gradual secularisation was making religion less important each year, something that sophisticated people could safely ignore or sneer at. It led us to begin a loud, boisterous, but also serious and nuanced, debate on the place of religion in public life. But did it? Is it true that we began to think more clearly about

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why can’t I go to parties like Naomi Wolf’s book launch? | 6 September 2012

I got an invitation the other day to attend the launch of some incendiary tract about Europe published by a think-tank. I get quite a few of these, especially stuff from what was once the Tory far right (and by ‘far’ I mean ‘far’ as in sort of Alpha Centauri, i.e. more easily measurable in light years than inches). I have nothing which constitutes a ‘life’, as such, so I go to one or two of these bashes every year — largely out of gratitude that anyone would ever invite me to anything. They’re always the same — suffocating room, unrefreshed by unchilled Pinot Grigio and some conference league canapés,

Nick Booth

Making me violent | 6 September 2012

When the Criminal Records Bureau says you’re a violent criminal, it’s not easy to put the record straight. Recently, I decided to volunteer with The Samaritans. It won’t surprise you to hear I found out a good deal about myself in the process. What might surprise you is that what I found out was that I was a violent criminal. The revelation came after I’d sent off my details for what is know as an ‘enhanced disclosure’ check by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). Anyone who applies to work with children or vulnerable adults is usually checked, so I wasn’t anxious about it at all. In fact, by the time

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron didn’t enjoy this reshuffle. But he needed it | 6 September 2012

David Cameron has always nurtured a deep dislike of reshuffles, and the last week won’t have helped. The result might strengthen the government; but the process was as ghastly as the Prime Minister expected. He sought to be gentlemanly about things, publicising the promoted while granting the demoted privacy. Even so, I understand, three ministers burst into tears in front of him when he was delivering the bad news. Lady Warsi was so cross about being stripped of the party chairmanship that she went home to Yorkshire and carried on negotiations from there. Some ministers even succeeded in staying put when the Prime Minister would have liked them to move.

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

False idols

It is widely agreed that 9/11 had a silver lining: that frightening day prodded us into thinking about religion, into taking it seriously. It nudged us away from our embarrassed evasion and forced us to admit that religion is a huge cultural and political force, even in Britain. It helped to bury the myth that gradual secularisation was making religion less important each year, something that sophisticated people could safely ignore or sneer at. It led us to begin a loud, boisterous, but also serious and nuanced, debate on the place of religion in public life. But did it? Is it true that we began to think more clearly about

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why can’t I go to parties like Naomi Wolf’s book launch?

I got an invitation the other day to attend the launch of some incendiary tract about Europe published by a think-tank. I get quite a few of these, especially stuff from what was once the Tory far right (and by ‘far’ I mean ‘far’ as in sort of Alpha Centauri, i.e. more easily measurable in light years than inches). I have nothing which constitutes a ‘life’, as such, so I go to one or two of these bashes every year — largely out of gratitude that anyone would ever invite me to anything. They’re always the same — suffocating room, unrefreshed by unchilled Pinot Grigio and some conference league canapés,

Nick Booth

Making me violent

When the Criminal Records Bureau says you’re a violent criminal, it’s not easy to put the record straight. Recently, I decided to volunteer with The Samaritans. It won’t surprise you to hear I found out a good deal about myself in the process. What might surprise you is that what I found out was that I was a violent criminal. The revelation came after I’d sent off my details for what is know as an ‘enhanced disclosure’ check by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). Anyone who applies to work with children or vulnerable adults is usually checked, so I wasn’t anxious about it at all. In fact, by the time

Liza Mundy

The great pay shift | 6 September 2012

The news, when it emerged this summer, had an air of inevitability: women for the first time are scoring higher on IQ tests than men. Girls have long been doing better than boys in GCSEs and today they make up the majority of university students. When they graduate, they’re more likely than men to find work and an increasing number are now the family breadwinners. The word ‘pursewhipped’ — referring to men being in financial thrall to women — is slowly entering the English language, and with it the understanding that this is not about equality. Britain, like many other places, is witnessing a gender power flip. It is odd

Liza Campbell

The great pay shift

The news, when it emerged this summer, had an air of inevitability: women for the first time are scoring higher on IQ tests than men. Girls have long been doing better than boys in GCSEs and today they make up the majority of university students. When they graduate, they’re more likely than men to find work and an increasing number are now the family breadwinners. The word ‘pursewhipped’ — referring to men being in financial thrall to women — is slowly entering the English language, and with it the understanding that this is not about equality. Britain, like many other places, is witnessing a gender power flip. It is odd