Society

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lower inflation eases the squeeze, for now at least

George Osborne might not be feeling particularly comfortable with today’s August Inflation Report from the Bank of England, as Sir Mervyn King is expected to slash the Bank’s growth forecast for the British economy in 2012 from the 0.8 per cent it predicted in May to close to zero. This morning’s announcement will also include some mildly good news for households, with the Bank due to predict a 2.1 per cent fall in inflation by the end of the year. This will bring inflation down below the two per cent target, which, as the CBI’s Richard Lambert pointed out on the Today programme, will mean ‘families starting to feel a

Tuesday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

RIP Robert Hughes: Enemy of the Woozy

Few books have had a greater effect on me than Robert Hughes’ Culture of Complaint. The clarity of Hughes’ style in his dissection of the discontents of the 1980s was enough to make me love him. In his political writing, histories and art criticism he never descended into theory or jargon, but imitated his heroes, Tom Paine, George Orwell and EP Thompson, and talked to the reader without condescension or obscurantism Critics denounce and admirers celebrate the ‘muscular style’, but I find it more courteous than macho. Hughes tackled hard and often obscure subjects, the rise of modern art, the penal colonies in early Australia, and made a deal with

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cesspits and the City

It’s becoming difficult to predict just when the period of remorse and apology for bankers really will be over. Bob Diamond claimed that it had finished in January 2011, and found to his cost this summer that this was not true. The Libor scandal that cost the Barclays boss his job wasn’t the only unpleasant thing to crawl out of what Vince Cable described as the ‘cesspit’ in the City of London, though. Today Standard Chartered’s shares fell by 16 per cent following allegations from US regulators that the bank had covered up £160bn worth of transactions with the Iranian government. And at Southwark Crown Court this morning, Jessica Harper,

Shiraz Maher

What multiculturalism really means

Proponents of multiculturalism are crowing after golden Saturday when Team GB won a slew of Olympic medals. Somali Muslim immigrant Mo Farah and mixed race Jessica Ennis were among those securing gold. ‘Today intolerant right-wingers question the motives of non-indigenous sportspeople and are furious they have been chosen to represent the UK,’ Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote in the Independent. This is disingenuous. A packed Olympic stadium has stood and cheered for everyone in Team GB. The Times and Sun both carried articles on how our Olympic achievements reveal the success of a diverse and progressive nation. Alibhai-Brown epitomises how many on the left perennially misunderstand the debate around multiculturalism. They accuse

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Multicultural Britain, Olympic Games, Danny Boyle – Spectator Blogs

Back from holiday and it seems just about the only “controversy” at these splendid* Olympic Games lies in Danny Boyle’s exhuberant opening ceremony. According to its critics it was multi-cultural crap or pap or something. And, of course, in one sense it was a hymn to multi-cultural Britain. Why else would Boyle have begun with choirs in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England (spliced with rugby footage) if not to remind the audience (in London and further afield) that the United Kingdom is not quite the same thing as England. Of course, that’s not what the critics of multi-culturalism really mean when they sneer at “multi-culti” tripe and political correctness

Monday

Shiraz Maher

The rot at the heart of the Syrian administration

There have been many tipping points in the Syrian revolution, and this morning we were provided with another. The newly appointed Prime Minister, Riyad Hijab, once considered a staunch Baath party loyalist, announced his defection to the opposition. He had only been in the post for two months. Working at the heart of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Hijab is the most senior official to have defected. There are unconfirmed reports that a further three ministers are trying to defect, but are being stopped by the intelligence services. Activists from the beleaguered city of Homs have said that the Finance Minister, Mohamed Jalilati, was arrested as he tried to leave the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Louise Mensch resigns

Louise Mensch’s local paper reports this morning that the Conservative MP will this morning announce that she is resigning her seat after struggling to balance family life with the demands of parliament. The Northamptonshire Telegraph reports Mensch saying: ‘I am completely devastated. It’s been unbelievably difficult to manage family life. We have been trying to find a way forward with the Prime Minister’s office but I just can’t spend as much time with my children as I want to.’ Mensch had told the Guardian last September about the pressures she was experiencing on her family life, and she left a select committee hearing with James Murdoch early to collect her

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Summer holiday blues

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much recently – I’m on the annual family holiday. We’re in Croatia, on one of those islands they’re terribly proud of, roasting like pigs on a spit. Truth is I’ve regularly surfed the papers online to find something interesting to write about, but the only thing that seems to be happening is people rowing or running or lifting things up and everybody getting themselves into an awful frenzy about winning things and there’s no other news at all. That’s pretty much why we booked our holidays for these particular weeks; the overkill, the obsession, etc. The main Croatian TV channel shows nothing but Olympic stuff,

Saturday

Toby Young Toby Young

When did I lose my racer’s instinct?

About 15 years ago, I spent a ‘track day’ at Silverstone with my best friend Sean Langan. The climax was an Audi TT race, the result of which has always been a matter of dispute. I crossed the line first, but a race official told us afterwards that, technically, I should have been disqualified for illegal overtaking. Needless to say, we both claimed victory. This disagreement was destined to remain unresolved, until last week when Quintessentially invited me to the Millbrook Proving Ground to test-drive the Aston Martin range. I asked if I could bring Sean along and, to my delight, they said yes. The rematch was on. Millbrook is

Miriam Gross

Diary – 4 August 2012

What explains the extraordinary success of Fifty Shades of Grey? This question has been much skirted around but, as far as I know, no one has come up with what seems to me the obvious answer: a large proportion of women are to some degree closet masochists. Of course it’s an embarrassing thing to admit, but we are longing, in our sexual imaginations if not in real life, to be dominated and subjugated by a masterful male. This tendency also explains the enduring popularity of Mills & Boon romances, bodice-rippers and the novels of Georgette Heyer, many of which have been in print for almost a century. Fifty Shades is

Peter Jones

Sex and the Games

Boxer Lennox Lewis, arguing that women weakened a man, avoided sex for three weeks before a fight. Greeks would have agreed, but things seem somewhat different in the contraceptive-laden Olympic village. Ancient theory was based on the idea that semen was a vital element in keeping a man strong. The doctor Aretaeus (1st century ad) said, ‘If any man is in possession of semen, he is fierce, courageous and physically mighty, like beasts. Evidence for this is to be found in athletes who practise abstinence.’ Even involuntary nocturnal emissions were thought to be enfeebling, threatening one’s endurance and breathing. The doctor Galen (2nd century ad) recommended that athletes take precautions

Taki

High life | 4 August 2012

Thucydides carefully structured his Peloponnesian war history as a cautionary tale about the moral decay that accompanies abuses of imperial power. ‘It is a general law of nature to rule whatever one can,’ say the Athenians blandly to the denizens of Melos before slaughtering them. (The tiny island of Melos, a Spartan colony, had refused to join an alliance with Athens in 416 BC, so the civilised Athenians punished innocent civilians by killing all the men and selling the women and children into slavery.) Athens was a direct democracy, whereas Sparta was a militaristic oligarchy, yet it was Athens that abused her power once the great Pericles had died of

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 4 August 2012

Have you been following Mitt Romney’s ‘gaffes’? In Britain, he said that there were some concerns about security before the Olympics. In Israel, he said that the ‘economic vitality’ of Israel compared favourably with its neighbours and attributed this in part to ‘the power of culture’. He said that Iran should be confronted, not appeased. In Poland, he met Lech Walesa and praised those who stood out against the ‘all-powerful state’. One of his aides said something moderately rude to reporters who were trying to goad his boss. To the unprejudiced mind, all of this sounds wholly unremarkable, even vaguely positive, but we are talking not about the unprejudiced mind

The Spectator

Doping the economy

An outsider viewing the Olympic opening ceremony could easily have gained the impression that Britain was in the midst of an unprecedented boom. A week on Sunday we are promised an equally spectacular closing ceremony. For the moment, the cost of staging the Olympics — £9.3 billion for the games, including £80 ­million for the opening and closing ceremonies alone — has been laid aside in a rush of public enthusiasm. The biggest source of discontent this week has been the rows of empty seats reserved for the IOC’s politburo and their associates. After any big party, of course, there is the risk of a big hangover. The Olympics will be

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 4 August 2012

I was on my back on the operating table for my long-awaited minor op. Three lesions had to come off under local anaesthetic: two on my chest, one on my shoulder. A Dr Mukopadhyay wielded the scalpel. This slight, shy, otherwordly man surprised me at the outset by diffidently placing a comforting, perhaps healing, perhaps textbook hand on my shoulder and leaving it there until I ducked my shoulder away in embarrassment. Once he’d begun cutting, Dr Mukopadhyay kept at it for over an hour with all the care and concentrated attention of a master watchmaker. When he voiced an instruction, he did so softly and humbly. As Dr Mukopadhyay

Melissa Kite

Real life | 4 August 2012

One second the spaniel was sitting in the window seat, looking out of the third-floor attic window at the dogs playing in the garden below. The next second she was gone. Time slows down when things like this happen. I remember looking and her being there, and I remember looking back and wondering where she was. And I remember hearing the yelp as she landed 30 foot down. In truth, the space between me looking and her not being there and the sound of the yelp can only have been half a second but it felt like a lifetime. After the yelp, time speeded back up again but I wanted

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 4 August 2012

Home After an opening ceremony going on into the early hours, directed by Danny Boyle and watched at one point by 26.9 million viewers in Britain, the Olympic Games in the Lea valley settled down to its sporting business, with only marginal complaints about empty seats, food queues, over-protective branding and the loss of the keys to Wembley stadium. The locks were changed. Two hundred and four copper petals attached to steel tubes had risen into the air without a hitch to form an Olympic cauldron of flame, to the designs of Thomas Heatherwick. The Queen had co-operated in making a jokey film sequence with Daniel Craig in the character

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 4 August 2012

Q. A friend of mine put five Coldplay tickets up for sale on Facebook. They were £80 each and I assumed they must be very good seats. I sent her the money. When they arrived I was surprised to see that they had originally been only £45 each. I made a wry comment to this effect but she expressed no guilt; she just said, ‘I rather hoped a close friend would not buy them — it is a bit of a side business for me.’ Mary, what is your view about this behaviour? — L.O., London W14 A. It was no surprise that your friend should wish to profiteer: her

The Spectator

Letters | 4 August 2012

Midwife crisis Sir: All Leah McLaren has to do is wait and see if she still wants a hospital birth after antenatal care from her home-birth midwife (‘Bullied by the NHS’, 28 July). Our helpline is deluged with calls from women who, having experienced a first birth in hospital, have booked a home birth for the second. Towards the end of pregnancy, they are told that the community midwives are fully booked, or they are given a spurious or exaggerated medical reason for going in. I hope she is with a team of midwives who are able to support her eventual choice. Jean Robinson President, Association for Improvements in the

Dot Wordsworth

Olympic family

The people who occasionally drive in the empty Olympic lanes and are entitled to sit in the seats left empty at Olympic events are called the Olympic family. It seems to me unwise to have attached such a name to this already creepy notion. Even the UK Border Agency has special procedures for an ‘Olympic or Paralympic Games family member visitor’. Since the world is addicted to gangster films, everyone knows that Mafia gangs call themselves ‘the family’. In The Luciano Story (1954), ‘The inside facts on the greatest criminal conspiracy in history and the mastermind behind it – Lucky Luciano’, Sid Feder and Joachim Joesten explained that ‘to Mafiosi,