Society

Thursday

Alexander Masters

Diary – 27 September 2012

In Scandinavia, gene therapists have invented a virus that may treat the cancer that killed multi-billionaire Steve Jobs — but are going to have to throw it out, because of lack of cash. I am in Uppsala, Sweden, sitting among pipettes and centrifuges, helping the professor in charge to set up a rescue fund for this kindly microbe. My friend and co-writer, the biographer Dido Davies, has been diagnosed with pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer or ‘Steve Jobs Disease’, and Professor Essand’s virus makes neuroendocrine tumours melt away — at least, in lab mice. It is not clear if this will happen in humans; the only way to find out is to

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 27 September 2012

Andrew Mitchell, accused of being a bully, was bullied in turn. There was tremendous journalistic laziness in the reporting of his alleged remarks to police officers at the Downing Street gates. A few months ago it was considered a national scandal that the police were always slipping information to the Murdoch press. Now they planted a story in the Sun and no one minded. Yet what they did was a breach of trust for which they should be sacked. How can people who work in Downing Street now be confident that the men and women at the gate really are protecting them? It is a well-known tradition for police to

Doc

2082: 1 to 2082

The unclued lights (one of two words, one of which is an abbreviation) are of kind and between them go back to number 1. Elsewhere, ignore an accent. Across 3    Simple meal obtained from shady dung pit (12, two words) 10    To hear’s what is involved here (7) 11    Former student adapting usual start and finish to Milton (7) 13    Armstrong, say – singular fast bowler (8) 16    Regularly toddle down to theatre (5) 18    Impress priest and state time (5) 19    Hopeless endeavour of miserable fellow nursing wild cats (9, two words) 24    Carp about new gear brought back for craft

Doc

2079: prepared for rain

Each unclued light has no MAC on, but 30D (Macramé) does. First prize Stephen Gore, Seer Green, Bucks Runners-up John Cruickshank, Aberdeen; R.J. Green, Llangynidr, Crickhowell

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Life in Modern Britain: Charity Duck Edition – Spectator Blogs

A typical tale of nitwittery from modern Britain. And this, of course, is one of the problems with localism: it means giving more power to local councillors. That’s still, on balance, a risk worth taking even though so many of them seem so utterly devoid of common sense. Quackers council chiefs have banned a bow tie-wearing duck from collecting cash for charity – unless it gets a permit. The bird – called Star – wears a dickie bow and waddles alongside his owner Barrie Hayman raising money for sick youngsters. Star and Barrie regularly visit businesses collecting cash from the public – already raising £6,500 for a children’s hospice.But Mr

Robert Guest

What India does for Britain

Was it the sumptuous leather armchairs? Or the perfect teacups? Or the toothsome selection of custard creams and ginger nuts? I have never sat in a more quintessentially English workplace than the London office of Tata, India’s largest conglomerate. Travellers to India often remark that many Indians love British culture more than Brits do. Where else do airport bookshops offer tottering towers of P.G. Wodehouse novels? Where else is cricket a multi-billion-pound industry? What few people realise is that cultural bonds have economic consequences. Tata not only has executives who sip tea like English gentlemen. It also owns Tetley tea. Indeed, it is Britain’s largest industrial employer, having also bought

Rvaidya Nathan

A passage to India

When my parents emigrated from India in the 1960s, they sought what might be called the ‘-British dream’: stability, opportunity and the chance of a better life in the world’s third-largest economy. So when I told my parents that I was moving to India for the same sort of reasons, they were shocked. India may be going up in the world, but what about the corruption, bureaucracy, pollution and overcrowding? Would I really earn enough money and live in a nice house? It made no sense at all to them that, aged 32, their daughter had chosen to go east — and join a steady exodus which is passing almost

Bruce Anderson

A Sicilian renaissance

A Lincolnshire farmer died and went to Heaven. St Peter told him that there was a custom. Over dinner on his first evening, the new arrival would give a talk to the Heavenly Host on a great world event during his lifetime. ‘That’s easy,’ said the farmer: ‘the Lincolnshire floods in 1953.’ Peter was incredulous. ‘The Lincolnshire floods in 1953. Was that a great world event?’ ‘It certainly was. I lost six sheep. Jan Stewer lost 12 sheep, and six cows. Further down the valley, a man was drowned.’ Super Hanc Petram, who had heard enough about Lincolnshire to last an eternity-time, interrupted the flood. ‘Very well. But do remember:

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The myth of self-denial

It’s a cheap joke, but it cheers me up. When Starbucks started that habit of asking your name and writing it on your cup, I began giving my name as ‘Chantelle’, ‘Monique’, ‘Desirée’ or ‘Pixie’. Then, when I’d collected four or five of these empty cups, I would leave them all lying around in the car to stop my wife getting too complacent. In the same way, I always use a false name when I book an executive car. It amuses me to see a black Mercedes S-Class parked somewhere prominent with a big white card in the passenger window with ‘Monbiot’ written on it. On any subject involving consumption,

Lucy Vickery

Last words

In Competition No. 2765 you were invited to fill in the gap in ‘The Last —— on Earth’, and to submit a short story of that title. The challenge produced an excellent entry. I very much enjoyed J. Seery’s engaging opening: ‘The events at the Cheltenham supermarket at the end of the 24th century inducing the accelerated evolution of the foot are too well known to need  description, initiating, as they did, the decline and disappearance of shoemaking and mending and their artefacts.’ And I was sorry not to have room for Noel Petty’s poignant and plausibly titled ‘The Last Landline on Earth’ or John Samson’s entertaining wordplay. Commendations all

Liz Anderson

Millionaires’ playground

‘If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.’ Well, Mark Twain, I waited a couple of days and I liked the weather a lot: bright blue skies, warm sun and a cooling breeze off the Atlantic during a September weekend in Newport, Rhode Island. Two days is not long to explore the delights of the town, so here’s my advice for a -whistle-stop tour. Walk up and down the streets, past the variously coloured clapboard houses (some old — dating from the 17th century — some new) that would make Farrow & Ball devotees swoon in admiration. Pause for a while at Trinity Church,

Stuart Reid

City that never pales

Ooh, sir! Do you? At your age, sir? Well, yes. Revolting though it may seem, I still love New York. Every time I go there — as I did earlier this month — I fear I am not going to like it, but every time I fall in love all over again. I think it was Evelyn Waugh who said that when we are young we are Americans, but when we grow up we become Frenchmen. There is some truth in that. Although I cannot claim to have grown up, I do find as I hurtle towards my seventies that I have more in common with cheese-eating surrender monkeys than

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Proof that the UK is open for business: a Chinese takeaway for GCHQ

You might think it redundant to say that the world’s biggest manufacturer of telecoms equipment is a name to watch. But Huawei — which isn’t quite pronounced ‘Who are we?’ but perhaps ought to be — really does deserve scrutiny. This beacon of Chinese enterprise overtook its main rival, Ericsson of Sweden, in the first half of this year with more than $16 billion of sales. It has just announced an expansion of its UK activities, which include a research facility in Ipswich and a ‘cyber-security evaluation centre’ in Banbury, promising to create 700 jobs and winning applause from David Cameron. It is a supplier of equipment to 45 of

Mark Palmer

Holidays from hell

Everyone thinks travel writing is a doddle. You soak up the sun for a couple of weeks and when you get home the words pour forth, dazzling the reader with wish-I-was-there images. Then you sit back and wait for the cheque to drop through the letterbox while planning your next safari or walk in the rainforest or flop on an Indian ocean beach, encouraged by bubbly travel PRs who tell you that the ‘views are breathtaking’, the food ‘to die for’ and the whole experience ‘the stuff of dreams’. But there’s the problem. The vocabulary sucks. No form of writing is so riddled with clichés or lends itself so easily

Andrew Smith

Banking like it’s 1999

Ten years ago next week, the tech-heavy Nasdaq stock exchange hit its lowest point ever, as the dotcom crash shuddered to an excruciating conclusion. With Facebook shares now approaching half their May offer price and debate raging over the role of banks in society, this is a good time to ask what we learnt from that enigmatic earlier shock — the answer being not enough. Even by the standard of bubble-induced collapses, the dotcom crash was thorough. The Nasdaq Composite index, which had peaked in March 2000 at over 5,000 points and halved by that year’s end, hit a low of 1,114 in October 2002. By then, almost nothing was

Dominic Lawson

Japan Notebook

Some time around the middle of the last decade, Japan’s population began to shrink. The disappearing act has continued unabated: at the present rate of decline, this remarkable mono-cultural race will have all but become extinct within a hundred years. Worth a visit then, while stocks last: so I gratefully accepted an invitation from the business association known as Keidanren (like the CBI, only with influence). An early-morning meeting with Mr Takahisa Takahara provides a perfect snapshot of the consequences of population implosion. The business he runs, Uni‑Charm, is Japan’s biggest supplier of nappies; but now, said Mr Takahara, his firm sells more of the things to the incontinent elderly

Jonathan Fenby

Très difficile

François Hollande is nothing if not a traditionalist. French governments of the left usually come to office promising to reject austerity and pursue a holy grail of growth, only to hit the buffers of economic reality on election. In 1936, the Popular Front sought to overturn the orthodoxy of its predecessors after the Great Slump and in 1981 François Mitterrand pledged to escape from Giscard d’Estaing’s rigorous policies in reaction to the first oil shock. After being appointed as the country’s latest finance minister this summer, Pierre Moscovici duly declared that ‘austerity’ was a word he did not like. But austerity is, nonetheless, what the new president has been forced

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A teenage girl, a maths teacher and a righteous tabloid fury

I seriously contemplated being a teacher once upon a time, when I was lot younger. It seemed to me an agreeable doss, and one didn’t have to be too bright or too ambitious, or possess any great quantity of knowledge. I sometimes wondered what sort of teacher I’d prefer to be; one of those ingratiating young men who plays meaningful pop songs on his guitar to the class and affects an air of faux rebelliousness, the kind of teacher whom as schoolchildren we all despised, or the other kind — sarcastic, stentorian and occasionally brutal, the kind we all feared. It was one or the other; there is no middle