Society

Saturday

Kate Chisholm

Human stories

‘The aggregation of marginal gains’ is the key to success, according to Dave Brailsford, the extraordinarily successful cycling coach to Team GB. You could say that’s been the motto of this Olympic Games. Not massive injections of dosh (or drugs, for that matter). But a heady cocktail of supreme physical effort and tactical nous. Brailsford recognises it’s the little things that can make the difference when mere fractions of a second are all that’s between gold and nothing. We discovered that his cyclists sleep on specially chosen mattresses and wear heated hot pants (yes, I do mean hot pants). Cyclists, he reckons, need to sleep well before a race. They

Bruce Anderson

Magnum force

A double magnum is a triumphant spectacle. A single bottle of claret looks slender, elegant: a suggestion of a late Gothic spire. In the 15th century, architects bent their efforts to achieve effortlessness: stone sublimated into light; ethereal, disembodied, breath-taking columns, ad maiorem Dei gloriam, shooting upwards like fireworks to make love to the sky: flamboyant. A double magnum rests on firmer foundations. Robust and proud on its massy haunches, this is Atlas or Antaeus, not Ariel. A double magnum is Romanesque, Norman. Far from seeking to conceal power, it revels in it. In its mighty eminence, Durham Cathedral tenses itself on primevally igneous rock, like a crouching lion, overawing

Lucy Vickery

Second hand

In Competition No. 2759 you were invited to submit a well-known poem rewritten by another well-known poet. You were outstandingly good this week and there are lots of unlucky losers. Honourable mentions to Graham King, Janet Kenny, Jerome Betts, Barbara Smoker and Gerard Benson and a hearty pat on the back all round. Those printed below earn £25 each; Noel Petty takes the extra fiver. The church tower casts an ever-lengthening shade And evening cloaks the dismal rural scene. Beneath these stones the hamlet’s dead are laid. How devilish dull their living must have been! No claret, cards or courtesans repaid Their tedious agricultural routine. I fancy, though, if I’d

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Complexity is too simple

Pojoaque, near Santa Fe, New Mexico This is a magical part of the world — and it’s easy to see why D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley and Douglas Adams were tempted to hang around for a while. When James Delingpole finally gets his act together and leads 10,000 Spectator subscribers into the desert to form a libertarian commune, northern New Mexico should be the first place he tries. He’ll have the blessing of a former two-term governor here, triathlete and Everest mountaineer Gary Johnson, now the Libertarian party’s presidential candidate. As Republican governor, Johnson spent part of his second term campaigning for the decriminalisation of marijuana: when asked of his past

Peter Jay

National Service, by Colin Shindler

For over 15 years after the second world war young men between the ages of 18 and 20 were conscripted by law to serve in Britain’s armed forces for two years. This was officially in order to man the army, navy and air force sufficiently for them to be able to perform the roles which government assigned to them, mainly in the management of British colonies and, after the formation of Nato, in opposing the feared westward expansion of the Soviet Union. Some serious fighting was done in Korea and later in Malaya, which was surprisingly successful from the colonial point of view. Others of us disported ourselves in the

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Barclays’ surprise choice for chairman: Old Father Time with his lyre

I’ve had a picture on my wall of the newly appointed Barclays chairman, Sir David Walker, for about 25 years. If that sounds creepy, I should explain that it’s a photograph of a 1986 meeting of the Court of the Bank of England, of which my father was a member. Walker, then an up-and-coming forty-something, was an executive director of the Bank and chairman of Johnson Matthey Bankers, which the Bank had bailed out two years earlier to avert a domino collapse across the City. Tall and bespectacled — taking his glasses off for photographers these days seems to me a mistake, giving him the mildly befuddled look of Corporal

Charles Glass

A hostage’s daydream

Twenty-five years ago, in a windowless Levantine oubliette, my wrist and ankle were bound with chains, but my imagination soared. Among my many daydreams was a reunion a quarter-century hence. The guests at this illusory affair were to have been my captors. There were times when I envisaged our encounter as real, and others as a piece of theatre. Either way, 25 years on, it hasn’t happened. Nor has anything else I expected before I escaped from Hezbollah in Beirut in August 1987. The rendezvous was to take place at the Grand Hotel Kadri in Zahle, a Christian village where the foothills of Mount Lebanon descend into the Bekaa Valley.

Douglas Murray

Have it by heart

Earlier this year the Education Secretary Michael Gove suggested that primary school children ought to learn a poem by heart. Even if the teaching unions had not objected I would have needed no further convincing. I was converted to Gove’s idea years ago, by Terry Waite. Having haphazardly discovered poetry on my own at state school, it was slightly later that I heard Ronald Runcie’s hostage-negotiator-turned-hostage give a sermon on a cold Sunday evening in chapel. Within ten minutes he had introduced me to a new poem and a new idea, which is a good average for a sermon. The poem was ‘Burnt Norton’, the first of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four

John R. Bradley

Recipe for revolution

It started in America. The Midwest has for weeks been suffering what is now the worst drought in living memory. Prices for maize and wheat have soared by 50 per cent and the G20 will next week decide whether to call an emergency meeting to discuss what the United Nations believes could be a repeat of the 2008 food price crisis. It is being spoken of as a humanitarian disaster, and rightly. But the last few years have taught us that, when hunger strikes, political upheaval will not be far behind. Even now, the Arab Spring is seen as a popular outcry for political freedom, but those of us who

W James-Antle-Iii

Can Paul Ryan save Mitt Romney

Washington, DC If you read only the British press, you might get the impression that Mitt Romney couldn’t have found a more extreme running mate than Paul Ryan. The new vice presidential nominee is a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House budget committee, in which capacity he has pushed for gradual but significant cuts in social welfare. Yet it seems that Ryan’s criticism of the National Health Service, so celebrated at the London Olympics, has rankled most. ‘Romney’s new No. 2 savages the NHS,’ declared the Times. The Guardian asked, ‘Is Paul Ryan’s attack on the NHS healthy criticism?’ (Three guesses as to what the answer is.) Even the Daily

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Let us enjoy peace on Mars while we still can

There are some things to be said in favour of the planet Mars. Its atmosphere contains almost no oxygen, the temperature in winter reaches minus 143˚C, it is exceptionally arid and dusty, and any human travelling to the place would receive sufficient solar radiation to be lit up like a Russian dissident. My problem with the place, though, is that it is only 33 million miles distant. It is altogether too close for comfort, virtually a stone’s throw away. Mercury, I think, or better still Pluto, would be far more fun. On Mercury, incineration would be instantaneous. However it is Pluto that really fits the bill. It is three billion

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The vagina fad

In the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, there’s a picture that, last time I looked, was curtained off. A couple of Japanese girls came out from behind the curtain, stuffing their hands into their mouths to stop the giggles. I went in to see the cause of the girly mirth and there it was, Gustave Courbet’s ‘Origine du Monde’, a painting of a woman’s open legs, with dark pubic hair and a glimpse, but only a glimpse, of th e labia. It’s obviously provocative: you could say that Courbet has cut to the chase as far as male viewers are concerned. He’s got his Mount of Venus, lots of hair and

Andrew M Brown

Psychedelic revival

Acid is back. For the first time since the 1960s there are signs of a rekindling of serious interest in psychedelic drugs — conferences, clinical tests, and a full-blown study is planned, with human subjects. LSD belonged to history — to grizzly-haired hippies and travellers, the ‘counter culture’. Now, an informal alliance of psychiatrists, therapists and psychopharmacologists are seeking to shine a fresh light on to psychedelics, the group which includes LSD and psilocybin (magic mushrooms). MDMA (ecstasy) is also in this category. There are two main areas of interest: what psychedelics reveal about how the brain works; and their potential as medicines. There is a third, fuzzier angle: the

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The weak contract worth £100 million

Moving people off sickness benefits and back into the workplace was never going to be an easy job. It’s a sensitive process dealing with all the grey areas that complex illnesses and disabilities throw up, and has always needed careful handling. But today ministers came under fire for the way they hold the company that carries out the assessments for fitness-to-work decisions to account. The National Audit Office has identified weaknesses in the Work and Pensions department’s contract with Atos Healthcare, which carries out the work capability assessments. Comptroller and Auditor General Amyas Morse has written a letter to Labour MP Tom Greatrex, who is investigating Atos’ performance, saying: ‘We

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ministers fail to sell themselves on playing field sell-offs

If you’re a minister, or even the Prime Minister, and you take to the airwaves holding a page of figures aloft, it’s always a good idea to make sure the figures are actually correct before you enter the studio. When David Cameron read out a break down of playing field sales on LBC radio during the Olympics, he was trying to crush reports that under this government, schools are continuing to reduce their sports facilities in return for money. You can watch the film of Cameron with his sheet of paper here. The problem is that this sheet of paper wasn’t actually correct when it said there were only 21

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How students are mis-sold the benefits of university

What do you say to an Arts graduate? ‘Big Mac and fries, please!’ I used to laugh at that joke until I was served a Junior Whopper by one of my fellow arts graduates in Edinburgh and ever since then I’ve been suspicious of the story I was sold at school: that going to university takes you into a new league of earning potential. The A-Level results came out yesterday, and anyone who has opened an exams envelope will be familiar with the feeling. That you may as well have the results tattooed on your forehead because they will define the trajectory of your life. But in the 22 years since

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sales of The Spectator: 2012 H1

The Spectator’s sales figures are out today, with digital sales included for the first time. I’m pleased to report that, in a pretty murderous market, our sales are still rising — and, thanks to our new digital readers, rising at the fastest rate in ten years. The red line shows our print sales. It’s not exactly boom times for the printed word. Some publications have resigned themselves to terminal print decline, and have switched their focus entirely to digital. That’s not the way we see it at The Spectator, the oldest magazine in the English language. We love the printed magazine, which is why two years ago, we refreshed its

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Housebuilding slumps

If ministers needed any more encouragement to improve the supply of new homes in this country, today’s figures on house building starts and completions from the Communities and Local Government department might just do it. Housing starts in England in the three months to the end of June fell by 10 per cent on the previous quarter. If you compare the figure for starts in this quarter to those in the same quarter last year, there has been a 24 per cent drop. The number of completions has also fallen by five per cent between the first and second quarters of this year, but has risen seven per cent on

Clarissa Tan

When hunger strikes

How many of history’s great revolutions were sparked by sheer, human hunger? In 2008, global food prices spiked, with the cost of basic crops doubling. In the two years that followed, Egyptians saw their food prices increase by some 40 per cent – in 2011, as we know, the Arab Spring broke across the Middle East, triggered by the self-immolation of a Tunisian food seller. How likely are such spates of unrest to happen again? Very likely, given that – due to the worst drought in the US in living memory – the price of wheat and maize have soared 50 per cent in past weeks, and the G20 may

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

A-level results crib sheet

This year’s coverage of A-levels has been a little different to that in previous years. Sure, there are still plenty of blonde twins coming out of the woodwork to take impressively high jumps in the air but there are no headlines about results breaking new records for the proportion of top marks awarded, and that’s because tough new rules on the exams came into effect this year. Last year results remained static for the first time in a decade, and this year, they saw a drop. The number of marks at A or above fell 0.4 per cent to 27 per cent of total grades awarded. Just under 7.9 per