Society

Saturday

Simon Hoggart

July Wine Club

Earlier this month we held a wine fair at The Spectator, using the tents that next day sheltered the magazine’s summer party. It was great fun, and our six principal partners sold plenty of wine. The event is free; come next year! There were some terrific bottles, many discounted, such as the gorgeous Chilean Pionero Pinot Noir sold by The Wine Company of Colchester – an incredible £6.99 — luscious Château de Sours and Nyetimber from Private Cellar, stunning Menetou-Salon and Côte Rôtie from Yapp Bros, the glorious Maiden Flight, also from Chile, one of the few Gewurtztraminers that really works outside Alsace, and a host of gluggable summer wines

Robin Oakley

The turf

Cramming too much in is always a mistake. It was just one broken jar of tahini paste, requested by Italian friends along with the pork pie, the Marmite and two bottles of Amontillado as items unobtainable in Sardinia, but boy what damage it had done after my holiday suitcase spent three hours in the care of British and Italian baggage handlers. The sherry survived but, having separated itself into separate streams of oil and orange goo, the tahini paste had oozed malevolently around, insinuating itself into every crevice and tainting almost every garment, probably wrecking for ever the rather snazzy pair of Cambridge blue trousers purchased by Mrs Oakley in

Lucy Vickery

Water works

In Competition No. 2755 you were invited to submit an ‘Ode to rain’. No doubt you saw this one coming, what with monsoon June and July’s 50 shades of grey skies. In any case, the lively and entertaining postbag the challenge elicited was certainly a welcome antidote to the ongoing misery of being semi-housebound or repeatedly soaked to the skin. Gerard Benson, Katie Mallett, Mae Scanlon, Roger Theobald and Basil Ransome-Davies were unlucky to miss out on a place in the winning line-up. Those that did make the cut are printed below and rewarded with £25 apiece. Mary Holtby pockets the bonus fiver. A one-off award this week for the

Bruce Anderson

Chinese spirit

My recent drinking has been straight out of Hopkins: ‘All things original, counter, spare, strange.’ A dinner party in Chinatown ended with mao tai, the Chinese rice spirit. I have never been able to decide about mao tai. It has a nose like a school changing room: some would say, a taste to match. It packs a wallop. At around 86° proof, it can be heartburn in a glass. Girls rarely enjoy it. When mao tai is on offer, even the ones who delight in a Havana with some serious armagnac tend to dodge the column. But a ­digestif ought to pull the strings together: a final movement which makes

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Yesterday’s nearly-men

Francis Beckett has come up with an intriguing new brand of political history. The Prime Ministers Who Never Were selects 14 of Britain’s nearly-men and imagines how they’d have fared in the top job. The big beasts are reduced to footnotes and the prat-fallers occupy centre stage. Beckett himself writes the story of Labour in the 1990s without the modernisers, and 13 other contributors cover the rest. John Smith survives his heart attack in 1994 and wins a 99-seat majority in 1997. His first act is to scrap the Millennium Dome, which Beckett describes as ‘a now long-forgotten proposal to build a vast round shed in Greenwich … which no

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Big is beautiful

Sir Terry Leahy might be the UK’s most successful businessman. He turned Tesco, love it or loathe it, from a second-tier supermarket worth £7 billion into the £37 billion behemoth of the sector. As an interviewee, however, he is not a natural performer. There is no Bransonian bonhomie about him. He is dressed in a non­descript dark suit, and, though he has no entourage, is accompanied by a publicist from his publisher; he starts to steal not-so-subtle glances at his watch almost as soon as we have started talking. But Leahy’s awkwardness shouldn’t obscure the truths he has to deliver. He has a bracing analysis of the situation that Britain is

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The price of a good reputation

I have never practised tax avoidance myself. It’s not that I’m particularly virtuous: it’s just I’d rather pay a few thousand pounds to HMRC than spend an hour talking to an accountant. But I was fascinated by the Jimmy Carr affair for one reason. Why was Mr Carr, alone of the thousand or so participants, hounded to withdraw from the Jersey K2 scheme? Innate decency aside, Carr had to withdraw because he is famous and a comedian. A comedian’s career is ‘reputationally fragile’. People need to like you before they’ll laugh at you. (Fatty Arbuckle and Woody Allen are two people who, once tainted by scandal, found themselves ‘just not

Quentin Letts

Easing made easy

Ghastly moment, isn’t it, when at a supper party (worse, at editorial conference or in a meeting with clients) some drawling know-all asks ‘so what do you think about QE?’ Everyone at the table swivels in your direction. Your mental turbines stall, your eyeballs sweat. QE? Is that a conference centre? Cruise liner? A fashionable disease? Anyone who has been through this experience may find useful the following bull-point presentation. With the emphasis on bull. ● On hearing ‘QE’ do not say: ‘You mean that game show fronted by Stephen Fry?’ People may think you are being serious (which in fact you are, but let’s keep that quiet). ● QE

Harry Mount

This sheltered isle

This rainy weather has occasionally softened my rock-hard cynicism about climate change. I have bicycled around London for 25 years — and I usually get drenched about half a dozen times a year. This week, I have been soaked six times in as many days. For a moment, I nearly fell for the theory, suggested by some scientists, that the jet stream had slipped south, pushed downwards by warming polar temperatures.  But then the sun came out, and reason — and cynicism — returned. This summer’s weather is unusual, but it isn’t freakish. If anything, our extreme reaction to not-so-extreme rainfall shows how limited the capacities of the British climate

Douglas Murray

Is there any way to stop the infantilisation of Britain

As the world turns to London it may still imagine us a serious, taciturn people. If so, the world is in for a shock. For Britain has become a land all but denuded of grown-ups. We are in the grip of a full-scale, double-dip regression. We were not surprised that our Prime Minister should be addicted to a video game called Fruit Ninja. His predecessor, then in his late fifties, claimed to enjoy listening to teenage pop bands and had a wife who held ‘slumber parties’ for other women in their forties. Stand in any British high street and you’ll see the people to whom these politicians hope to appeal.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The final victory of middle-class football

John Terry — the gift that keeps on giving. It is not enough that this stoic and rat-faced footballer should have provoked the most absurd and hilarious court case I have yet seen. Now it looks like there’ll be another one, perhaps even funnier, predicated upon a reaction to the fact that he wasn’t convicted of racially abusing another footballer, Anton Ferdinand, as everybody seemed to wish. Some chap ‘tweeted’ that Ashley Cole, who gave evidence on behalf of Terry, was a ‘choc ice’ — and of course now the police are involved. They had to be: it is deeply racist to liken black people to items of confectionery or popular

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Fears grow over Spanish bailout

The market data on Spain this afternoon suggests that the bailout sticking plaster agreed earlier by eurozone finance ministers wasn’t big enough to cover the wound even for a few hours. Ministers have signed off on the deal to lend Spain €100 billion to recapitalise the country’s banks, but the IBEX is down 5.8 per cent – its biggest one day drop for two years – and Spanish 10-year bond yields have crept further into the danger zone, and are now at 7.28 per cent. Markets were unsettled by Valencia’s announcement that it would need to apply for financial help from the Spanish government. The region is heavily indebted, and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Letwin fails to consult about the consultation on consultations

Oliver Letwin’s decision to launch a consultation on reducing the amount of time that government has to spend on consultations has sparked controversy in Whitehall. Sticklers for procedure are complaining, in a way that only Sir Humphrey himself could do justice to, that other ministers hadn’t been consulted about the decision to launch a consultation on shortening consultations. Now, this is all quite trivial. But it does reveal just how bureaucratic modern-day government has become. This problem has been exacerbated by the Equalities Act and the rise of judicial reviews. Indeed, I understand that there is now a board of civil servants whose job is to review the equality impact assessments being

Jonathan Jones

Public finance statistics point to a miserable autumn statement

Today’s round of public finance statistics bring mixed news for the government. The headlines have focused on the fact that borrowing last month — at £14.4 billion — was £0.5 billion higher than in June 2011. But considering that the monthly borrowing figures end up being revised by an average of £1.7 billion (usually downwards), we shouldn’t get too fixated on a difference of a few hundred million. What is perhaps more worrying is the trend in the financial year so far. Superficially, the numbers look pretty good: a total of £14.9 billion in borrowing since April, compared to £38.4 billion in the same three months of last year. But this year’s

Douglas Murray

We can’t just bury Bloody Sunday

I have a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about the case for prosecuting certain of the Bloody Sunday soldiers. I am aware that it is not a popular argument, and one that most British people tend to shy away from. It also seems to provoke a certain amount of confusion. On a radio programme the other day, discussing potential prosecutions, the interviewer went so far as to ask how or why somebody who is ‘right-wing’ could be making these points. Firstly of course, this is a straightforward category error (‘right-wing’ equals bad and mean and therefore any ‘right-winger’ must be in favour of shooting civilians). Secondly, I think that

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

We need a minister to defend the City of London

Is the City of London worth defending? Not many in the government seem to think so. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, calls it a ‘cesspit’. George Osborne blames the financial sector for causing the crisis – the Barclays Libor scandal, to him, was not an isolated incident but indicative of the whole rotten system, ‘the epitaph to an era of irresponsibility’. The City’s global enemies look on, amazed. Not even the Brits are prepared to stand up for their extraordinary financial sector. As I say in my Telegraph column today, now is their time to strike. As the Americans are pointing out, much Wall St woe can be traced back to

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How long can the government ignore demands for free grammar schools?

The argument about grammar schools had been stuck in a rut. Opponents argued that the division between grammar schools and secondary modern was too binary. But with the advent of free schools this argument has lost its force. There is now a diversity of provision meaning that there’ll be no return to the old stark grammar/secondary modern split. Free grammars would also boost the number of state school children going to our best universities and unleash a new wave of educational philanthropy. As Terry Leahy, the former boss of Tesco who has as good a claim as anyone to the title of Britain’s most successful businessman, tells The Spectator this week,

Interconnect

Too much government meddling undermines the energy market

Pity Ed Davey. At some point in the next few months, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary is going to have to sit down and decide how much nuclear power is going to cost for the next few decades. It is not an easy decision. On one side are nuclear firms threatening to pull out of building new power plants if they do not get the price they want. All those jobs not created. All that low carbon energy not generated. All those windfarms that will have to be built instead, with all their protest groups and angry backbench Tories. On the other side are households and business, already worried

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Tories, oppose family values

For almost a decade now, what social conservatives say and the evidence in front of our eyes has been diverging with remarkable speed. According to the received wisdom, the permissive revolution of the 1960s led to family breakdown, which in turn led to today’s terrifying crime rates. The small snag with the argument is that crime rates are not terrifying. The decline in marriage and rise in divorce notwithstanding, crime rates have collapsed. Social conservatives can take some comfort from the fact that the fall coincides with the increase in the prison population since 1990. But a rise of about 30,000 in the number behind bars is small beer when

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Guardian parody watch

Top marks to Paul Watson for this nipping satire, published in today’s Guardian: ‘In fact it is almost impossible to find any piece of positive European journalism relating to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The days of cold war pantomime journalism and great ideological battles might be over, but North Korea remains an area in which journalists have free licence for sensationalism and partiality. The lack of western sources in North Korea has allowed the media to conjure up fantastic stories that enthrall readers but aren’t grounded in hard fact. No attempt is made to see both sides of the Korean conflict: it is much easier and more