Society

Saturday

2 Jun 2012

Letters | 2 June 2012

Faith and addiction Sir: How right Damian Thompson is (‘Addict nation’, 26 May), and how shrewd of The Spectator to put the growing human disaster of addiction on its cover. We seem all too obsessed with euro crises and media intrigue to notice the even more ominous changes in our world. We are addicted to satisfying our impulses instantly. Mr Thompson steers clear of the language of religion, perhaps for sensible reasons. But it should be acknowledged that, while our moral collapse is facilitated by technology, the problem is spiritual at root. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and other religions teach self-restraint. Modern life does the opposite. Charles Taylor London SW15

Barry Humphries

Diary – 2 June 2012

Whenever, in an idle moment, I dip into one of my own books, I am almost immediately consumed by an unstoppable fou rire. It is immodest of me to make this confession, but I find my own work irresistibly funny. It pleases me to know that other more illustrious authors whom I admire are also deeply amused by their own books. Kafka, Max Brod tells us, always exploded with laughter while reading aloud from his own desolate tales. Ronald Firbank cackled uncontrollably while writing his orchidaceous novels and D.H. Lawrence, not famous for his sense of humour, laughed often and not seldom inexplicably at his own writings. Even the saurian

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 June 2012

Home The government revised plans announced in the Budget to put VAT on warm Cornish pasties and supermarket rotisserie food, and reduced the proposed 20 per cent VAT on static caravans to 5 per cent. It launched an £82 million scheme to lend money (typically £2,500) to people aged between 18 and 24 who want to start a business. Baroness Warsi, the co-chairman of the Conservative party, referred herself to the Lords commissioner for standards after newspapers alleged that she claimed accommodation allowance while staying with a friend rent-free. A government internet service for people to discover how much income tax they pay broke down on its first day. Boris

Dot Wordsworth

Mayoral

I heard a man say mayor on the radio recently as though it were mayo (of the kind that one goes easy on) followed by ‘r’. I suspect that this weird pronunciation (which could only be adopted by someone who had never heard Larry the Lamb bleat at ‘Mr Mayor’) was influenced by mayoral. Mayoral is almost always yoked with elections, especially with Boris Johnson around. Indeed mayoral and electoral are mispronounced on the same principle, with the stress on the or. That is no doubt an Americanism, but I think it is more often adopted by speakers who do not remember having heard the words pronounced at all. They

Tanya Gold

Away with the pixies

Dabbous is the place where stoned pixies would dine if they were into food. I have a fever and think of fairies and ghost trains to nowhere all day. But it is really Dabbous — Dabbous — that did this to me. Dabbous is a girl with her skirts up at Oxford — she has a reputation. For being wonderful — foodie food for those who aren’t really foodies or won’t identify as such; eating there is like going to the opera, and finding people who can look you in the eye. The critics have all come, and fallen down wormholes made of their own superlatives. Now it is booked

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: Cicero on Leveson

Culture minister Jeremy Hunt’s special adviser Adam Smith landed the minister in the soup by his too-cosy texts to News Corp about the proposed BSkyB takeover. He resigned, and Labour smells Hunt’s blood. What can Hunt do? The buck stops with him, but Cicero would argue that if Smith had had no criminal intent, but just became over-excited, Hunt is in the clear. The Murena defence shows how. In 62 bc Cicero was defending Lucius Murena on a bribery charge. He concentrated his fire on the prosecutor Cato’s refusal to compromise his Stoic principles and acknowledge human weakness. Cato is one of those people, Cicero says, who believes ‘that the

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 2 June 2012

Q. A very stylish woman with a much-admired house happened to drop into my rather dark cottage. She advised me that I should paint the inside of my fireplace white: it would look much better than the current black hole effect and would also reflect light. It seems such a good idea that I suspect the reason it is not done more often is because it is unsafe. Can you advise? — A.L., London W11 A. Fire specialist Allan Christensen takes a different view. He pronounces: ‘I would avoid using light colours inside a fire chamber as the light reflected is quite cold. You are better off using a dark

Toby Young

Status Anxiety: Humbled at Buck House

It’s not every day the Queen invites you to tea. Admittedly, I’m not alone in being granted that honour. At the Royal Garden Party I went to last week, I was among several thousand dignitaries craning their necks to get a glimpse of Her Majesty. But it was still a lovely day out — more deeply affecting than I thought it would be. The reason I was invited is because of my ‘service to the community’, which I assume is a reference to the West London Free School. I don’t suppose the Queen herself has been following my progress in the pages of this magazine — though you never know.

Robin Oakley

All the Queen’s horses

Royal trainer Richard Hannon, we learn from an intriguing new volume about the Queen’s lifetime love affair with horse-racing, is essentially a stockman. He recognises horses by their shape and mannerisms rather than by what their owners choose to call them. So the chestnut colt with three white socks is, in Hannon-speak, ‘the Galileo colt’. I know one other racing figure who does the same. One afternoon at Newbury Mrs Oakley and I were surprisingly and suddenly invited to take tea in the Royal Box and I was intrigued to find throughout a fascinating afternoon that Her Majesty never referred to the horses’ names in the racecard. For her, too,

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 2 June 2012

I have bought myself a floating wooden duck house for my pond in Northamptonshire. It is not a fancy one, just two little back-to-back nesting boxes on a raft under a pitched roof; and it cost £270, roughly a tenth of what you would now have to pay for a duck house of the sort favoured by Sir Peter Viggers, who, until he was shamed into auctioning it for charity, had a magnificent replica of an 18th-century Swedish pavilion topped by a cupola on his pond in Hampshire. But unlike the former MP for Gosport, who got the taxpayer to foot the bill, I had to pay for my duck

Melissa Kite

Real life | 2 June 2012

Perhaps I should be flattered. There was I thinking I was getting old and frumpy. But it turns out the reason I waited for so long in the ambulance before they took me to hospital was that they thought I was on drugs. The boyfriend has just revealed this. He didn’t want to tell me earlier as I had enough on my mind, what with being left in agony on a trolley for 12 hours, then abandoned on a ward for a further seven hours before a supremely uninterested doctor managed to diagnose two cysts the size of golf balls.: Apparently, right after the paramedics accused me of misusing the

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 2 June 2012

Our Scottish visitors, man and wife, came bearing lavish gifts: a beribboned fruit cake in a Union Jack cake tin; a bottle of Bollinger; a bottle of Bailie Nicol Jarvie old Scotch Whisky (their favourite tipple); a bottle of nubile white Burgundy; four ‘Katie Morag’ children’s books; The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, which made them both laugh in bed; a heavy, 19in high relief sculpture of Eos, Titan goddess of the dawn (she of the rosy fingers); a circular plaster plaque featuring a bust, in relief, of their jaw-droppingly beautiful middle daughter Sophie, clad in a toga, her head informally decorated with thistles, olives and olive leaves. And for

Taki

High life | 2 June 2012

On board S/Y Bushido However you cut it, Greek demagogues are bluffing that the faceless suits of Brussels will give in to the blackmail and fold their hand. Greeks are gamblers to start with, and some are even very good poker players. The tragedy is that the very same criminals who ruined the country to begin with are about to be re-elected on 17 June. The criminals, led by Antonis Samaras, have 27 per cent, the left-wing bluffer and con man Tsipras 25 per cent. Talk about Scylla and Charybdis! A couple of weeks ago I wrote that this Tsipras chappie who came in second and is running neck-and-neck with

David Blackburn

Mubarak sentenced

Jubilation has erupted outside a court in Cairo, where former President Hosni Mubarak has been sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the killing of 850 anti-government protesters during last year’s revolution. This has been a long process. When Mubarak was indicted, he was wheeled into a cage on a hospital bed, which raised questions about the state of his health and the fairness of the trial. The prosecution has been pushing for the deposed dictator to receive the death sentence, but that has been resisted. Mubarak was found guilty of conspiring in killing, but not guilty of corruption. It remains to be seen how this development will affect

Fraser Nelson

The end of an era | 2 June 2012

We baristas at Coffee House tend not to write about each other, but today I’d like to make an exception and say a little about Pete Hoskin, who is going freelance after four years running this blog. Regular CoffeeHousers will know about his rare combination of insight, humour and his gentle writing style which only adds to the force of his comment. But writing is only the most visible part of his job. His job for the last few years has been Coffee House editor – which not only means protecting the blog’s character and sense of fun, but working on the copy filed to him. As someone who has

Steerpike

Will Jordan trigger Kent’s free schools revolution?

I have learnt that Toby Young, also of this parish, has been briefing his fellow Sun on Sunday columnist Jordan, aka Katie Price. Young is one of Michael Gove’s biggest free school champions and I hear that keeping readers abreast of developments with his own West London Free School has paid off — Jordan is to set up a free school for blind and disabled children in Kent. Toby informed me of the obvious benefits this development: ‘She’ll make a much more appealing spokesperson for the free schools movement than me!’ Mr Steerpike couldn’t possibly comment. But will we be seeing other Sun columnist joining the education revolution? The Jeremy

James Forsyth

The pressure heaps on Merkel

This morning there’s an odd disconnect between the joyful Jubilee coverage in the papers and the grim economic news inside them. The Eurozone crisis appears to be once again reaching one of those moments when there’s an expectation that something will have to give. The Germans are coming under even more pressure than before to sign up to Euro-bonds and to allow the bailout fund to recaptialise ailing banks; the Spanish are particularly keen on the later point as it is their only way of avoiding an IMF programme. One British government source complains that ‘the Germans are working on a five to ten year timetable, but if they are

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Jubilee lines

In Competition No. 2749 you were invited to submit a poem, written by a poet laureate from the past, to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Thirteen out of the 19 former laureates featured in the entry. Unsurprisingly, the most popular were Betjeman and Tennyson, with Wordsworth and Hughes coming a close second. Alfred Austin and Colley Cibber, poorly rated and oft-mocked, spawned a handful of strong submissions. I liked George Simmers’s twist on Southey’s ‘After Blenheim’; equally impressive were Ann Alexander, Brian Murdoch and W.J. Webster, all of whom captured well the voice of Ted Hughes. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. The bonus fiver goes to Mary Holtby

Roger Alton

Gold standard

Heavens, we do like a moan. Sure the traffic will be hell; the commercialism mind-numbing; the Zil lanes a pain; and the presence of the egregious will.i.am, a man so irritating he makes Stephen Fry seem likable, lugging the Olympic torch is preposterous. Usain Bolt will probably miss the final because he’s been stopped and searched driving through Brixton in a rented Beamer, and the starter pistols will doubtless set off a health and safety alert. The miserabilists will have a field day or 15 but for the rest of us the Olympics will knock our blocks off. You don’t have to buy into all the waffle surrounding the Games

Rory Sutherland

Pushing the envelope

What’s so good about email? Well, it’s quick and easy for you to write an email, you can copy in lots of people, it’s immediate and it’s free. And the worst thing about email? Well, it’s very quick and easy for other people to send you an email, or to copy you in on an email, and their bloody senseless email arrives immediately. And for bloody free. This is one problem. Almost all the advantages of email accrue to the sender. The effort, obligation and responsibility all fall to the recipient. In that sense email creates what economists call ‘negative externalities’, rather like industrial pollution or aircraft noise. In several