Society

Saturday

Louise Mensch

Beastie girl

My husband Peter manages rock bands, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Ohio last month. I went with him to the ceremony. Other bands I’d known and loved as a teenager were being inducted, too, among them Guns N’ Roses and the Beastie Boys. Two of the three-man rap band — Ad-Rock (Adam Horowitz) and Mike D (Michael Diamond) — were there to accept their awards. But they wouldn’t go on stage without Adam Yauch. That day, Yauch had entered hospital for the last time. When he died, the international media overflowed with grief. Yauch made television news

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Set text

In Competition No. 2746 you were invited to submit a sonnet using the following rhymes: pig, bat, cat, wig, jig, hat, rat, fig; lie, red, sob, die, bed, rob. This is a rerun of a brute of a competition that was set back in the 1950s, and the daft rhymes are those given as an illustration of the verse form by the Concise Oxford Dictionary of that time. The final rhyme proved especially bothersome, frequently scuppering otherwise excellent entries. Nonsense verse was the obvious way to go but a fair few forged ingenious alternative routes. It was a large entry and the standard was high. Well deserved commendations go to

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

More Canada!

The more elderly among The Spectator’s readership, who still secretly mourn the loss of Nyasaland and the Aden protectorate, may be pleased to hear that a small step was taken last month towards reversing the Empire’s inexorable decline. More surprising still, the idea behind this expansion comes from an American economist and the flag raised will be not the red ensign but the maple leaf. But it’s a start. The original proposal (mentioned here three years ago) is to create ‘charter cities’ in the developing world where the institutions, infrastructure and government are not those of the surrounding nation but are imported wholesale from somewhere else. City-states whose success supports

Bruce Anderson

A malt revolution

There was a wonderful old girl called Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The daughter of the good Roosevelt president, Theodore, she was a formidable Washington political hostess until her nineties. The older she grew, the more fearless she became. By the end, she combined the plain speaking of her Dutch forebears with a wit and sharpness which would have delighted, and intimidated, any salon, anywhere, ever. She also solved one of the greater minor mysteries of the 20th century. If any two human beings were fated to become staunch friends, it ought to have been Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. To win the second world war, Churchill had to get on with

Anthony Cummins

The courage of their convictions

HHhH is a prize-winning French novel about a writer writing a novel about the plot to kill the Gestapo boss Reinhard Heydrich. A lot of people reckon it’s a big deal — Martin Amis, Mario Vargas Llosa, me — so naturally there’s a backlash afoot. In a fit of territorial pissing disguised as an interview, Michael Burleigh revealed that Laurent Binet ‘does not even read German’ (which HHhH admits on page 28) and professed surprise that his research failed to take in a Heydrich biography published (as Burleigh didn’t say) almost two years after HHhH first came out. I suppose part of the problem is that Binet asks for trouble

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Coulson easily handles his Leveson test

Andy Coulson’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry was a reminder of why he rose so quickly. He never said more than he had to and never let his ego interfere with his judgment. It is a testament to his skill that we essentially learnt nothing new from his evidence this afternoon. But it should be remembered that Coulson wasn’t on that bad a wicket today. The Leveson Inquiry isn’t going to overlap with the criminal investigations going on and so there wasn’t much time spent on hacking or on payments to the police. Instead, the questions focused on his relations with politicians and Cameron and Osborne in particular. Helped by

Martin Bright

Rochdale is a lesson to all of us

The coverage of the appalling Rochdale grooming case has been, for the most part, well-informed and responsible. In the Times today David Aaronovitch takes on the cultural issue directly (£) and should be saluted for so doing. ‘So here are the bald facts about this specific kind of abuse. Men, many middle-aged and most of previous good character, and largely from one community, have been committing a particular series of sexual crimes almost entirely against young girls. Why? Almost certainly because of their attitudes towards women and sex.’ But he saves his most important point for the end of his article when he says: ‘we ought to be mad as

Douglas Murray

Let’s talk about this

What a strange place Britain has become. You sometimes need some time away to realise quite how strange. Take yesterday’s main story: the latest paedophile rape-gang case from the north of England. The judge in the trial told the men, during sentencing, that they had selected their victims ‘because they were not part of your community or religion’. But that is the sort of fact which causes the most terrible contortions in modern Britain. The perpetrators were all Muslim men of Pakistani origin and the victims all underage, white girls. We know exactly how we should think, how loud would be our proclamations and our desire to analyse the ‘root-causes’

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Obama’s Evolution

Yesterday, Barack Obama came out of the closet and acknowledged what we’d all suspected for a long, long time: he supports extending the civil recognition of marriage to same-sex couples. As you might expect, this has been hailed as a bold and risky and courageous move even though, as the chart above demonstrates, Obama is following public opinion, not leading it. His own position, he says, has “evolved” and he’s been mocked for putting the matter in those terms even though, as the chart shows again, the US population as a whole has “evolved” in pretty much the same way. Of course, it’s probable that Obama has long-supported gay-marriage but

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cardinal Brady Should Resign

Last night, I finally watched last week’s BBC This World documentary investigating the latest stage of the child abuse scandal that is destroying the Catholic Church in Ireland and, like Jenny McCartney, suspect it is time for Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of All-Ireland, to resign his post. I don’t suppose Cardinal Brady is a bad man, nor should one suppose that his resignation would draw some manner f line under the whole, sorry, rotten, scandalous affair. But it would be more than just a gesture too. William Oddie, writing in the Catholic Herald, plainly would prefer Brady to remain in office but accepts he “almost certainly” must “bow before the

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Weak, Weak, Weak: Cameron’s Brooks Affair Will Haunt Him.

The public is not, I suspect, nearly as bothered by or interested in the Leveson Inquiry as some editors think. Nevertheless it is not just a Guardianesque enthusiasm. And even if voters dn’t much care for it, Leveson inevitably colours how the professional press views the government. With Andy Coulsen giving evidence tomorrow and Rebekah Brooks appearing on Friday you could argue that this was a bad week to try and have a government relaunch. Worse still, it looks as though the Prime Minister is going to be humiliated. This is not good. Then again, nor is this: David Cameron privately sent Rebekah Brooks a message of support as his

Peter Hoskin

The Queen’s Speech: full text | 9 May 2012

My Government’s legislative programme will focus on economic growth, justice and constitutional reform.   My Ministers’ first priority will be to reduce the deficit and restore economic stability. Legislation will be introduced to reduce burdens on business by repealing unnecessary legislation and to limit state inspection of businesses. My Government will introduce legislation to reform competition law to promote enterprise and fair markets. My Government will introduce legislation to establish a Green Investment Bank. Measures will be brought forward to further strengthen regulation of the financial services sector and implement the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Banking. My Government will introduce legislation to establish an independent adjudicator to ensure

Tuesday

Jonathan Mirsky

Chen Guangcheng: a blind, Chinese Houdini

Even in a Beijing Spring of ceaseless surprises, the escape of the blind dissident lawyer Chen Guangcheng from rural house arrest into American protection was a sensation. The sensation soon turned into a catastrophe for him and humiliation for the United States. After his astounding escape 2 weeks ago from 18 months of house arrest and arrival at the US embassy in Beijing, Chen stated he had no intention of leaving China. Six days later he was assured by his American hosts, who now say he had cancer, that he must go to a Chinese hospital for treatment and be reunited with his and then would be free, perhaps to

Peter Hoskin

Have the Milibands got Hollande fever?

We’ve grown so used to regarding Ed and David Miliband as mutual nemeses that it’s strange to see them operating as a tag team today. The younger brother has delivered a fiery attack on the ‘unfairness and economic failure’ of the coalition, while the elder brother has an article in the Mirror arguing that the government is ‘Wrong about how to grow the economy in the modern world’. There’s also another article by the latter in the Times (£), just in case you haven’t had your fill of MiliCommentary. Much of what they say is unsurprising, but some things do stand out from their twin attacks nonetheless. The first is

James Mumford

Politicians are avoiding the real problems with social care

‘The smell would be even worse’, says Zoe, the social worker I’m shadowing for the week, ‘were it not for the clothes.’ Trying not to touch or breathe, I survey the mounds of sweaters and jeans and dresses interspersed across the bare floorboards. The place is a disaster — junk everywhere, filling the shelves, piling up the surfaces; the sound of broken taps from the kitchen; the living room a living ruin. I’m on a housing estate in one of the Home Counties and we’ve been called out to see about putting in place a ‘preventative measure’ for Mrs R, a 90 year-old woman at risk of falls. Not having

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Predictable End of An Old Fighting Song

Years ago, before government began to take its toll I remember reading an interview with young David Cameron published by the Dundee Courier. The paper wanted to know if the leader of the opposition (as he then was) had any plans to reverse the army reforms that bundled all the Scottish infanty regiments together to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland. As I recall, Mr Cameron (gently) suggested he was unlikely to be able to unpick that reform but stressed he was mindful of the importance of local afiliations and that he understood the depth and breadth of sentiment attached to the regiments in Scotland. Aye, weel, tht was then

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why hire nurses when you can win awards?

My column in the magazine last week was about a PR outfit called Awards Intelligence which helps companies and individuals win various pointless vanity awards — everything from business awards up to OBEs and knighthoods. I asked them if they’d help me get a knighthood, because I’m worth it. Yep, they said, that’ll be £3,900 plus VAT please. Oddly, despite the piece being published last Thursday, they’re still importuning me to call them and fix up the knighthood, so I’m not sure to what the ‘Intelligence’ part of their name refers. I suppose if private companies and individuals feel a pressing need to win these sorts of fatuous awards, it’s

Monday

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 7 May 2012

…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson says that it’s about time politcians started lurching towards the public. James Forsyth summarises how each party performed in the local elections, and explains what Francois Hollande’s victory means. Peter Hoskin reviews Ed Balls’ latest explanation of his fiscal policy, and says that Lords reform will still weigh on politicians’ minds. Sebastian has audio from City Hall on the the night of Boris’s victory. And Rod Liddle highlights the new ‘tough love’ approach to healthcare.

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A duty of care

Another example of the new and commendable ‘tough love’ approach adopted by health workers.  In a sense, the case of nurse Sally Miller epitomises this new movement within the NHS: the old, discredited and soppy notions of care and compassion is jettisoned in favour of an abrupt, no-nonsense vigour. Responding to a patient who, tiresomely, had pressed the buzzer in the ward in the hope of receiving palliative care, Sally said to her: ‘If you f****** press this buzzer again I am going to nail your f****** hand to the floor.’ Excellent. This follows a similarly uplifting case in South Wales. This concerned a paramedic in Cardiff who, eschewing the