Society Archives

Saturday

16 Jun 2012

Meet the ‘Syriza Tories’

The ranks of the ‘Syriza Tories’ have been swelling in the run up to the Greek elections this Sunday. As I say in the magazine this week, the ‘Syriza Tories’ have decided that the Eurozone crisis needs to be brought to a head. Their argument is that the one thing worse than the Eurozone breaking up, is this crisis dragging on for the rest of the decade and preventing the return of confidence to the global economy. So, they are rooting for the radical leftists in the Greek elections in the belief that a Syriza victory would force a resolution of the crisis one way or the other. If

David Blackburn

100 years of Enoch Powell

I heard a wonderful anecdote the other day. A well to-do couple knelt to receive communion. A man knelt next to them. They noticed that he was Enoch Powell. They told a friend after the service that a church which accepted Powell as a communicant was not for them. It is Enoch Powell’s centenary today, and his monstrous reputation persists, even at the communion rail. Sunder Katwala, the thoughtful former general secretary of the Fabian Society, believes that Powell, and in particular his infamous views on immigration and identity, should be regarded as ‘a historical figure, an important, troubled voice in Britain’s difficult transition to the post-imperial society which we

Fraser Nelson

Language, politics and debt

The myth that George Osborne has held firm on his deficit reduction plan persists. When I was on Question Time last month, Alan Duncan said that Osborne may have changed some policies but he had not budged an inch from the deficit reduction programme. This was not a porkie; he genuinely believes this to be true. And even in today’s FT, economics editor Chris Giles describes the government’s strategy as ‘maxing out on stimulus measures, short of relaxing deficit reduction.’ In fact, Osborne tore up his deficit reduction plan ages ago, but to minimum press comment. The single largest decision Osborne has taken since his first Budget was to

Rowan Dean

Diary Australia – 16th June

London I always wondered what happened to that ghastly floating Chinese restaurant that used to meander around Sydney Harbour. Now it’s turned up as the new Royal Barge, from whence Elizabeth, Phil and the rest of the blue-fingered bluebloods watch the Jubilee Regatta making its way down the muddy Thames on a freezing winter’s, er, sorry, summer’s day. ••• Wisely, I choose to avoid the entire event and instead sneak off to a barn in Buckinghamshire for what the poms call a barbie. Sausages, gently cooked, pink on the inside, are served up at room temperature. I try to explain the delights of the frazzled Aussie snag scorching the skin

Roger Alton

Kevin’s choice

One Test series down, one to go. It’s been fun to have the West Indies here this soggy summer. They are not yet fit to lace the rum punch of their predecessors but they’ve been better than some recent vintages of Caribbean cricketer. Now we wait for the main — if truncated — event of the summer game: the three Tests against South Africa. The best team in the world against their nearest rivals, and 19 July can’t come soon enough, but until then cricket goes short-form and England will have to live without ‘KP’. To many, Kevin Pietersen’s decision to retire from international limited-overs cricket makes it a little

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Vice Verse

In Competition No. 2750 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of one of the deadly sins. The challenge was prompted by the following surprising admission by Taki in a High Life column earlier this year: ‘Lust, gluttony, pride, wrath and sloth I am rather proud to be guilty of, especially the first and the last.’ Though lust didn’t get much of a look-in in the entry, you were with Taki on sloth, which, along with gluttony, produced all six winners. Marion Shore and John O’Byrne were on pithy, witty form; commendations also go to Barbara Wilcock Bland, Janet Kenny, Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead and Derek Robinson. The winners get

Alexander Chancellor

Long life

I came down to earth with a thump after the spellbinding Jubilee weekend by attending a Speeding Awareness Course at the Sixfields Football Stadium in Northampton. It lasted four and a quarter hours and was held in the windowless shareholders’ lounge of the Northampton Football Club, not a nice place in which to spend a long afternoon. I had been tempted to pay a fine and have three points put on my currently clean driving licence rather than undergo this dispiriting experience, especially as I had already been on a Speeding Awareness Course four years earlier and knew what I was in for. On both occasions I had been caught

Tom Leonard

Bone idols

New York The Manhattan tattoo artist Craig Dershowitz had already spent $60,000 fighting a desperate legal battle with his ex-girlfriend for custody of their ‘son’ before he appealed to the public a few weeks ago. He needed another $20,000 so he can keep going, he said. Had the helpless victim at the centre of this tug-of-love been a real boy, Mr Dershowitz could have kissed his campaign goodbye. But Dershowitz junior is actually a puppy, Knuckles, part pug, part beagle, all ‘puggle’ — so Craig’s in with a chance of getting the cash. A $25 donation will get you a Save Knux T-shirt, $10 will buy you a ‘virtual smooch’

James Delingpole

In a restaurant this perfect-seeming,there has to be something fishy

‘God, you are going to love this place — it is absolutely perfect!’ I report back after my recce. ‘It’s completely ramshackle, kind of a beach-hut arrangement, almost. They don’t speak a word of English. It’s in this gorgeous position bang next to the sea. And they’re open for lunch tomorrow.’ ‘Sounds brilliant,’ says the Fawn. ‘Oh it really is. I think this is going to be it. The one. You know, one of those throwbacks to the days of Elizabeth David, like they just don’t make any more.’ ‘Great!’ So we arrive the next day, the four of us, and it is indeed as I described: the dining terrace

Harry Mount

A sporting life

If you wanted a little more excitement in this year’s Olympic marathon, you could do worse than imitate the race in 1908 — the first time the Games were held in London. Competitors, running from Windsor Castle to Shepherd’s Bush in the boiling heat, were given hot and cold Oxo, rice pudding and milk, but no water. Still, there was free eau de cologne and champagne — that’s what did for the South African leading at the halfway mark. He suffered stomach cramps after a glass of champagne, surrendering the lead to a plucky little Italian confectioner, Dorando Pietri. Just short of the finishing line, Pietri collapsed. In the most

Ksenija Pavlovic

I was never a rebel

It’s a hot and crowded afternoon in Manhattan. Martin Amis is in the New York Public Library, relaxing on a small purple sofa. He’s tired, but he takes the time to answer a few questions about his new novel Lionel Asbo about poetry, porn and modern Britain. Spectator: You grew up in 1960s Britain with all that rebellious rock ’n’ roll culture, but your father, Kingsley Amis, was part of the establishment and knighted to boot. How did you reconcile those worlds? Amis: I was never a rebel. I mean not in my life, in my writing a bit, perhaps. My father was a communist when he was young. And

R. Emmett

Drop the dead donkey

In 1992, I wrote a book called The Conservative Crack-Up, and my liberal adversaries were joyous. Which is not to say they read the book. American liberals never read a book by a conservative, not even an essay, not even a letter to the editor. What gave wings to their spirits was that 1992 was an election year, and they thought I had somehow provided them with ammunition. They neglected to note that some years before I had written another book, The Liberal Crack-Up, in which I had said that the future for liberals looked even gloomier. At the risk of bragging — of all the virtues, humility is the

Rod Liddle

Ukraine’s prejudices – and ours

‘The more Ukrainians that play in the national league, the more examples for the young generation — let them learn from Shevchenko or Blokhin and not some Zumba-Bumba they took off a tree, gave him two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian league.’ — Ukraine coach Oleg Blokhin, 2006 There you are, you see, Dr King — other people have dreams, too. Oleg Blokhin’s dream is a different sort of dream to the famous one you had. A less palatable dream, maybe. Oleg, 59, is the coach of the Ukraine national football team, and Ukraine is a joint host of the current Euro 2012 football tournament, along with

Ross Clark

The train to nowhere

The fact that you cannot perform a U-turn in a train is one of the limitations of that form of transport. When the line ahead is blocked, locomotives form long queues, unable to go anywhere until the problem is solved. It is scarcely any easier performing a U-turn with a high-speed rail project, especially after you have spent several million pounds compensating people who live in blighted properties along its route, and several years promoting it as central to your vision for a modern Britain. But it is a U-turn which it is becoming increasingly clear that the government is now resigned to making. To the outside world, ministers are

Friday

15 Jun 2012

Sebastian Payne

The ideological quandary over Gove’s curriculum reform

Primary school children studying subordinate clauses and foreign languages? What an outlandish but suddenly very real idea. Michael Gove announced earlier this week a curriculum reshuffle to restore rigour and aptitude to primary education. But why is liberalising Gove instigating a top-down approach, prescribing what teachers teach? It’s not the first time that Gove’s policies have become contradictory. Earlier this year, Tristram Hunt MP wrote a magazine article about the Tory divide over forcing secondary schools to teach British history while also increasing their freedom. The Times’ Alice Thompson (£) provides an answer for these dilemmas in her column this week. She wrote: ‘Some schools have given up

Alex Massie

The best and worst of Britain

There are at least two things at which the British are very good: being jobsworths and complaining about jobsworths. Today’s example of this feature of British life comes courtesy of Martha Payne and Argyll & Bute Council. Martha, as you may know if you’ve read the papers today, listened to the radio, or been on Twitter, is the nine year-old lassie from Lochgilphead who had, until today, published a blog — Never Seconds — cataloguing her school lunches. A suitably esoteric subject for the internet and an unlikely sensation but there you have it. Her blog, boosted by support from the likes of Jamie Oliver and Nick Nairn, reached two

Fraser Nelson

How not to create jobs

The Keynes vs Hayek debate is at its sharpest on the issue of employment. Can government create jobs (as Balls says)? Or does large public sector employment simply displace economic activity that would happen elsewhere (as Osborne says)? A fascinating study has been released today by the Spatial Economics Research Centre at the LSE showing the damage done by public sector employment to the real economy. Drawing on a huge amount of local-level data over an eight-year period, it’s a serious piece of research that is worth looking into and deserves to impact our economic debate. 1. First, what is seen. In the short term, hiring someone to work for

Thursday

14 Jun 2012

Jonathan Jones

A more ambitious approach to fighting poverty

‘You attack poverty by knowing what you do changes the lives of those people.’ In that phrase on this morning’s Today programme, Iain Duncan Smith summed up the difference between his approach to combating poverty and Gordon Brown’s. As Fraser has put it, Brown saw poverty as ‘a statistical game… his great spreadsheet puzzler’. The aim of the game? To reduce the number of people living in households below the ‘poverty line’ — set at 60 per cent of median income. The easiest way to achieve this is to move people from just below the line to just above it by giving them a bit of extra cash (in the

Melanie McDonagh

The battle over complementarity of the sexes is already lost

Today is the last day of the Government’s consultation about its gay marriage proposals. But as an editorial in the Telegraph points out, this is a more limited exercise than it sounds…you’re not being asked whether it’s a good idea for gay people to marry so much as how you think the Government should implement its proposals. Consultation, not. But since the opportunity is there, I’m all for sounding off about whether gay people should marry in the first place, as the Church of England has done, with uncharacteristic robustness, in its official response to the proposals. I can’t myself, see why marriage, as a status and a concept and

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 – is HS2 the rail to nowhere?

Is High Speed 2 headed for the sidings? In our cover feature this week, Ross Clark examines why the ambitious infrastructure project — designed to boost Northern cities — has all but disappeared from the government’s agenda. Despite the chancellor’s ‘boyish enthusiasm for fast trains’, the project has lacked the essential support from private business. Now, more pressing issues have taken charge. In our View from 22 podcast this week, Ross explains why the Tories were once so enthusiastic about the High Speed link to the North: ‘It was a way for the Tories to say — as part of their decontamination of the Tory brand — look, we’re