Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 21 April 2012

Capital letters Sir: As Neil O’Brien (‘Planet London’, 14 April) rightly says, London is New York, Washington and LA rolled into one, which is unhealthy for our national politics. So I have a serious suggestion. If the House of Lords is going to be reformed in the next year, part of the reform should be to move it out of London to a city in the Midlands or the North, perhaps next to the relocated BBC in MediaCity in Salford Quays. Half our national politicians would then assemble well away from ‘Planet London.’ The public purse would make a net saving by selling the vast and expensive property portfolio the

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: Power junkies

As local councils seize more power from central government, with more to come if Osborne’s plan to link salaries to location comes good, Labour MPs are already giving up on the Miliband Miracle and deciding to satisfy their control instincts by seeking election as mayors or police commissioners. This is no surprise. Power, on any terms, is in MPs’ DNA, as it was in Julius Caesar’s. The essayist Plutarch (c. ad 100) provides two telling stories about Caesar that neatly make the point. In 67 bc, while serving in Spain, ‘He was reading some part of the history of Alexander when, after sitting for a long time lost in thought,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 21 April 2012

On Monday, via the BBC, the Treasury put out the line that ‘10 per cent of those earning more than £10 million a year pay less than 20 per cent in income tax.’ It was not explained, or asked by the BBC, how this could be, or how many people were involved. Even in the era of preposterous bonuses, the number of people registered as earning more than £10 million p.a. is, I discover, only 200. So 10 per cent of them is 20 people: the total sums involved cannot amount to much more than £100 million, probably less. In the context — the decision to cap the amount of

Damian Mcbride

Diary – 21 April 2012

This week marked seven years since I agreed to quit my civil service career to become a political adviser to Gordon Brown, and three years since I was forced to quit that new role in shame. Following my resignation, I put my last vestige of professional pride into denying the chasing media pack the chance to put a camera in my face. My home was surrounded, so I spent seven nights staying with different friends in London, on occasion having to escape over fences or inside car boots when the pack found me. I learned two main lessons from this experience, besides not sending scandalous emails: first, switch your mobile

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 21 April 2012

Home Abu Qatada, wanted in Jordan on terrorism charges, was held in prison in England again, two months after his release from prison, and Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said he would be deported to Jordan, although ‘deportation may still take time’. Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a Libyan commander, sued Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, alleging that he was instrumental in his arrest by US agents who sent him into the clutches of the late Colonel Gaddafi. Charities campaigned against the plans by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to limit tax relief on big donations to £50,000 or a quarter of the donor’s income, whichever the higher. Seventeen

The Spectator

The technocrats are coming

  There was a time when the British could look upon the French, and their monstrously big government, with a sense of superiority: not any more. There is now a horrible similarity to our political predicaments. We both have political leaders who have failed to kick-start an economic recovery, in spite of repeated promises. We both have old-school socialists as opposition leaders, riding worryingly high in the polls while touting high-taxing policies that would not have sounded out of place in the 1970s. Meanwhile, national debt is rising on both sides of the Channel, albeit twice as fast in Britain as in France. But Britain does have the pound sterling.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Since when has grief meant threats and vituperation?

I would like to begin my article this week with a minute’s silence, please, which I would enjoin you to observe respectfully and without feeling the need to chant obscenities. This particular minute’s silence is in respect of the minute’s silence which was not observed appropriately by some football supporters last weekend. That minute’s silence, held before the Spurs versus Chelsea FA Cup semi-final, was ordained to commemorate the deaths of the 96 Liverpool fans who perished at the Hillsborough football ground 23 years ago, and also an Italian footballer who died during the week. I am not sure how those observing the silence were expected to divvy up the

Christopher Booker

Rings of steel

Last August I was intrigued to learn that the cash-strapped Cornwall county council was spending hundreds of pounds advertising for a ‘project officer’ at £400 a week to assist in ‘the successful delivery of the Olympic Torch Relay in May 2012’. The lucky applicant’s job would be ‘to raise awareness of this event throughout Cornwall’, while ‘stimulating excitement for the London 2012 Olympic Games’. My earliest memory of the Olympics is of getting up at 3 a.m. in 1948 to stand by a roadside in Chard, Somerset, to cheer a lone runner as he carried the Olympic flame past us in the darkness for that year’s yachting events in Torquay.

Florence King

To your health

Fredericksburg, Virginia The huge popularity of your TV show Doc Martin here in the US has nothing to do with the balmy Cornish setting. What really turns us on are the scenes in the Doc’s surgery, where no one ever pays a bill. Contrast that with the bedlam of an American doctor’s office. A panicky patient hunched over the front desk waving his insurance card at the frazzled nurse as she waits on hold for a claims adjuster in a distant state to rule on how many haemorrhoids are covered. When the adjuster finally comes on the line she can’t hear him because the panicky patient lobs a barrage of

Ian Thomson

The tide turned

A couple of years ago, a rescue operation was recorded at a lifeboat station in Poole, Dorset. ‘The boat was launched at 13.35p.m. following a call that a man and two children were stranded on rocks in the vicinity of Lulworth Cove. The wind was south-south-west force three. Visibility good. We reached the scene at 13.45p.m. The man and two children — one boy, one girl, both under five — were taken off the rocks and landed at an adjacent cove into the care of a local coastguard mobile unit.’ The report concluded: ‘The man’s name and address were not obtained.’ I can now reveal that the man was myself.

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

George Eliot’s dialects live on in my corner of Derbyshire

A slow reader but someone who has to plough through stuff for work, I skim and flick uneasily, and by middle age had almost completely lost my teenage habit of unhurried reading for pleasure. But in the last decade I’ve started again in a gentle way to read fiction and biography for amusement alone. It was George Eliot who tempted me back. Middlemarch fair blew me away. The Mill on the Floss followed, then Silas Marner. And while in Africa last month I decided to tackle her first novel, Adam Bede. Eliot’s reputation has no need of my support. Suffice it to say she’s the reason I’ve never attempted a

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Now even conservatives are scared to mention race

When is it socially acceptable for a white person to tell a black person he looks like a monkey eating a banana? For some of you the answer will be ‘never’; for others: ‘Oh my God. I can’t believe you even asked such a racist question!’ But I must confess that when my white tennis friend Glen made some quip on these lines to my black tennis friend Rodney at our class the other weekend, I found it funny. What made it so was not, of course, the stupid joke itself but the context. Here we were in gag-inducingly PC south London, conspiring in the kind of banter so verboten

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business: Do the maths: no one in their right mind uses charitable giving to minimise tax

You wouldn’t thank me for filling this column with arithmetic, but the way in which the government has sought to defend George Osborne’s proposed tax-relief cap for charity donations, and the way most broadcasters have tried to challenge it, has displayed woeful if not wilful ignorance of the tax maths involved. It’s as though ministers have been instructed by Downing Street on no account to consult the easy-to-follow section of the HMRC website headed ‘Giving to Charity: Individuals’ lest it deter them from parroting the line about the iniquity of the super-rich minimising their tax rates by exploiting reliefs. Likewise, it’s as though the leftists who populate BBC newsrooms, inherently

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Cooking the books

In Competition No. 2743 you were invited to submit a recipe as it might have been written by an author of your choice. Kafka’s Soup, a complete history of world literature in 14 recipes by Mark Crick gave me the idea for this challenge. It contains such gastronomic delights as Cheese on Toast à la Harold Pinter and Fenkata à la Homer and is a masterclass in literary impersonation. You gave Mr Crick a run for his money. This was another cracking entry and competition was stiff for the top spots. Commendations to unlucky losers Alannah Blake, Frank Osen and W.J. Webster. The winners are printed below and are rewarded

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: National mourning

You don’t want to sound too swivel-eyed about this, but didn’t poor doomed Synchronised look cursed from the get-go in that enthralling Grand National? How often do you see the best jump jockey on the planet being chucked to the ground like a piece of straw? And that was on the way to the start. The Cheltenham Gold Cup winner looked out of sorts when he was eventually recaptured and Tony McCoy showed him the first fence.  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ he should have snarled at McCoy. ‘Haven’t I done enough this year?’ Could McCoy have pulled his horse, one of the favourites, in a race watched by millions?

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 20 April 2012

Here is a selection of articles and discussions from this week on Spectator.co.uk… Most discussed: Andrew Adonis on moving the Lords to Manchester. Most read: James Forsyth on the civil service coup. Most shared: Sebastian Payne on Michael Gove’s historical conundrum. And the best of the rest… Fraser Nelson speaks highly of Anders Borg and believes there is a looming schools crisis. James Forsyth examines the depth of feeling over House of Lords reform and asks if newly created jobs are going to British people. Peter Hoskin reports on Galloway’s return and thinks QE has returned to the fore.  Jonathan Jones writes on America’s own tax debacle and finds there is no ‘poll shock’. Sebastian Payne speaks

David Blackburn

Interview: Jonathan Haidt on left vs right

Why are Dennis Skinner and George Osborne locked in enmity? The answer, according to Jonathan Haidt, lies beyond the obvious partisan explanation, and reaches back into humanity’s first nature. Haidt is a professor of moral and social psychology at the University of West of West Virginia, who has written a compelling book, The Righteous Mind, which argues that politics is determined by evolutionary biology and what he terms ‘Moral Foundations Theory’. In a little over 300 pages of incisive prose, Haidt presents a theory that explains why politics is always personal. His research shows that our high-minded ideals are mere spontaneous gut-reactions, a primeval hangover from our less evolved forebears. He

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Probability: Fornication Desk

We are indebted to Michelle Mulherin, Fine Gael TD for Mayo, for offering this gem during a Dail debate on Ireland’s abortion laws: “In an ideal world there would be no unwanted pregnancies and no unwanted babies. But we are far from living in an ideal world,” Deputy Mulherin said. “Abortion as murder, therefore sin, which is the religious argument, is no more sinful, from a scriptural point of view, than all other sins we don’t legislate against, like greed, hate and fornication. The latter, being fornication, I would say, is probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country.” That “probably” is lovely. Alas, Deputy Mulherin

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — 19 April 2012

For your listening pleasure, here is the second episode of The View from 22 podcast. Thanks for all the feedback on our first attempt, we’ve tried to take as much as possible into account this time. In this episode, Fraser and I speak to the Labour MP and historian Tristram Hunt about the teaching of history in schools. Freddy Gray discusses this week’s cover on the runners and riders in the French presidential election. And James Forsyth reports on a deficit of politicians inside Downing Street . You can listen below with the embedded player or — best of all — subscribe through iTunes. As before, we’d love to hear

Wednesday