Society

Saturday

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Waiting for Dr Nasty

David Starkey is no longer quite as eager to show off his bitchy side, but he can be persuaded …  ‘I don’t think I could have been Dr Fluffy,’ says David Starkey, poised behind a hake. ‘No. Absolutely not Dr Fluffy.’ He takes a sip of wine. He looks like an evil Professor Yaffle. I am here because I have long wanted to interview him, principally because once, when I was working for a newspaper gossip column, he gave me a line about Tories and sado-masochism too revolting to print. And he is always in trouble. On Jamie’s Dream School, a reality TV show where poor teenagers got celebrity teachers,

Theodore Dalrymple

Rough treatment

If anyone needed persuading of the deep moral disarray of modern British society, the latest figures on assaults against National Health Service staff should be more than sufficient to convince him. It is not so much their overall number — though 57,830 in a year seems quite a lot to me — that is alarming, as the variation in the way with which they are dealt. The predominant response is, as you would expect, feeble, vacillating, lazy and cowardly: or, if you prefer, forgiving. I mean no criticism of NHS Protect, the horribly named agency that collected the figures, when I say that these figures raise far more questions than

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

I can’t blame Pippa for her latest career move

I suppose we might all be quite wrong about what it’s like to be Pippa Middleton. I suppose that’s perfectly possible. When Hugh Laurie wrote his novel The Gun Seller, I remember being told he submitted it under a pseudonym, so terrified was he that a grasping publisher might be willing to publish any old crap provided it had the name of Stephen Fry’s mate on it. With Pippa, for all we know, the situation might be similar. ‘Great news!’ one soulless publishing automaton may have said to another. ‘Some complete nobody has sent in a manuscript about how to host godawful jamborees for men in blazers and women in

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business: Why Osborne is the new Chamberlain and bond yields say more than forecasts

I admire the Chancellor for his clarity of mind and his coolness under fire, but I don’t believe a word of his forecasts. I didn’t even believe the forecasts he read out on Tuesday from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, and I’ll hazard a guess that the Chancellor wasn’t really putting much faith in them either. The key predictions of 0.9 per cent growth this year and 0.7 per cent next year, and all the borrowing numbers that flow from them, depend, he was careful to point out, on whether the eurozone finds a way through the current crisis: ‘If they don’t then the OBR warn that there could

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: App happy

If you are a Spectator subscriber, the plastic wrapper in which your magazine arrived this morning is probably already in the bin in the kitchen. By now it has been joined by two sodden teabags, four strips of bacon rind and a couple of eggshells. Try to steel yourself now, pull on a pair of Marigolds and retrieve it. Because printed above your name and address on the slip of paper inside is something called your subscriber number. Write this down on a piece of paper and keep it somewhere safe. In the next few weeks, after many months of development, the Spectator launches its iPad and iPhone application, use

Bruce Anderson

Drink: A resurrection in Bordeaux

In St-Julien, amid the gentle landscape and the gravelly soil, there is a vineyard that had gone to sleep. According to the 1855 classification, Branaire-Ducru was a fourth growth. Back in the 1980s, however, it was neither rated nor priced accordingly.  People bought it because it was relatively cheap, but it had slipped a long way behind its neighbour, Beychevelle. Though that was also a fourth growth, it often delivered second-growth quality. No one was saying that about Branaire-Ducru. Then came new owners, the Maroteaux family, who brought investment, energy and an almost sacramental commitment to producing serious wine. Bacchus, libations, the First Miracle, the Last Supper, the Communion Service:

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 3 December 2011

Kenya In protest against the lack of law and order in my farming district I have decided to dye my white cows pink. I don’t know what to do about my red cattle, but I was inspired by the news story of the Dartmoor sheep man who dipped his flocks in bright orange to deter the thieves who repeatedly pilfered his wethers. Painting my cows shocking pink may be the only defence against the predations of Samburu rustlers armed with assault rifles who have hit us six times so far this year. My applications for a firearms licence have been turned down by the police four times. In the past,

Michael Tanner

Ticking boxes

Dante didn’t have the foresight to create or depict a circle of the Inferno designed expressly for opera critics, with intrepid explorers of new operas with social agendas as an extra. That was left for almost seven centuries until the Royal Opera House came up with the idea of the Linbury Studio Theatre, which answers the most stringent requirements for such a place of torment. You go down, down again and then down, sit in acute and always freshly experienced discomfort, and try to concentrate on yet another exploration of inequality, multiculturalism, a variety of shocking discriminations. Isn’t there a box to be ticked for letting a perfervidly right-wing budding

Andrew Taylor

Recent crime novels | 3 December 2011

The crop of recent crime fiction is generously sprinkled with well-known names; as far as its publishers are concerned, Christmas is not a time of year for risk-taking. The Impossible Dead (Orion, £18.99) is the second novel in Ian Rankin’s post-Rebus series featuring Inspector Malcolm Fox of ‘The Complaints’, the team that investigates allegations of misconduct among the police themselves. Fox and his colleagues arrive in Kirkcaldy, where a detective constable stands accused of corruption — by his own uncle, who is in the same force. But the case mushrooms into something far more momentous that leads to some dark corners of the Scottish nationalist movement in the 1980s. Fox

Fiona Maddocks

At opposite ends of the scale

A book which opens in the bushes of a Venetian garden and ends, more or less, in the cafés of Parma with chocolate panettone and biscotti dipped in coffee knows how to command attention. Given that what unfolds between these sensory episodes is densely constructed and formidable in scope, this is just as well: Peter Conrad writes engagingly and lures his reader into a grand game of cultural chess. There is no winner or loser, but we need to be alert for fear of missing a wry connection or a devilishly clever move. The oddity of the title hints at the awkwardness of the subject matter. Verdi and/or Wagner reflects

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Balls’ blindness

This week has marked something of a watershed in the British economic debate. The story of the strike on Wednesday was not one of paralysis, but of resilience. There was an 85 per cent turnout in NHS staff; Cumbria council kept every office open as so few staff went on strike; Aussies landing at Heathrow cleared passport control in record time, due to the large number of volunteers who were qualified with two days’ notice. As I say in my Daily Telegraph column today, the union leaders went rather quiet afterwards: they misjudged the mood of the country. As has Ed Balls. He is attempting what economists call ‘fiscal illusion’

The Spectator

The week that was | 2 December 2011

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: The Autumn Statement Fraser Nelson says that, with growth evaporating, Osborne’s chosen more debt over more cuts. Peter Hoskin points out that the dreary forecasts might actually be far too optimistic. James Forsyth thinks Osborne did well considering the situation, and still has the upper hand. Jonathan Jones looks at what the public made of it all. And Peter Hoskin and Jonathan Jones present the key points in chart form. Fraser Nelson sifts through the latest report on this summer’s riots. Peter Hoskin takes a stroll around Westminster to meet the strikers. James Forsyth says Marty Feldstein’s right:

Jonathan Jones

‘What’s that line again?’

When Rick Perry made that horrible gaffe in a Republican debate last month, you might have expected to see it in one of his opponents’ ads. Instead, it’s Perry himself who’s just put out a video poking fun at his mistake: ‘If you want a slick debater, I’m obviously not your guy.’ Indeed. We’ll have to wait and see if this sort of thing helps Perry recover from just 4 per cent in the polls.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Merkel’s fiscal union won’t solve the euro’s problems

Few people have been as vindicated about the failings of the euro as Marty Feldstein, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Reagan. In 1997 he wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs called ‘The EMU and International Conflict’. In it, he argued that far from furthering peace and stability in Europe, the Euro would actually endanger it. Watching the events of the past few months, few could disagree with him. Feldstein has now returned to the debate pointing out that none of the current fixes being suggested will solve the single currency’s problems. He writes: ‘Although the form of political union advocated by Germany and others remains

Daniel Korski

Sarko’s renaissance

When David Cameron sits down for lunch with Nicolas Sarkozy today, he is bound to ask his host how the presidential election is going. In response, President Sarkozy is likely to break into one his wide-faced smiles, and begin moving about energetically, as he tends to do when he is excited. Forget the polls that put Francois Hollande ahead in a two-way race. It is too early to tell what people really think and, crucially, it won’t be a two-person race. It is a five-person, two-round election. And so far, Sarkozy is doing very well. Besides Sarkozy and Hollande, four other candidates could make a difference to the outcome: Marine

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Outrageous Outrage

Gosh! Jeremy Clarkson – a muckle tube, for what it’s worth – said something silly/stupid/offensive/boring and now everyone’s twittering that he must be sacked or arrested or hung, drawn and quartered. Who cares? Plenty of people, it seems, but the mustering of outrage is itself becoming an outrageous feature of British life. We are becoming rather too American, in this regard. This, unlike Clarkson being Clarkson, is no hyperbole. I was going to despair some more about all this but, mercifully, Heresy Corner has said it all for me. Unison, clwons and clods as ever, are demanding “action” or something. Grim stuff: It’s all there. The presumption that the union

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Good news! Sea levels aren’t rising dangerously

This week’s Spectator cover star Nils-Axel Mörner brings some good news to a world otherwise mired in misery: sea levels are not rising dangerously – and haven’t been for at least 300 years. To many readers this may come as a surprise. After all, are not rising sea levels – caused, we are given to understand, by melting glaciers and shrinking polar ice – one of the main planks of the IPCC’s argument that we need to act now to ‘combat climate change’? But where the IPCC’s sea level figures are based on computer ‘projections’, questionable measurements and arbitrary adjustments, Mörner’s are based on extensive field observations. His most recent

Alex Massie Alex Massie

First, Shoot All the Teachers*

Our local paper, the Southern Reporter, reports that “2,000 public service workers” took the day off work yesterday. Sorry, withdrew their labour to protest against a monstrous government regiment that should horrify and disgust all sensible people. Soon, you know, armed resistance will be necessary. Fine. But, in these parts at least, it is interesting to see which taxpayer-funded workers struck. The Southern reports that: 1,200 teachers were on strike (78% of all teaching staff). 400 non-teaching staff (45% of all non-classroom staff). 68 of 1,400 people in the social work department did not report for work. 23 of 900 workers in the infrastructure department were out. 28 of 400

Jonathan Jones

What did the public make of the Autumn Statement?

The lack of growth in the economy has taken its toll on the government – and George Osborne – according to YouGov’s post-Autumn Staement poll. After the Budget in March, 34 per cent said the Chancellor was doing a good job – now it’s just 24 per cent. And the percentage saying he’s doing a bad job has risen from from 40 to 49. Here’s how the public’s view of the economic performance of the coalition as a whole has declined since Osborne’s first Budget: Despite this, Labour have failed to seize the initiative. Osborne still leads Ed Balls on the question of who’d make the better Chancellor, 30-24. Indeed,

Wednesday

Will Straw

Another voice: Why the strike is right

If I were a teacher, I’d be on strike today. Public sector workers are being asked — in what is now a well-rehearsed soundbite — to work longer, receive less, and pay more. In these austere times, with deficit reduction a necessity,  two of those three aims might be reasonable. But doing all three at once, and conflating the package with the spurious notion that public sector pensions are ‘unsustainable’, justifies the direct action being taken today.   The rise in contribution rates — in effect a three per cent tax rise — will be especially hard to bear for those on modest salaries who are already facing a prolonged