Society

Saturday

James Delingpole James Delingpole

When the world ends, will I know how to cook our cat?

 ‘Oh God, you realise if it gets really bad we might have to end up eating that,’ I said, meaning our fat cat Runty. The Fawn started making upset noises. She’s very fond of Runty. My problem wouldn’t be so much the sentimental aspect as the practical one. Just how do you go about skinning and cooking a cat, when the power’s most likely to be gone and you’re long since out of barbecue charcoal? Which bits are safe to eat? Does it taste like chicken? ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s never going to get that bad,’ she said. ‘How do you know?’ I said. ‘Well London would need to be

The Spectator

Your nominations for the Spectator Threadneedle parliamentarian awards

Voter apathy? Don’t you believe it. Ever since we asked our readers to nominate this year’s best parliamentarian, our digital post bag has been full to bursting. Nominations have come from as nearby as Westminster and as far away as Australia. They have spanned all three major political parties, and Ukip besides. And they have been by turns witty, insightful and impassioned. This really is democracy in action. One early frontrunner is the Conservative backbencher Philip Davies. Reader Steve Mullins praises him as someone who ‘defends us almost single-handed against the massed ranks of pressure groups and sanctimonious political busybodies who want to dictate what we can say, do and

William Cash

Say no to wind farms: Selling our birthright

A few weeks ago, I attended a planning seminar at Ripley Castle in Yorkshire organised by the Historic Houses Association (HHA). It was a chilling presentation which contained a clear message: the current planning proposals — which close for consultation next week— pose a serious threat, not just to our countryside, but to our heritage. With the removal of Public Planning Statement 5 (PPS5) from the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), there are now few safeguards to prevent developers building 300ft-high industrial wind turbines right next to historic castles, new sprawling social housing next to the walls of stately homes or 12th-century village churches. No, no! I can already

Matt Ridley

Say no to wind farms: Shale of the century

The arguments for wind farms just became obsolete. We’re entering an era when gas will be cheap, plentiful – and green Which would you rather have in the view from your house? A thing about the size of a domestic garage, or eight towers twice the height of Nelson’s column with blades noisily thrumming the air? The energy they can produce over ten years is similar: eight wind turbines of 2.5 megawatts (working at about 25 per cent capacity) roughly equal the output of an average Pennsylvania shale gas well (converted to electricity at 50 per cent efficiency) in its first ten years. Difficult choice? Let’s make it easier. The gas well

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Textbook error

If young people don’t want to learn languages, it might be because the teaching materials are so drearily trendy Tonight’s homework: learn ‘Bonjour’, ‘Je m’appelle,’ ‘Comment t’appelles-tu?’ ‘Ça va?’ ‘Ça va bien’, ‘Pas mal’, and ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’. And the tired child, already sick to death of French, having been taught it since the age of three but never methodically, starts climbing the Everest of trying to master these horrible, spiky phrases, with their sudden apostrophes, their ­unexplained hyphens, and the dangly fives under some but not all of the ‘c’s. ‘Try to remember: there’s an “s” on the end of “t’appelles”,’ we say. The child keeps forgetting. And we

Tom Hollander

Top gear | 15 October 2011

The exciting thing about showbiz is, you never quite know where you are. I thought of a good test some weeks ago. I phoned Denee, my agent’s assistant. ‘Can you ring Audi and see if they’ll give me a car. But for goodness sake be discreet.’ I know it sounds grasping, but I’d been forced to it. Orlando Bloom had a A4 3.0 TDI A4 when we did Pirates, which he let me drive up Regent Street because he was worried about his carbon footprint; Kate Winslet was in a Q7 last year in Cornwall when I got lost following her because I couldn’t understand her directions; and Michael Gambon

Christopher Booker

Private Eye’s private life

The first editor of the magazine turns a quizzical eye on 50 years of a ‘national institution’ Not long after the 50th birthday of what was once the most successful humorous magazine in Britain, one of the best-known writers of the day delivered a damning judgment. Whereas in its early days, Max Beerbohm wrote in 1899, Punch had made a reputation by its youthful irreverence, wittily lashing out in all directions, it had now become staid and respectable, ‘a national institution’. How strangely has this been echoed in the coverage being given to the 50th anniversary of Punch’s successor, similarly hailing Private Eye as a ‘national institution’. Little could its

James Forsyth James Forsyth

To catch a minister

Old hands in Westminster are confident that they know what lies behind the Liam Fox-Adam Werritty relationship. With a knowing glint in their eye, they lean forward and whisper: ‘He’s a lobbyist.’ They’ve seen it all before, they say. It explains why Werritty thought it was worth spending tens of thousands of pounds just to be in the same city as the Defence Secretary. ‘We all know the drill with these people,’ one senior Tory explains. ‘Their job is to get as close to you as possible and if it is easier to bump into you in Dubai or Washington than London, that’s where they’ll do it.’ Lobbyists for special

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Sport: Three cheers for the Welsh boy band with the XY factor

Well, we’re all Welsh now. Love the country, been there loads of times, adore the Millennium Stadium, in fact I’m about as Welsh as it’s possible to be without actually being Welsh. And I will be up at 9.00 a.m. on Saturday, cheering the wonderful Wales team on. On the other hand, my mum was half French so God knows what will happen. This World Cup has been about as dazzling as you can get. To those harrumphing about the poor quality of the games against the tier two nations, just see what Tonga, conquerors of France, have to say about that. As for England, well let’s move swiftly on,

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Against the grain

In Competition No. 2717 you were invited to supply a poem expressing distaste for something or someone widely considered to be beautiful. You poured scorn on Paris, daffodils, Michelangelo and Alan Bennett’s plays. Newborns were also a popular target. Here is Melissa Balmain giving it both barrels: ‘You can dress it in taffeta, ribbon and lace;/ you can scrub it each hour of the day;/ you can name it Belinda Veronica Grace;/ it’ll still look like rump roast manqué’. Martin Parker took an entertaining swipe at ‘Les Grandes Baigneuses’ — ‘They may in youth have all been ravers; Cézanne, though, did their looks no favours’ — but the most heartfelt

Barnaby Jones

The devil’s in the detail | 15 October 2011

This is a book for our times, a pair of linked essays, the first, by Rory Stewart, on the troubled decade of Western intervention in Afghanistan, followed by the success story of the ten years of Western intervention in Bosnia by Gerald Knaus. The authors write not for glory, or to secure a professorial chair, but out of desperation. Year on year over the last decade, the leaders of the West have immersed us ever deeper in ‘sorting out’ Afghanistan. They do this from the best possible motives — a sense of obligation and moral decency — but also out of fear, hubris and historical ignorance. As a result, our

Melissa Kite

A question of faith

Perhaps beginnings are meant to be disorientating sometimes. For many pages of Mohammed Hanif’s second novel I cannot get my bearings and start to worry that, far from finding my way into the dense narrative, I am becoming more and more lost. I fret about what the problem might be. Is it overwritten? The earthiness of the description of downtown Karachi is glorious, but I begin to panic that if there are many more phrases such as ‘breasts like abandoned puppies’ I will get squeamish and miss the point. There are pages and pages where nearly everything is throbbing or sweating or getting punched, eaten, licked, raped or shot to

John Julius-Norwich

Why didn’t I appreciate it more?

I should hesitate in any circumstances to compare myself with Marcel Proust; but on opening this marvellous book I knew exactly how he felt with that madeleine. My father was appointed Ambassador to France in 1944, moving in a few weeks after the Liberation of Paris; thus it was that from Christmas of that year — when I was 15 — and for the next three years I spent all my holidays at the Embassy. At that time, oddly enough, we had no other home; so it was there more than anywhere else that I felt I belonged. As I read this book and feasted my eyes on the superb

Richard Shone

A lightning tour

In her foreword to this short study of Virginia Woolf,  Alexandra Harris writes that ‘it is meant as a first port of call for those new to Woolf and as an enticement to read more’. There is some justification for such a book — a synthesis giving the outline of Woolf’s life with pertinent interpretative commentary on the novels and other writings. While such an aim is not new, the book will inevitably reflect the concerns of the moment, the stamp of each generation’s particular interest. If this is so, the longer appeal of such a study is not necessarily guaranteed. Harris presents a Woolf for the early 21st century.

James Booth

Fathers and sons

The ghost stalking this selection is Martin Amis’s father, Kingsley, who, Martin tells us in his introduction, ‘loved Philip with a near-physical passion’, and mused: ‘I sometimes wonder if I ever really knew him.’ Ruth Bowman, to whom Philip Larkin was engaged in the late 1940s, remembers that Kingsley was ‘possessive of Philip and tried to keep me separate from him’. Kingsley always remained slightly offended by Larkin’s soft, feminine side, never understanding what the latter called ‘the dear passionately sentimental spinster that lurks within me’, and insisted that his friend be consistently masculine, abrasive, philistine. Martin Amis’s selection reflects his father’s version. It includes ‘This Be The Verse’ (‘They

Alex Brummer

Investment special: Flying through storms

The financial crisis has unleashed a great debate about rebalancing Britain’s economy. The conventional wisdom is that our prosperity during the Nice decade (non-inflationary continuous expansion, that is) was over-dependent on finance and that we need to refocus our attention on high-quality manufacturing. Under New Labour, and the Tories before them, manufacturing was allowed to wither, declining from 18 per cent of GDP in 1996 to just 12 per cent now. The better news, however, is that what’s left behind is much better than what was lost. In certain sectors, including high-end engineering and aerospace, Britain has managed to retain a strong competitive edge. And unlike in previous decades, this

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 14 October 2011

A selection of posts from the past seven days at spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson says it might be time to scrap the minimum wage for young workers and calls Andrew Lansley’s handling of the NHS reforms historically bad. James Forsyth explains how Lansley got his health bill through the Lords and says Adam Werritty’s no Walter Mitty. Pete Hoskin reports on the threat from Iran and the Miliband and Balls double act. Daniel Korski calls Sarkozy’s likely opponent dull and says ministers need their Werrittys. Jonathan Jones says the middle ground’s there for the taking and reports on the latest Republican debate. David Blackburn reports on Cameron’s immigration speech and his

Peter Robins

Local interest | 14 October 2011

A tourist from Crystal Palace, south London, rescued an 11-month-old boy from the River Yare, in Norfolk, after his pushchair was swept into the water by a freak gust of wind. (Eastern Daily Press) Four men have admitted possession and use of criminal property after finding £750,000 buried beneath a pigsty in Worcestershire. (Worcester News) A 12-week-old German Shepherd cross puppy has been found in a recycling bin in Lincoln Road, Basildon. (Echo, Southend) Police have told a bar in Stockton-on-Tees that, if it goes ahead with a plan to offer shots of spirits for 1p on Halloween, they will attempt to have its licence withdrawn. (Gazette, Middlesbrough) A teenager

Clarke Hayes

Switching off the spotlight

Having tea with Gillian Anderson is a thoroughly pleasant business — a splash of muted glamour in a fairly drab London autumn. I thoroughly recommend it, as a more engaging companion it would be a challenge to find. We meet in the studiously bijou surroundings of the Zetter Townhouse in St John’s Square, chosen, I suspect, because no one there has the slightest clue who she is. She is wearing the no-make-up disguise, and glides serenely under London’s radar, something she clearly enjoys. She is a tad jetlagged, she says, having just arrived home from a three-week stint ‘doing press’ in LA. We are talking in the Games Room downstairs

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Lansley’s historic debacle

I’ve just come back from a Health Service Journal conference of medics, where all manner of subjects came up. One audience member asked what historical event stood comparison to Lansley’s mishandling of the Health Bill. What else has caused so much controversy, to such little purpose? No one knew. Many of those present — senior doctors, NHS executives, etc — knew Lansley, and everyone seemed to agree that he is a policy wonk fatally miscast as Health Secretary. Politics is about making and winning arguments; whereas Lansley wanted to work on details so complex that, even now, almost no one in government can explain what is being done. The Bill