Society

Saturday

21 Jan 2012

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern: Aristotle on Balls

The reason why shadow chancellor Balls is such a liability is that he is incapable of understanding how other people feel. That may not matter in relation to the opposition — they do not care how he feels either — but it does, for what one would have thought were fairly obvious reasons, when he is dealing with us. Aristotle (384–311 bc) explains why. In his brilliant Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle devotes considerable space to a discussion of the emotions and the way in which they may be manipulated to one’s advantage. He is especially interested in anger and its opposite, praotês, which means ‘calm, mildness, patience, tractability, good temper’.

The Spectator

Barometer | 21 January 2012

Condemned A Norfolk woman was given the honour of pressing a button to demolish a tower at the Campbells soup factory where her father was scalded to death in 1995. Here are some other buildings demolished to expunge bad memories: — 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, former home of Fred and Rose West — 5 College Close, Soham, Cambridgeshire, house where Ian Huntley killed two ten-year-old girls in 2002 — Beb al-Azizlya Compound, Tripoli, former home of General Gaddafi — Muiredge Cottage, Buckhaven, Fife, bungalow where Rab Thomson murdered his two children — 12205 Imperial Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, house where Anthony Sowell raped, murdered and buried 11 women All at sea

Dot Wordsworth

Chains

The other day I walked past Patisserie Valerie on the corner of Broadwick Street and Marshall Street, in a shop that used to be a potter’s. ‘This isn’t really Patisserie Valerie,’ I thought to myself. What I had always taken to be a proper name (of a place in Old Compton Street, after its move from Frith Street, where it had been bombed in the war) had now become a common noun (a chain). Luke Johnson, who runs Risk Capital Partners Ltd, the owners of the Patisserie Valerie chain, is not entirely to blame for this, since a few branches had opened before he took it over in 2006. And

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 21 January 2012

Q. A close neighbour has a two-car garage that occupies her entire street frontage. However, she has developed a habit of parking her car outside my house so that I then have to park way up the street (I only have one car). When her many children visit, they also park in front of my house if I am not there. I think this is rather rude. Is there any way I can tactfully get the message to her that she should either park in her garage or down the street, where there is plenty of room? I have considered appealing to the local council but this seems a bit

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 21 January 2012

On Saturday 7 February my wife and I finally succumbed to the combined pester power of our four children and bought a hamster. They’ve been nagging us for over a year to buy them a pet and this seemed like the least hassle. We opted for a six-week-old Syrian with reddish-brown fur and white patches. We decided to call her Roxy on account of her being so pretty. It’s short for Roxana, the Bactrian princess that Alexander the Great fell in love with. I quickly realised that hamsters are a bit like printers, in that you think you’ve got a bargain until you realise what the running costs are. Roxy

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 21 January 2012

In Thought for the Day, of all places, the weird bitterness behind much Scottish nationalism was revealed. On Wednesday, John Bell of the Iona Community complained of the suffering of the Scots and asked people in the south-east of England how they would like it if their history books had been ‘written in Aberdeen’. We should not have minded a bit. Indeed, though I cannot immediately recall a schoolbook from Aberdeen, the quantity of excellent British educational material coming out of Scotland — think of Collins in Glasgow — always far exceeded the relative proportions of the UK population. So did the writers — Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, John

Robin Oakley

The turf: Emerging names

Every sport needs renewal and the most heartening thing about this jumping season is the growing prominence of a bunch of comparatively new, comparatively young trainers. A little older than some is the phenomenon John Ferguson. Moonlighting from his worldwide role as Sheikh Mohammed’s chief bloodstock adviser on the Flat, he has set up as a jumping trainer and had 18 winners from fewer than 50 runners, an extraordinary strike rate. In Wales Tim Vaughan goes from strength to strength, matched in the Cotswolds by Martin Keighley. Then there are the ex-Lambourn Likely Lads, a bunch of successful horse-handlers who were all assistant trainers there and did their courses together.

Melissa Kite

Real life | 21 January 2012

The visit from the accident assessor appointed by the insurance company sent me on a cleaning spree involving industrial quantities of bleach. I spent the hours preceding his arrival subjecting every corner of my flat to a thorough going-over. Then I lit scented candles and brewed fresh coffee. ‘What am I doing?’ I muttered dementedly as I grabbed the dog and deposited her in the bath 20 minutes before he was due. Cydney was happy enough. There’s nothing she likes better than lapping warm water from a shower spray while skidding up and down a bath tub. ‘Got to get you nice and clean,’ I said, as I emptied half

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 21 January 2012

A week into the New Year I drove to town early to do a spot of shopping. The sun was shining, I felt well again, and I marched up the high street with a spring in my step. The still-thriving high street is predominantly Georgian, with here and there a few remaining Tudor merchants’ houses. The foundations and old stone walls are medieval, and the narrow street runs steeply upwards between the ancient river bridge at the bottom and a textbook motte-and-bailey castle at the top. You can either park at the top and walk down, or park at the bottom and walk up. It depends how you feel.

Taki

High life | 21 January 2012

Gstaad ‘Mick Flick invites you to the Roaring Twenties’ read the invite, a black-and-white stiffy with a flapper and a Rudolph Valentino type in white tie and tails, flirting in the old-fashioned manner, she dreamlike, flapping her eyes upwards, he looking swarthy and passionate and standing over her. In the background, a roomful of swells in their finest are tripping the light fantastic. It is rare for a party to live up to expectations, especially one to which people come from very far away. I’ve given a few in my life and none of them has ever truly clicked. Perhaps it’s a matter of luck, but mainly it has to

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 21 January 2012

Home Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, commenting on the public sector wage freeze, said: ‘I can’t promise to reverse that now.’ Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said it was ‘absolutely right’ to place employment before pay rises. But Len McCluskey of the Unite union called it a ‘Blairite coup’ and Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services Union, called it ‘hugely disappointing’. Inflation fell in December to 4.2 per cent from 4.8 per cent (by CPI) or to 4.8 per cent from 5.2 per cent (by RPI). Thieves dug a 100ft tunnel to a video shop in Manchester over the New Year, and got away with £6,000; a similar

The Spectator

Work in progress | 21 January 2012

It is often claimed that the Lords, unencumbered by the rivalries and ambitions of the Commons, have a greater affinity with ordinary people than MPs. Certainly, this is the spin which opponents of the Welfare Reform Bill would like to put on its rocky passage through the upper house, where the government narrowly avoided a fourth defeat this week. But there is an alternative interpretation: that their lordships are suffering from a form of noblesse oblige which prevents them from seeing that the welfare system has become a racket, incubating the poverty it was set up to eradicate. This week’s near-defeat, on the subject of the Disability Living Allowance (DLA)

James Forsyth

What does it say about our society that abortion will now be advertised on TV?

The news that for-profit abortion providers are soon to be allowed to advertise on television suggests there is something very wrong with our society. Abortion may well at times be the least worst option. But even those of us who accept this should feel deeply uncomfortable with it being actively promoted on television. The fact that these providers want to advertise on television is revealing of a certain lack of moral seriousness about the work they do. This news is also revealing of how far we have come since the Abortion Act 1967. I doubt that the parliamentarians who voted that legislation through envisaged that 45 years later, what are

Martin Bright

Matthew Norman, David Brenteron and the end of the compassionate Conservative

Until now I haven’t seen Matthew Norman as a radical figure in British journalism. But his column in the Independent this week was a genuine anti-establishment rant in the best tradition. The headline was a corker: ‘Cameron is the David Brent of welfare reform’ – clear, to-the-point and expressive of the fury of the piece to come (he later describes the man he dubs ‘David Brenteron’ as a ‘galaxy-class hypocrite’ for his government’s betrayal of the disabled in its welfare reforms). It is difficult to choose a single passage from the article as every single sentence drips with delicious anger, but the final paragraph is worth reading in full: ‘Whatever

Lucy Vickery

Competition: This be the reverse

In Competition No. 2730 you were invited to supply a refutation in verse of Philip Larkin’s assertion ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’. ‘This Be The Verse’ may not be Larkin’s finest poem but it is certainly his best-known and most oft-quoted (he himself wryly commented that he fully expected to hear it recited by a thousand Girl Guides before he died). The challenge generated a large and generally impressive postbag. Commendations to Frank Osen, Adrian Fry, Robert Schechter and John Whitworth. Star of the show is Alan Millard, who pockets the extra fiver. His fellow winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 each. You lying toad! Your

Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: Class system

1) Imagine you have the choice of living in two worlds. In World A you have a five-bedroom house and everyone you know has a six-bedroom house. In World B you have a four-bedroom house and all your friends have three-bedroom houses. Which world would you prefer? 2) You can live in World C, where you get five weeks’ holiday a year and your friends get six. Or you can choose World D where you get four weeks’ holiday a year and everyone else gets three. Which do you choose? ••• Most people, when asked these questions, chose worlds B and C. In other words, with property (at least above

Nicholas Farrell

Ship of fools

Ah, those Italians. Let’s just blame the bloody Eyeties for the catastrophe of the Costa Concordia and have done with it, shall we? That way we don’t have to think too much about the perils of floating citadels in general. There was something peculiarly Italian about this disaster. The night his ship went down Francesco Schettino, the 52-year-old captain, was in the bar with a striking blonde on his arm who was not his wife. He stayed glued to her side until the moment the ship struck the submerged rock — which it only did because he had changed course to get in nice and close (he says 300 metres, the

Angela Huth

What colour is Wednesday?

If you are one of that small band of people who happen to see days of the week, months of the year, even single numbers and letters in colour, you are considered either very peculiar or very lucky. It also means you are a synaesthete. I am one of them. Synaesthesia is a rare condition: few people have heard of it. To put it simply, synaesthesia is a psychological and neurological state concerning the visual and auditory areas of the brain. For those who have never known a yellow Friday, or a red July, it’s hard to understand how this curious phenomenon works. Most people have five senses: sight, touch,

Bruce Anderson

Drink: Stars by any other name

Eheu fugaces. It is 1989 and I am off to Paris for the Sunday Telegraph, to cover the Sommet de l’Arche. Intended to commemorate the French Revolution’s bicentenary, it was a characteristic Gallic blend of grand projet, grandiloquence and frippery. The late Frank Johnson makes a suggestion. I ought to talk to Serge July, the editor of Libération, who is very close to Mitterrand; and here is a number for someone who will have M. July’s coordinates. Already halfway out of the door, not fully concentrating, I thought I was writing down July’s number. I phoned it on landing, and asked for Serge July. ‘Do you mean Georges Joly?’ Perhaps

Rod Liddle

Bearded maniacs deserve justice, too

I’d like, this week, to draw your attention to the United Kingdom’s unjust treatment of some bearded maniacs. I realise, in writing this, that bearded maniacs may not be near the top of your list of stuff to worry about at the moment, or perhaps ever. Indeed it may even be the case that you think the world is an unjust place per se and that you would be very happy if its most egregious injustices were directed largely towards bearded maniacs, rather than the rest of us. In which case what follows may annoy you, for which apologies. Bearded Maniac No. 1 (BM1) is the ‘radical Muslim cleric’ Abu