Society

Sunday

27 Nov 2011

The shape of the Budget battleground

There are still two days and a couple of hours to go until George Osborne’s Pre-Budget Report — but, already, we have a good idea of what will be said. The emphasis, beyond just plain ol’ jobs and growth, will be on combatting youth unemployment; helping smaller businesses; and relaxing the squeeze on middle-income folk. Most of the measures either announced or suggested so far — from the Youth Contract to the credit easing scheme to the suspension of January’s fuel duty rise — fall into one of those compartments. Whether they’ll work or not is a different matter entirely. As for Labour’s response, they’re already making it —

Saturday

26 Nov 2011

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern: Televising trials

English juries are warned to reach their decision exclusively on the evidence put before them. Would the proposed intrusion of TV into the courtroom (as in the USA) threaten this restriction by turning the trial into a public performance? The ancient Athenian case may be salutary. In Athens, all cases were privately brought, before a jury of (usually) 501 citizen males over 30 (no judge). Litigants pleaded their cases themselves (no barristers). Both parties spoke once, for equal periods. The evidence of witnesses was read out (no cross-questioning), and the jurors then passed their verdict (no discussion). And it all took one day. But while it is clear that the

Tanya Gold

Food: Occupy dinner

What to say about Occupy London? I support it, because I always judge a movement by the quality of its enemies, and also because its position at St Paul’s cathedral makes a certain type of writer wander around, pondering, ‘What would Jesus do about Occupy?’ There have been many articles asking ‘What would Jesus do about Occupy?’ The answer, of course, is very simple. Jesus (or rather Joshua) of Nazareth was Jewish. So, when faced with any problem, including the implosion of the global financial system and the erection of lots of tents near St Paul’s cathedral, he’d eat something. He’d eat something anyway. The Bible is full of stories

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 26 November 2011

Q. Is it on to invite friends to a birthday dinner and, with no pre-arrangement, expect them to fork out for their meal? An acquaintance — let’s call him Ralphie — has done this for years. Responding to his always effusive invitation (‘I’d really like YOU to be there’), one arrives bearing a gift and, at the end of a convivial evening in a posh restaurant, with appropriate fine wines and liqueurs, the bill is divided between the guests, some of whom, being unprepared, cough up with fixed smiles. Those who pay cheerfully are Ralphie’s pals who, like him, are associated with boats. Ralphie is skipper of a millionaire’s ocean-going

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 26 November 2011

Watching Steve Coogan giving his testimony to the Leveson inquiry on Sky News, I was intrigued by his argument that, unlike some, he’s never entered into a ‘Faustian pact’ with the press. The implication is that those who have, like Katie Price, are fair game. Not an argument for a universal right to privacy, then, but a qualified right that would only apply to celebrities that shun the limelight. The obvious objection to this is that either everyone should be entitled to a right to privacy or no one should. It cannot be contingent on not returning phone calls from the Daily Mail’s showbiz desk. But, actually, I think Coogan

Robin Oakley

The turf: Profit and loss

As she walked towards a Palace dining room once in company with the playwright Noël Coward, the late Queen Mother noted his gaily lascivious eye flickering over the Guardsmen lining the stairs. ‘No, Noël,’ she admonished him before he had spoken. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. They count them before they put them out.’ Following the end of the Flat season, I have to do my own counting and it is not the happy story it was last jumps season when our Twelve to Follow showed a 50 per cent profit. Between them our Flat twelve made 41 racecourse appearances and from those they mustered six victories, six seconds

Melissa Kite

Real life | 26 November 2011

If 40 was the question, climbing a mountain was not the answer. I don’t know why people go looking for themselves when they approach middle age and I always swore I wouldn’t do it. But then I found myself a few months off the dreaded landmark birthday and off I went up Kilimanjaro. All I can say is I had a good look for myself over a distance of 80 miles, half of them uphill, and I couldn’t find anything. Apart from an irrepressible ability to moan and a total lack of intrepidness. If anything, I discovered that my capacity for pessimism and can’t-do spirit was far more robust than

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 26 November 2011

For 21 years my bike has leant against the wall just inside the garage door. On Monday morning it was gone. Nicked. I loved that old Dawes Galaxy. But I couldn’t work myself up into a state about its theft. I tried anger, I tried indignation, but without success. Good luck to them, I thought. I might be a fool, but I try not to be a hypocrite as well. Besides, I was elated and humbled that morning because the postman had delivered another packet of your jokes; the biggest yet, containing about 60 letters, emails and postcards; all of them miles too late, unfortunately, to be entered in the

Taki

High life | 26 November 2011

Henry Kissinger, writing on American foreign policy, mentions that, according to Dean Acheson, ‘Leaving high office is like the end of a great love affair — a void left by the disappearance of heightened sensibilities and focused concerns.’ Dr K. should know. He was a swinger in his younger days, was among the first to mention that power is one of the greatest of all aphrodisiacs, and knew quite a few beauties in his time. He then married the very graceful and extremely supportive Nancy and has lived happily ever after. Lucky Dr K. I am a great fan of his and consider him a modern Machiavelli, meant in the

The Spectator

Letters | 26 November 2011

Economy pack Sir: Of your ten suggested remedies for the UK economy (‘Get it right, George!’, 19 November), not one mentions the obvious answer: recognise that communications technology is transforming every business and social model on the planet and accelerate Britain’s dozy and halfhearted commitment to invest in its communications infrastructure — broadband and mobile. Give the people the tools and they will generate the growth. Peter Krijgsman Somerset Sir: The big ideas in your last issue will have a limited immediate impact on the one million youngsters out of work; something more radical is required. I suggest that the government spends money created by quantitative easing directly on infrastructure

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 26 November 2011

On Tuesday morning, I was sitting reading Jessica Douglas-Home’s vivid new book about the great Delhi Durbar in 1911 (A Glimpse of Empire, Michael Russell). In the background, the Today programme was burbling. I had just got to the bit about the Maharajas paying homage to the King-Emperor. The author describes how the Maharaja of Nawanagar — better known as the great cricketer Ranjitsinhji — though splendid in his silver carriage, was also stony broke: ‘Ranji’s extravagance was much frowned upon in official circles … After the Durbar, he was humiliated by the imposition of a financial adviser upon his administration’. Then on to Today came a man called Horst

Quentin Letts

Diary – 26 November 2011

Nine years ago we moved to Herefordshire from Gloucestershire, where lovely Jilly Cooper was a neighbour. There is less bedhopping here in the Marches, fewer rakes such as Jilly’s character Rupert Campbell-Blacks. Recently, however, we learned that a married friend here was having an affair, bonking away in the marital home like a bonobo monkey. What should we do? Sometime matinee idol Hugh Grant would tell us to mind our own business. Broadsheet columnist Joan Smith on Monday assured the Leveson Inquiry that 21st-century Britain is laid back about marital collapse. Speak for yourself, Joan. I take the view that marriage is a public estate, declarations of love being exchanged

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 26 November 2011

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Getting debt under control is proving harder than anyone envisaged.’ In a speech to the Confederation of British Industry he blamed in part ‘paralysis in the eurozone’. His words came a week before the Chancellor was due to make his autumn statement, and the Office for Budget Responsibility to publish projections for the public deficit, which looked most unlikely to be expunged by the end of this parliament. Mr Cameron had earlier held talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and was thought to have discussed a ‘narrow’ amendment to the Lisbon Treaty that would not be subject to a referendum in Britain.

The Spectator

The technocrats’ coup

Just a few weeks ago, calling someone a ‘technocrat’ was a soft insult. The word meant, in effect, an efficient dullard. Now, technocrats appear to be inheriting the earth. They represent a new global elite, and they have recently added Greece and Italy to their empire. When Egypt’s military faced riots on the streets this week, it sought to assuage the crowds by replacing the government with a cabinet of technocrats. The Libyan rebels are doing the same. We have seen two very different types of regime change this year. The Arab Spring is driven by popular uprising; Europe has pioneered the reverse: an uprising of an unelected European elite

Rod Liddle

Comic timing | 26 November 2011

Ah, so this time Jimmy Carr has fallen foul of the increasingly vociferous Down’s Syndrome lobby. A few weeks back it was Gervais, who used the word ‘mong’, provoking fury among the god-awful bien pensant and the pressure groups. Now Carr has told a joke about those Variety Club Sunshine Coaches used to take Down’s Syndrome kiddies on trips. ‘Why do they call them variety when the kids all look the same,’ he said. Not a very good joke at all (but then I don’t find Carr very funny in general). But the response it elicited was funny. Some grandstanding idiot from the Variety Club said Carr should ‘apologise to

Fraser Nelson

Wrestling over cuts

Britain’s economic debate has been reduced to WWE-style wrestling, where two figures adopt semi-comic personas and have at each other for the entertainment of the crowd — while not doing any real fighting at all. So it is with Osborne and Balls. Rhetorically, they are poles apart; one championing cuts, the other spending. But you’ll notice that neither quantifies the cuts. That’s because Osborne is simply enacting an only-slightly-souped-up version of Darling’s plan and the real difference between the two parties is tiny. This was the point of last night’s Newsnight, where David Grossman filed a report (in which yours truly was interviewed) about the great pretend fight between two

Interconnect

Competition: Two bridges

In Competition No. 2723 you were invited to supply an updated version of Wordsworth’s ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’. A reading of the sonnet on Westminster Bridge in September 2002, to commemorate its 200th anniversary, was all but drowned out by the roar of the rush hour. A far cry, then, from Wordsworth’s view of a slumbering city, ‘silent, bare’, dominated by St Paul’s, with fields to the south. It was described thus in a diary entry by the poet’s sister: ‘The houses were not overhung by their cloud of smoke & they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly with such a pure light that there was even

Douglas Murray

After spring, winter

Spring was a long time coming in the dictatorships of the Middle East and North Africa. But when it arrived it was unhesitatingly welcomed by western leaders. William Hague declared the Arab Spring more important than 9/11 and the financial crisis. Barack Obama delivered one of his most mellifluous speeches on the subject. Everyone hoped for the best. But hope, we were reminded, is not quite enough. The shooting of protestors in Tahrir Square by the Egyptian army is the latest sign of something the West seems in no mood to admit: the Arab Spring is giving way to an Arab winter. In the last year we saw uprisings topple

Dot Wordsworth

Never trust a technocrat

‘Technocrats?’ said my husband, turning his face from the television and the latest news from Italy, looking at me for a change, and putting his whisky glass down in puzzlement. ‘Aren’t those the chaps who helped Franco out?’ ‘I don’t think they can be exactly the same people still, darling,’ I replied soothingly. But he had a point. It seems strange that we should think politicians more capable simply because they rejoice in the name technocrats, as the men put in to run Greece, Italy and are called. And a technocrat as a caretaker prime minister for Egypt seemed to be just the bone to throw the crowds in Tahrir

Rod Liddle

Sorry, Ken, but even I know you can’t say that

This week I thought I would offer advice on the sort of things one can and cannot say in public without fear of censure. I realise that I may not be the most obvious person, at this moment in time, to offer such a service. Maybe even the last person. But one has to plough away, give help where it might be needed. And in this particular case, to our Justice Secretary, Kenneth Harry Clarke. So Ken — here’s the last thing you should ever say in public. You should never, ever, as a suffix to a statement, make the claim: ‘And most women agree with me.’ We’ve got to