Society

Saturday

31 Dec 2011

How democracy fared in 2011

Even before we were a month in, 2011 was an historic year. Principally because in a region of the world where governments shift through military coup or foreign intervention, dictators fell — and others tottered — thanks to local popular uprisings. Whatever the outcome of those events (and I have expressed my fears elsewhere, here) they remain a landmark worth observing. Whether or not the coming years are any good at all for them, 2011 was a great year for democrats in the Middle East. In the older democracies of the West, however, 2011 was more disconcerting. If anyone doubts this, consider the following experiment. It is the beginning of

The Spectator

How to write a diary

Over the years, many intriguing, famous and noteworthy individuals have written a diary for The Spectator. Some good, some bad. Some exhilarating, some excruciating. But this week’s diarist offers a timely lesson in how to do it properly. The best Speccie diaries are both personal and professional, idiosyncratic yet informative, quirky yet insightful, giving the reader a unique ringside perspective into important topical events. Ideally, they are devoid of the spin and crass self-promotion normally found in the mainstream press, and delve not only into the mindset but also the emotional vulnerabilities of the diarist at a decisive, reflective or simply amusing point in their lives. This week’s very special

The Spectator

Escape from gangland

The murder of a teenager on Boxing Day, stabbed during a brawl over a pair of trainers in Oxford Street, offers another horrifying glimpse of the culture of violence being incubated in our sink estates. Police have not yet confirmed if this was another gang killing, but it seems to fit a sickening pattern. There was Negus McClean, killed in April after he confronted a gang who tried to steal his brother’s mobile phone. Then Nicholas Pearton, stabbed to death in a shop doorway in May by a group of schoolboys. At each outrage politicians denounce criminality and the police promise crackdowns. Then things carry on as before. It’s unclear

James Forsyth

Politics: Can the coalition survive a good year for the Tories?

Westminster used to think that 2012 would be the year that the ‘feel-good factor’ returned. Back in May 2010, all three parties expected the economic mood to lift. Combine that with the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and it seemed a good bet that, come September, the country would be smiling. Labour frontbenchers feared that David Cameron would seize his chance to go to the country in search of a majority of his own. Now even the most optimistic believe that the economy will remain in a critical condition. Yet, against the odds, Cameron remains in the ascendant. The Conservatives are polling significantly ahead of their performance in the

Anne Applebaum

Russia’s new dissidents

Alexei Navalny, the de facto leader of the demonstrators who thronged freezing Moscow on Christmas Eve, minces no words. On rospil.info, a website he founded that is dedicated to the investigation of local and municipal corruption, he introduces the topic like this: ‘Why is all of this necessary? Because pensioners, doctors and teachers are practically starving while the thieves in power buy ever more villas, yachts, and the devil knows what else.’ Nor does Navalny shy away from sharp visual imagery. Another one of his projects is to collect photographs of potholes, crumbling motorways, cracking bridges and other road catastrophes waiting to happen. On his personal blog, where he posts

Dennis Sewell

Mission Impossible

At the height of empire, Britain used to send missionaries out to Africa and Asia to instruct the natives in personal hygiene, instil good table manners and preach the gospel. The occasional unlucky one found himself in a cannibal’s pot for his trouble; but mostly they won out, establishing themselves as the kindly, civilising arm of imperialism, founding schools and clinics, and converting the heathen. Back home, the public was jolly proud of them. British missionaries were both an expression and a source of Britain’s muscular national self-assurance. So what are we to think of ourselves today, now that we are on the receiving end of missionary attention? For, all

Melissa Kite

On the wrong track

The high-speed rail link will spell disaster for the countryside – and for Cameron My outing with the Bicester hunt has already taken me over a five-bar iron gate when a lady on a handsome dapple grey pulls up alongside me. ‘You’re visiting, aren’t you?’ she says, as our horses snort and stamp. ‘You need to know that the next bit is called the black run.’ Seconds later we are hurtling through a fine, rainy mist over hedge after hedge. As we approach the first, I let out a tremendous shout which surprises even me. ‘Go on!’ I’m not yelling at my horse, a hireling called Ruben who is terrific;

Matthew Parris

What is this longing for the apocalypse?

Sometimes it is by catching ourselves unawares that we see ourselves best. That unprepossessing fellow with a dull, crumpled, peasant face and a faintly disobliged expression that you caught a glimpse of in the shop window while Christmas shopping on Oxford Street — oh crikey, that was you. Our looks, however, are not our fault. Our attitudes are surely under our control. Or are they? the other day I caught myself, as if in a shop window, in an attitude I’d never acknowledged, do not like, and do not seem to be able to do anything about. And now I’ve spotted it, and the more I think about it and

James Delingpole

Ten things you don’t want to happen in 2012, but which probably will

My predictions for 2012 1. After the Arab Spring and the Islamist Winter will come Armageddon Summer. It might happen as early as spring but that season has been bagged already. At Islington dinner parties, on the BBC and in the Guardian — after cursory acknowledgement has been made of all the dead innocents — the conclusion will be reached that Israel is to blame. As if its very existence wasn’t provocation enough, Israel has consistently — and deliberately — mocked its poor, struggling neighbours with its outrageous displays of democracy, accountability and economic growth. 2. Boris will make some spectacular gaffe. Perhaps he will suggest, outrageously, that the gentle

Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business – New Year ideas: put directors in the stocks and knock down Battersea power station

About ten years ago, over a good lunch, I had a debate with the late Giles Worsley about Battersea power station. The distinguished architectural writer said Battersea was an industrial icon that should certainly be conserved but — like its sister station turned gallery at Bankside — found a new purpose. If an industrial icon had ceased to serve the very specific purpose for which it was built, I countered, there’s no need to strive at enormous cost to save its impotent hulk, especially if we’ve kept another just like it a mile or so downriver. Assuming it’s physically possible to knock the brute down, why not create a new,

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Short story | 31 December 2011

In Competition No. 2727 you were asked for a short story entitled ‘An unwelcome bequest’. The Guardian recently invited its readers to share their experiences of unwished-for bequeathals. The request elicited a crop of hugely funny and touching stories featuring, among other things, ‘a hideous pink pig in a hat and a pinny drinking a cup of tea’, which was initially consigned to a cupboard but metamorphosed over time into a symbol of stoicism that provided its recipient with solace in dark times. Animals popped up frequently in the entry: I especially liked Basil Ransome-Davies malign, windy polecat. Honourable mentions, too, to Mark Ambrose, G.M. Davis and Natalia Colthurst. Bill

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: Sporting lives

Sadly, no blistering new memoir this year from Max Mosley — A Study In Scarlet: the History of the Whip (published by the British Horseracing Authority) — but there have been plenty of wonderful sporting books this year. Too many to list obviously, so I have chosen just four and, in the Leveson spirit of full and frank confession, all written by or about people I know and admire. Paul Kimmage’s Engage: The Fall and Rise of Matt Hampson tells the extraordinary story of the England Under-21 tight head prop who broke his neck on the training ground in 2005 when the scrum collapsed on him, leaving him paralysed from

Interconnect

Travel Extra: Blue Danube – Cruising for Christmas

How was it for you? Christmas, I mean. Was it a week of joy and revelry? Or was it, like mine, a rather miserable few days of pretending not to be bored stiff? The solution may be to take a year off — take a cruise: somewhere that matches the character of the season. There is no place on earth more beautiful than the banks of the Danube in December. Fire scorches the mantelpieces of ancient schlosses, snow covers the forests, the lights glimmer in the waters below Budapest, and songs resonate around the drinking halls of Salzburg. What more magical way of spending Christmas? There are a number of

Patrick Allitt

Travel Extra: Cruise – Breaking the ice

Alaska is best seen by ship, says Patrick Allitt – just so long as you choose the right season For two thirds of every year Alaska is a nightmare of ice and darkness. For 16 or 17 weeks, by contrast, it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth, and anyone who can find a way to get there should seize the opportunity. John Muir, the pioneering American environmentalist, cautioned young people not to see it too early in their lives because ‘the scenery of Alaska is so much grander than anything else of its kind in the world that, once beheld, all other scenery becomes flat and insipid’. So

Johnnie Kerr

Travel Extra: First steps on skis

When I was just starting out on the slopes, a slip of a boy with nothing but training skis and a dream, there were a number of issues I wish someone had warned me about: 1. Don’t let your mother kit you out The piste is really just a massive catwalk. I look all right these days, but I had to learn the hard way: skiing on a hot day in a puffy bright yellow onesy, goggles and a crash helmet is apt to cause scoffing from overhead chairlifts. 2. Know your limits Stick to the blue runs (the equivalent of a 20mph zone near a driving school) and try

James Delingpole

Travel Extra: Ski – Man against mountain

A friend of mine called Mike Peyton had what he modestly describes in his memoirs as an ‘average war’. It included having his battalion of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers overrun and wiped out in the Western Desert; nearly starving to death in an Italian POW camp; witnessing the bombing of Dresden; escaping from his camp to fight for several months with the Soviet army, personally killing many Germans. I asked him what it had felt like. He replied: ‘You know when you’re on a black ski run and you look down and you say: “Can I manage this?” Then you get down and you think: “How did I manage that?”

Kate Eshelby

Travel Extra: Return to Zimbabwe

Who would have thought that a pig and an elephant would become best friends? ‘When we began looking after Kimba, an orphaned elephant, she took an instant liking to Whisky, our pig,’ says James Varden, my guide. ‘Elephants are social animals, so they slept together. Whisky was extremely protective of Kimba and panicked if she was not there.’ I last came to Zimbabwe in the 1990s when tourism was blooming — so I’m interested to see what Mugabe has done to his country. Some friends criticised me for coming here, asking why I was supporting a dictator. ‘Most Zimbabweans want peace and to get on with life,’ James says. ‘When

Charles Moore

Travel Extra: Safari – The ride of a lifetime

It’s not easy seeing the Masai Mara on horseback, says Charles Moore – but it’s also impossible to forget On the third day, we left our original camp to ride 30 miles to the next. There were 15 of us, including our leader Tristan Voorspuy and two Masai grooms. We had all gathered for a moment in a salt-lick when a dik-dik, one of the smallest of the African antelopes, shot out from a bush under our feet. The horses reared and bucked, each frightening the others. One of our party, Sophie, fell on to the hard ground, and cried out in pain. She had broken her wrist. Much of

Deborah Ross

Unalloyed joy

Every so often a film comes from the left field and plays a complete blinder and The Artist is such a film. It is also glorious, delicious and an unalloyed joy and if you don’t go see it you are a bigger fool than I thought you were, which is going some. It’s a film about silent films but not just a film about silent films because this is a silent film about silent films, and so beguiling and touching and funny and tender and clever without being cute it’ll warm the cockles of your heart. I loved it, adored it, delighted in every frame of it, would run off

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Rather a cold fish

Published first novel (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) at the age of 59, Richard and Judy choice, won Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction; spent his whole career in industry; lives in Northumberland, wears tweed cap, likes fishing…These are the facts you read about Paul Torday time and again, and he must be getting tired of them. That first book really was good: the kind of novel you wish you’d written yourself, all done in emails, extracts from diaries and letters, snatches of Hansard, articles in newspapers, transcripts of interrogation sessions. It was a charming satire, about politicians, entrepreneurs and fish. His late career-change and success gave hope