Society

Saturday

Peter Hitchens

The thrills of summers past

How my heart sinks at the sight of those little features on ‘summer reading’. Follow these recommendations and you will strain your shoulder and your purse, buying and carrying books that will stay unread at least until the cool blast of the autumnal equinox, and probably forever afterwards. Ignore the log-rolling, the favours to friends and publishers, the favouritism of the bookshop display tables. As an occasional author, I long ago realised that at least half the book reviews in Britain are written by people who haven’t read the book they are writing about, and don’t much care. If you want something to read in the summer months, plunge instead

Camilla Long

Amy Winehouse became more helpless with every photograph

Amy Winehouse was found dead at home at 3.54 p.m. last Saturday afternoon. A day earlier, a Norwegian gunman had let off a bomb in central Oslo, shooting youth workers and teens in a national horror-show that was still ongoing. For a couple of hours, editors deliberated who they should ‘go with’ as the top story. In the ‘hierarchy of death’, as one commentator grimly put it, was Anders Behring Breivik bigger than the sadly predictable demise of the dark star of British pop? Not for the tabloids, who hungrily ‘went’ with the 27-year-old singer. They splashed her across the front pages, the Star, the Mirror, the Sun, the Express,

John Laughland

Vive les vacances!

‘Vous partez?’ ‘Vous partez un petit peu?’ ‘Quand est-ce que vous partez?’ Since early June, Parisians have been asking and answering these questions remorselessly, their minds fixed on holidays and nothing else. Since early July, the capital has been emptying out dramatically: the markets are deserted, shops are boarded up, food supplies even run down. Children vanish as mothers take them to the country or send them on Scout camp, leaving the fathers to join the family when the office permits. The city will slow down even further in August, so much so that it does not even charge for street parking during that languid month. Given that September is

Andrew Gilligan

A gold medal for idiocy

The Olympics are a gigantic folly – and you still have time to be part of it Would you like to compete for Britain at the 2012 Olympics? No, seriously, compete in the real Olympics, march in the athletes’ parade, wear our national colours? Vacancies are still available. Complete beginners most welcome — no experience necessary. You don’t even have to be, well, British. I promise I am not making this up. Among the many inventive ways which London 2012 has devised to waste public money, Team GB Handball is my personal favourite. Three million pounds is being spent to create, from scratch, a British Olympic squad in a sport

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 30 July 2011

Barely a flicker of growth, but Osborne mustfollow his instincts and stick to his guns Cut taxes now, or pile more taxes on to the bankers? Cut spending even faster to compensate for flagging tax revenues, or slow the cuts to ease the dole queues and boost confidence among consumers who still have public-sector jobs? Ban royal weddings, or at least the ones that cause the nation to stop work for a week and a half? Print more money, or tell Vince Cable to sod off and stop rocking the boat? George Osborne has a rich menu of choices as to how to respond to the news that second-quarter growth

Anita Brookner

A singular voice

Barbara Pym, now thought of as a reliable and popular novelist of the 1950s and 1960s, has almost disappeared from sight, overshadowed by the more explicit and confessional writers we are accustomed to reading today. Indeed her eclipse was sudden and unforeseen: her mature novels were rejected by three major publishers when she was only midway through her career, and it was only through the generous comments of two of her admirers, Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil in the Times Literary Supplement in 1977, that she was brought again to public attention. That her admirers in this instance were men rather than women was a more than welcome reversal

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 29 July 2011

Here are some of the posts that were made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson undermines Ed Balls’s spin about growth and the cuts. Peter Hoskin previews George Osborne’s summer of pain, and introduces the Game of Growth. Jonathan Jones wonders how you measure cuddles. Martin Bright has some questions for the police. Alex Massie responds to Tim Montgomerie’s cover article for the latest Spectator, asking: was the coalition a mistake? The Spectator Arts Blog reviews the latest production of Somerset Maugham’s For Services Rendered. The Spectator Book Blog has a hatful of facts about PD James. And the Business Blog sifts through the rubble of America’s debt

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Was the Coalition a Mistake?

Tim Montgomerie is a bonnie fighter but his essay in this week’s magazine (Subscribe from as little as £1 a week!) is a splendid example of the pundit’s fallacy: if matters were arranged as I think they should be everything would be for the best and David Cameron would have a thumping majority. Well, maybe even if past experience suggests the kind of “Mainstream” Conservatism (has that label been ditched, yet?) Tim favours had a limited electoral appeal. That was then, however, and this is now. (It’s also fair to note that Tim accepts a good deal of the Cameron Project). Tim complains that “The Cameroons’ mistake was to combine

Daniel Korski

The revolution remains on track

The Egyptian revolution has pulled itself back from the brink in a quite an extraordinary way. Everyone feared a clash in Tahrir Square today but, so far, a deal struck between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, the pro-democracy activists and the military is holding. Tahrir Square is teeming with white-clad Hajis. But everything is calm. The military gave into to a number of key demands from the protesters, including making some changes in the newly-promulgated electoral law. The Muslim Brotherhood feared being blamed by the military for a confrontation and being seen as too close to the Salafists. And the Facebook liberals wanted to keep the revolution united for now.

Peter Hoskin

‘Fessing up to drug use, the Mensch way

Just the thing to liven up a slow news day: a response from the Tory backbencher Louise Mensch to a series of insinuating points put to her by “David Jones Investigative Journalists”. The points were all about her time working at the record company EMI in the 90s; about her drug use, night-clubbing habits, that sort of thing. And she has answered them in marvellously unapologetic fashion. You can — and should — read the whole exchange here, although Mensch’s response to the question of whether she “took drugs with Nigel Kennedy at Ronnie Scott’s in Birmingham, including dancing on a dance floor, whilst drunk, with Mr Kennedy, in front

Jonathan Jones

Coffee House, distracting civil servants since 2007

A cracking, little story that we arrived at via the Daily Mail website: thanks to an FoI request put in by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Department for Transport has revealed which websites its staff visited on work computers between January 1st and May 31st this year. The full list is here, and there are some eye-catching entries to say the least. Take the role-play site bearsfaction.org.uk, where you are advised to “conduct yourself as a Bear would” — that got 183 hits per day. Or the infamous sexymp.co.uk on 142 hits per day. Even the website of the website of Page 3 girl Claire Tully got 5 hits per day.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Hello Again | 29 July 2011

As you may have noticed it’s been pretty quiet around here. That’s what weddings, cricket matches, some unseasonal sunshine and, most of all, being swamped by family will do for you. Those waters are receding now and there’s time and freedom to blog again. Hurrah. Plenty to write about too, including the test match, Norwegian events and the debt-ceiling debacle in Washington… But how has your summer been?

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

The shifting sands of public opinion on Libya

All of the buccaneering rhetoric has been sucked from the Libyan conflict this week, replaced with words of concession, compromise and caution. A few days ago, it was the news that — contrary to what they might previously have said — the government is prepared to let Gaddafi remain in the country after all. Today, William Hague deploys the same line in an interview with the Times (£), in which he also warns that there are “a lot of problems and even convulsions” to come in northern Africa. As it happens, the depressed mood of our foreign-policymakers reflects the tide of public opinion. Here, for CoffeeHousers’ benefit, are a couple

Peter Hoskin

The phone hacking scandal rumbles on

“The News of the World proved is is a force for good.” So said Sara Payne, the mother of the murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne, in a column for the final edition of the paper. Its writers and editors had supported her unerringly, she wrote, in her campaign for tighter laws against child molesters. “I shall miss you all and to you I say thank you and good luck.” All of which makes the latest phone hacking allegations particularly disquietig. According to the Guardian, Glen Mulcaire, the private investigator hired by the News of the World, had Sara Payne’s phone number in his extensive collection. “The evidence that police have found

Peter Hoskin

The good news story that Osborne wants you to hear

  There was much sly amusement earlier this week when George Osborne, responding to the latest growth figures, described Britain as “a safe haven in the storm”. The idea that our high inflation, low growth economy might be a “safe” anything seemed, to many, a grotesque idea. But, in truth, the Chancellor may have had a point — and it’s a point that he’ll want to make again and again as the recovery stumbles on, and as other indicators fluctuate against him. What the Chancellor was referring to, I’m sure CoffeeHousers know, is the interest rates set by the markets on the UK bonds that fund our borrowing. Broadly speaking,

Douglas Murray

Breivik and the right | 28 July 2011

There’s plenty to sate your thirst for politics in this week’s issue of The Spectator (out today, you can buy it here, etc.), not least Tim Montgomerie’s forceful cover article on how the Tory leadership has become detached from the wisdom of ordinary Conservatives. Here, though, is Douglas Murray’s essay on the psychosis of Anders Behring Breivik, and whether the right has a case to answer for his crimes: Anders Behring Breivik believed himself a Knight Templar and awarded himself various military ranks accordingly. He also believed that he and other self-described racists had common cause with jihadis and that the USA has a Jewish problem. So even before he

Kate Maltby Kate Maltby

No Lashings of Ginger Beer Here

Despite the early 1930s chintz curtains, there is something morbidly contemporary about Somerset Maugham’s drawing room melodrama, For Services Rendered, recently produced at the Union Theatre. Or as the affluent older generation noted, ‘The nation can’t afford itself the luxury of keeping an army of officers it has no use for… Times are difficult… Today’s young people are facing difficulties we never had’. Yes, it’s a depression; yes, the global outlook is uncertain, but James Bound’s light and breezy staging found more nuanced points of comparison in Maugham’s unflinching portrayal of family breakdown than in the easy analogies between two Britains, wearied by military sacrifice and jaded by boom-and-bust economics.

Peter Hoskin

Alexander’s balancing act

Remember that merry dance between the government and the unions over public sector pensions, a few weeks ago? Expect a minor reprise today, and much more over the summer. The government today announces how much extra public sector workers will have to pay to maintain their pension levels, and already the Telegraph has the numbers. When it comes to the 40,000 best-paid public sectorees — all on considerably over £100,000 — their contributions will rise by around £3,000 a year. And then it’s a sliding scale all the way down to the 750,000 least well-paid workers, who will face no increase at all. The unions, who will rejoin the government

Wednesday

Jonathan Jones

One year to go, but the public aren’t convinced

Boris may think next year’s London Olympics will be “the most exciting thing that’s happened in the eastern part of the city since the Great Fire”, but – according to a slew of new polls – he’s got some way to go to persuade the rest of the country. Here’s an opener from YouGov:   In the same poll, there’s also widespread scepticism over what benefit the Olympics the bring to Britain:    The clearest perceived benefit is for London’s sporting facilities, with 54 per cent agreeing that they will be much better “not just for the games themselves but for years afterwards”. However, when it comes to London’s public

Piotr Brzezinski

No sign of progress, apocalypse nigh

With less than a week to go before America’s August second debt ceiling deadline, negotiations have broken down. Nonetheless, a deal will almost certainly be done. The markets seem convinced, and it’s inconceivable to most observers that the US would arbitrarily default on its obligations (whether to bondholders, pensioners, or employees).  Inconceivable, however, is not the same thing as impossible. As in August 1914, rational decisions by reasonable actors can combine to create an unexpected and unintentional disaster. Even if both Republican and Democrat parties as a whole agree on the importance of raising the ceiling, individual members have every reason to vote against it. The last time economic crisis