Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Barometer | 5 November 2011

• Initial problems The leaders of the eurozone countries have hatched a plan to bundle up dodgy Greek government debt and sell it to the Chinese. Without any apparent sense of irony, the debt will be sold in the form of a Special Purpose Investment Vehicle — known as Spiv for short. Some other unfortunate acronyms: — Canadian Reform Alliance Party (since merged with the Conservatives) — Committee to Re-Elect the President:  formed to raise money for Richard Nixon’s election campaign in 1972 — Area Rolling Stock Engineer: position held by British Railways functionaries — South Lake Union Trolley: (reputed) original name for tram line in Seattle — SS: now-replaced emblems

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 5 November 2011

It being All Saints’ Day on Tuesday, we sang ‘For all the saints’ in church: ‘Oh, may thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,/ Fight as the saints, who nobly fought of old/ And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.’ Meanwhile, the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral were falling apart because most of them thought it was wrong to nobly fight in any way at all. Most of the clergy involved in this curious situation keep referring to the danger of ‘violence’, as defined by Canon Giles Fraser in his resignation last week. ‘I feel that the Church cannot answer peaceful protest with violence,’ he said. Naturally,

Anthony Horowitz

Diary – 5 November 2011

How nice to find myself at the front of The Spectator rather than the back, where I make occasional appearances, albeit under a pseudonym, next to the crossword. I love these quirky, waste-of-time competitions, which at £25 for 150 words must make the contributors pro rata among the highest paid in the magazine. It’s a shame, though, that the same four or five people seem to win all the time. What else do they do with their lives apart from construct haikus about literary figures or short stories without using the letter ‘e’? Who are Basil Ransome-Davis, Noel Petty and Bill Greenwell? I have a feeling I was reading their

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 5 November 2011

• Home St Paul’s Cathedral decided not to take court action against anti-capitalist demonstrators who, since 15 October, had kept 200 tents pitched outside. The Corporation of London suspended its own legal action. The Rt Rev Graeme Knowles resigned as Dean of St Paul’s, a post he had held since 2007. His resignation followed that of Dr Giles Fraser, who, as Canon Chancellor of the cathedral, had at first asked police not to clear protesters from its precincts. The Archbishop of Canterbury said that the protesters had a point. Sir Jimmy Savile, the disc jockey, died, aged 84. The government said that unemployed people sentenced to pay a fine would

The Spectator

Don’t blame the Greeks

One can’t help but admire the Greeks. To be sure, they lied and cheated their way into the euro, and even the threat of a referendum on the bailout may yet tip the eurozone into a financial abyss. But there is something to be said for actually consulting the people about their future. Greece faces a choice: a decade (or more) of Frankfurt-enforced austerity, or bringing back the drachma and defaulting on their loans. Neither option is attractive. But this is about sovereignty, not just about money. This needs to be seen as a choice of the Greek people, not a deal imposed from outside and aimed primarily at saving

Nigel Jones

Bonfire boys

We so enjoyed Nigel Jones’s last contribution to Coffee House that we thought we’d invite him back to describe the rather eccentric Bonfire Night celebrations in Lewes… Here in Lewes near the Sussex coast we were awoken this morning at 6am by a flash in the sky followed by an ear-splitting explosion. The shock waves reverbrated around the South Downs that cup the town in chalky hands, setting off barking dogs and car alarms. On any other day I would have feared that an incoming airliner had fallen short of the Gatwick runway. But this is November 5th – Guy Fawkes day, or as we call it here simply “Bonfire”.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

How do you lose 124,000 people?

I see that the UK Border Agency has “lost” 124,000 asylum seekers and immigrants. It has done this in exactly the same way in which I deal with begging letters from Cancer Research and that charity that wants you to help the little foreign girl with no lips. Unwilling, out of embarrassment and shame, to just put them straight in the bin, I “file” them in a small tray at the back of my office from where, six months later, my wife puts them in the bin. This is exactly what the UK Border people do. They call it a “controlled archive”, a place where all these cases are kept

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Odd job

In Competition No. 2720 you were invited to supply a piece of prose written by a well-known author working in an unlikely context. Thanks to Brian Moore for drawing my attention to Samuel Beckett’s flirtation with a career in grocery trade journalism, as revealed in the great man’s recently published volume of letters: ‘I see advertised in to-day’s Irish Times an editorial vacancy on the staff of the RGDATA [Retail Grocery Dairy and Allied Trades-Association] Review at £300 per an. I think seriously of applying. Any experience of trade journalism would be so useful.’      It was a strong entry and I very much regretted not having space in

Daniel Kalder

Mr Blair goes to Kazakhstan

Ah, Tony Blair — you can’t keep a good hustler down. One minute he’s singing the praises of formaldehyde at the opening of a methanol power plant in Azerbaijan (£90,000 for a 20-minute talk), the next he’s accepting a gig ‘consulting’ in Kazakhstan. For his advice on ‘issues connected with policy and the economy’, he could reportedly make as much as £8 million a year. In May, Blair and a gang of his associates were spotted at a meeting of the Foreign Investors’ Council in Kazakhstan. Among them was Lord Renwick of Clifton, vice-chairman of JP Morgan, which (coincidently) pays Mr Blair £2 million a year for advice — and

Luke Coppen

Get well, Adele

In his last months as prime minister, Gordon Brown sat down and wrote a fan letter to a young British singer-songwriter. ‘With the troubles that the country’s in financially,’ he told her, ‘you are a light at the end of the tunnel.’ Last weekend that light officially went out: Adele has suffered a career-threatening vocal cord injury and will not sing again this year. OK, so it’s impossible to prove cause and effect, but you have to wonder if the curse of Gordon Brown has struck again. To understand what bad news this is, remember that it’s barely three months since the death of Amy Winehouse. Now Britain may be

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Crossed wires

Chris Huhne wants to know why we don’t shop around more for our utilities. I’ll give him one reason. The liberalisation of utility markets has created an impression of bewildering choice, but when things go wrong you realise that there is no choice at all, just the same old creaking infrastructure, owned and operated by the legacy company of an old nationalised monopoly. In fact, in one sense, liberalisation has made things worse: with a multiplicity of companies involved, you are never quite sure who is responsible for your pipes or your wires. You can find yourself caught between two companies, each blaming the other for your problem, via the

Peter Smith

Call me crazy

As a former mental patient, I find being asked to ‘embrace my diagnosis’ far more offensive than words like ‘bonkers’ Mentally ill people can be troublesome but at least the rest of the population does not have to think about them much. The system is effective in that respect. No one need know, for example, that 10 per cent of adults in Scotland are on antidepressants. The disturbed do not spread their disturbance. Whenever the subject of mental health surfaces in the media, progress is reported, unless there’s been a murder. While ‘bipolar’ has become a fashionable term to describe one’s own interesting self, and celebrities lay claim to mental

Dennis Sewell

The generation game

‘Intergenerational fairness’ is simply the latest cover for envy Towards the end of last month, a gang of youthful policy wonks started beating up the elderly. This is something we will have to get used to. The proposal from the Intergenerational Foundation to ease over-60s out of their three- or four-bedroomed houses to make way for younger families was just the first of a series of pernicious policies the think-tank is preparing as it opens up a new front in the politics of envy. ‘Intergenerational fairness’ is a seductive piece of branding. Who would declare themselves against fairness? In theory, it should have a particular appeal for conservatives. The idea

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

I’m ready to be scared. Just tell me what to be scared of

What I’m lacking, really, is any sense of the parameters. As I understand it, a best-case scenario involves the Greeks doing what they’re told. Everybody else tightens their belts a bit and there’s a bout of quite dispiriting inflation, followed by the ejection of a couple of countries from the euro, the slow retrenchment of almost every European public sector, the fundamental restructuring of industry here and in America, and a slow, slogging march back to stability and prosperity so that, in a decade or two, we can do it all again. Yes? Is that about right? So what’s the opposite? What’s the worst-case scenario? What happens when it all

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: Next bus

True or not, there is a persistent story about a former Duke of Devonshire who, seeing some silver napkin rings in Asprey’s, asked his companion what they were for. ‘Your grace, in some households they roll napkins inside these rings so that they can be used for a subsequent meal, rather than being laundered every time.’ ‘Good heavens. I never knew such poverty existed in England.’ Later, when the duke decided to board a bus for the first time in his life, it is claimed he beckoned to the conductor: ‘27 Eaton Square, please.’ Not such a ridiculous request, in fact. In many countries you will find ‘jitney’ services halfway

Bruce Anderson

Drink: A banker’s redemption

I have a friend who brought shame on his family. Rupert Birch was educated at Westminster and the House. Descending from a long line of writers, artists and journalists, he was admirably qualified for a distinguished career of cultivated indigence. Instead, he became a banker. But the fall of man can be followed by redemption. After making what anyone but a fellow banker would regard as a useful little fortune, Rupert did what many bankers talk about but few accomplish. At 40, he chucked his counting house for a sacramental vocation. He became a winemaker. He discovered 25 acres of vines near Aix-en-Provence. The previous owners had sold their grapes

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 5 November 2011

Kenya I am proud of Kenya for taking on Muslim extremists in southern Somalia. Rather wisely, the Kenyan military has so far prevented hacks from reaching the field. But for anybody in the outside world who cares, this is not a new battle. Operations against Somalis of varying types of fanaticism have been mounted since the 1960s. From my travels in the Somali borderlands I know this is some of the most thrilling terrain for a war — or for a safari. Not long ago, I set off for the frontier-coast village of Kiunga to get closer to the fighting. Along for the ride in my old Range Rover was

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business: To quell this divisive surge in top pay, we need less transparency, not more

‘The boom in top people’s pay is gathering momentum,’ I wrote before some of you were born — those of you who are still at school, that is. I went on to quote a leading industrialist of the day: ‘Shareholders won’t be able to stop it. Moderation will have to come through pressure of public opinion.’ Statistics from the same source two decades apart suggest public opinion has done a pretty feeble job. In a piece headed ‘Snouts in the Trough’ (1 May 1993), I quoted an Income Data Services (IDS) survey of FTSE 100 companies whose chief executives had received average annual pay increases in the depths of the

Friday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Can we torch Time Magazine’s offices now?

I should declare an interest and say that I have always admired Time Magazine. It has great journalists. It has even commissioned your humble correspondent and allowed him to join its exalted company of writers – and more to the point paid your humble correspondent ready money for the privilege. In normal circumstances I would deplore the notion that its offices should be firebombed and editors, reporters, critics, subs, secretaries and IT support staff reduced to piles of smouldering ashes, so charred and diminished their next kin would not be able to identify them. But what possible argument can those of us who shudder at the thought of arsonists torching

Jonathan Jones

Were the police hacking phones too?

“As an American who spent many years in this underground industry, I can tell you that the British phone hacking scandal has exposed only a tiny part of a vast criminal network.” So Frank Ahearn wrote in The Spectator a few weeks ago: he spent his life as a “skip-tracer” (as they’re called in America), dealing in the black market for information. There are many clients, he says, and journalists are just one part of it. The people he worked for included husbands investigating wives, insurance companies trying to expose dodgy claims and – yes – even the police, using “skip-tracers” to solve cases. Finally, this aspect of the British