Society

Saturday

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

I’m too busy to set up schools and regulate industries. Isn’t that what governments are for?

How long do you suppose it takes Chris Huhne to shop for the most competitive energy bill for all seven of his houses? Ages, I reckon. If he had been driving during that infamous speeding incident on the M11 — and everyone knows, of course, that he wasn’t — then this would surely have been why. Racing home, for another thrilling evening of comparing the damn meerkat. The spectre of rising energy prices is one of those bleak and terrible things that you know will have horrible consequences, but with which you cannot quite grapple until the bill comes. The spectre of the Energy Secretary and Prime Minister trilling on

Rian Malan

Algerian Notebook

• This is surely a mistake, I thought, stooping to kiss the hand of Algeria’s minister of culture. Madame la Ministre Toumi Khalida is throwing a party to mark the start of Algeria’s annual book fair, the Salon International du Livre. This year’s line-up includes a contingent of South Africans led by Breyten Breytenbach, the dashing poet and former revolutionary, now resident mostly in Paris. My inclusion is a complete mystery, given the event’s broadly anti-imperialist tenor. Clearly, Algerians do not read The Spectator. But one doesn’t turn down a busman’s, so here I am, helping myself to a drink off a passing tray. The drink is green, sickly sweet

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The free market in danger

Young people say capitalism has failed them. They’re right. We must change the system to save it It would be easy to attack the London spin-off of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which manifested itself in the form of a 300-tent encampment outside St Paul’s last weekend. Their political agenda? The same, meaningless, Dave Spartesque gobbledegook which has been a feature of anti-capitalist demos for the past decade and a half, such as the demand for ‘Structural change towards authentic global equality’ and ‘an end to the activities of those causing oppression’. Look for leadership and what do you see? The usual old suspects: Billy Bragg, Julian Assange and assorted

Theodore Dalrymple

A case in point

You can tell that the economy of East Anglia is more flourishing than that of the West Midlands because the fine for drunken vomiting in the back of the taxis of Peterborough is £50, whereas it is only £40 for doing so in the back of the taxis of Wolverhampton. The other difference between the taxis of the two cities (as I discovered on making the journey between them recently) is that the former are driven entirely by Muslims, the latter by Sikhs. How this arrangement came to pass — if, indeed, it is an arrangement — I do not know, but I am glad to report that both lots

Robert Gorelangton

Playing Churchill

Where would gentleman actors be without Churchill? No prime minister has given as much work to the profession as Winston (though Blair comes a close second), patron saint of jowly thespians of a certain age. Churchill now features in a new stage play called Three Days in May, about the British war cabinet in May 1940. The great man is played by Warren Clarke, whose fleshy fizzog is well known to fans of the 12 series of the BBC’s Dalziel and Pascoe — he plays Detective Superintendent Dalziel. A splendidly robust actor, he has roughly the same baby-fed-on-whisky looks as Churchill. In this he doesn’t wear rompers, instead you get

Dot Wordsworth

The case for cliché

If I had neglected to brush my hair, my grandmother would say that I looked like a birch-broom in a fit. Untidy clothing made me look as though I had been pulled through a hedge backwards. If I appeared unhappy she would say that I had a face like a wet week. These similes, exaggerated and invariable, were so familiar that their metaphoric images scarcely registered. You could call them clichés. If so, they were clichés that went with my grandmother’s character, like her powder-compact, rain-mate and the mothball smell of her fur coat. John Rentoul, the political journalist with the Independent on Sunday, has declared war on clichés in

Ed Smith

Strauss rules

Andrew Strauss is arguably the most successful England captain of the modern era. He shares with Mike Brearley the distinction of having beaten Australia at home and away, and this year he became the first captain to take England to the top of the official world Test rankings. Yet, unlike Brearley, Strauss is not talked about with hushed awe. His achievements are acknowledged but not mythologised, and when we meet for lunch at a busy pub in the Chilterns, no one pesters him for an autograph. You sense that not becoming a superstar is one of Strauss’s ambitions and, as usual, he has got what he wanted. Strauss has never

Robert Hardman

Yes, Ma’am

Less than four months away from her Diamond Jubilee — only the second in history — we still tend to forget that we have the oldest monarch (85) and oldest consort (90) in history. We see a monarch who is reassuringly unchanged — and unchanging — in an uncertain world. It is an integral part of her appeal, at home and overseas. In Australia right now, the republican tide is out. Invited to field a ‘royal’ phone-in on national Australian radio earlier this week, I was struck by the consistent level of affection for the Queen. In half an hour, I encountered only one and a half republicans. It could

Bruce Anderson

Drink: Monarch of the glen

As one approaches St James’s Street from Pall Mall, there is an enticing window full of whisky bottles. Part of Berry Bros & Rudd’s temple complex, it is devoted to Glenrothes, a Speyside Malt. The bottles do not look as if they were designed by a marketing man and their labels largely consist of tasting notes. I could not recall whether I had sampled Glenrothes (take that as you will) so it was clearly time to concentrate some attention on this rare malt. Scotland has its pastoral symphonies as well as its bleaker grandeur. From Aberdeen airport, the autumnal road to Rothes eases its way across rich farmland into the

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: Better than a ride on a banana

A friend of mine once spent a week on a vast luxury yacht cruising the Mediterranean. It was all jolly pleasant, he remembered, except for a strange thing: throughout the entire trip, the only time the shipboard party had experienced what you might call ‘fun’ was when somebody discovered in a locker some kind of giant inflatable banana which could be towed behind the ship’s speedboat while everyone clung on. The yacht was OK, but the inflatable banana was utterly brilliant. It confirmed a suspicion I have always had about yachts — that there is more joy to be had pootling around a harbour in the tender than there is

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Medical record

In Competition No. 2718 you were invited to submit an account, in verse, of a medical procedure undergone. The inspiration for this assignment, was James Michie’s characteristically witty and well-made ‘On Being Fitted with a Pace-Maker’: ‘What with sex and fags and liquor,/ Silly old mulish heart,/ Dear unregenerate ticker,/ You needed a kick start’. Afflictions of the nether regions featured more prominently in the entry than those of the heart. Brian Murdoch captures the mood nicely: ‘Even when there is no malignity,/ You can say goodbye to freedom and certainly dignity…’ And while accounts ranged from the eye-watering to the heartwarming it was a strong performance all round. The

Olivia Glazebrook

Sunday sustenance

Before we knuckle down to the week’s offerings I’m going to seize the opportunity (this review is a one-off, so no need to panic) to champion a regular programme: Something Understood (Radio 4, Sunday mornings at 06:05 and repeated at 23:30). It’s on every week and, while some are better than others, I’ve never heard a dud. It is neither more nor less than a 30-minute encouragement to be human — just what my (church-free) Sunday morning needs before the bells take over the airwaves. Mark Tully (the most frequent presenter) picks up a subject in both hands (this week: mentors) and handles it with sympathy, good sense and good

Friday

Peter Robins

Local interest | 21 October 2011

A pregnant 24-year-old from Carmarthen, north Wales, has pleaded guilty to attacking a parked police car with a rolling pin. She was reported to have explained her action as follows: “It was something I needed to do and I did it.” (South Wales Evening Post) About fifty mourners, including one who flew in from Portugal, attended a New Orleans-style funeral for a stray cat in Walthamstow, north-east London. (Walthamstow Guardian, with thanks to Mark Wallace) Cat bones believed to be a 300-year-old charm to ward off witches have been found in the ceiling of a room at the Duke’s Head Hotel, King’s Lynn. (Eastern Daily Press) Burglars who broke into

The Spectator

The week that was | 21 October 2011

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. Daniel Finkelstein is left slightly underwhelmed by Martin Scorsese’s biopic of George Harrison. Fraser Nelson laments the poverty of Britain’s energy debate, and offers a bottle of champagne to anyone who can help to explain George Osborne’s growth plan. James Forsyth charts government’s never ending Europe problem, and watches Europe dominate PMQs. Peter Hoskin reacts to GOD’s report into the Fox affair, and wonders if IDS’ reforms will be mired in Whitehall’s digital swamp. Lloyd Evans thinks that Cameron was outfoxed at PMQs. Jonathan Jones watches Romney and Perry’s ding-dong in Vegas. Daniel Korski has a to-do

Matthew Sinclair

How to untie the tax knot

Yet another HMRC scandal this week, as a new HMRC computer discovered millions who have paid too much or too little in tax. A letter from the tax man will land on their doorstep in the next few months. Some will enjoy the dubious pleasure of getting money back that should never have been taken in the first place. Others face the painful task of finding the money to catch-up on tax they didn’t pay before.   As Pete said in his post on Wednesday, this isn’t the first time. When the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee looked at similar problems last year, they said that the Department had

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The austerity myth

CoffeeHousers may remember an odd New York Times editorial recently where they tried to blame the evaporation of British economic growth on austerity. Perhaps the newspapers’s famed fact-checkers had taken the day off, because the slightest piece of research would have exposed the premises of the piece as bunkum. This morning, the ONS has produced monthly public finance figures, showing current spending is still rising in Britain. But first, let’s get to the New York Times editorial: “Greece, which has been forced into induced recession by misguided European Union creditors, Britain has inflicted this harmful quack cure on itself… Austerity was a deliberate ideological choice by Prime Minister David Cameron’s

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The Gaddafi Memorial Quiz

In order to commemorate the death of Colonel Gaddafi properly, here’s a quiz about various deceased (with one exception) murderous megalomaniacs. No googling, or I’ll boil you in a vat for supper. Answers later today. 1. Which Muslim headcases wrote the following novels: a) Escape To Hellb) Begone Demons! 2. According to a popular conspiracy theory, from whose frozen semen was German Chancellor Angela Merkel created? 3. Who ordered The Night of the Murdered Poets? 4. Which friend of ol’Muammar may well have served up his other friend, Giscard D’Estaing, with poached loin of human being at a presidential dinner? 5. Which murderous black nationalist nutjob reportedly modelled himself on Baron Samedi? 6. Who wrote to the Queen

Thursday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Helping out the Editor

Fraser asked how Britain can compete in the new world of global television. Here are two answers: 1) Don’t give up on the BBC. To use the language of marketing that has been polluting English for a generation, the BBC is a “global brand”. Fraser’s idea that Sky could ever win the same levels of trust is optimistic in the extreme. It would take decades for Sky to build a comparable reputation; longer if the board and shareholders allow the disgraced Murdoch family to cling onto power. BBC bias is a snide and cowardly phenomenon. But let us be realistic. When people talk about BBC bias they usually mean Radio

Jonathan Jones

The Spending Review, one year on

It’s been a year since the Coalition’s Comprehensive Spending Review, but the public is in no mood to celebrate its anniversary. As the economy has failed to recover – GDP was no higher in June this year than at the time of the Review – sentiment has turned against the government. The latest YouGov polling shows that just one-in-three think the government is handling the economy well, against 58 per cent who say “badly”. At the time of the Spending Review, the public was split evenly on this question. Similarly, just 33 per cent think the government’s spending cuts are good for the economy, while half say they’re bad. But

Daniel Korski

The Colonel’s end

After more than 40 years of murderous rule and months fighting his own people, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has finally been caught, and killed, in his hometown of Sirte. This marks the end of the formal struggle against the Colonel’s regime, and, as such, is a great event for all Libyans. But Col Gaddafi’s death does create some complications for the new Libyan authorities. They have avoided a drawn-out judicial drama — like Slobodan Milosevic’s — which could have rallied people in the ex-dictator’s support. But his death also robs the new Libyan government of an opportunity to show that they are better than he was, by allowing a process of