Society

Saturday

1 Oct 2011

Hacked hack

As a former Sun editor, I didn’t see why voicemail hacking bothered celebrities – until it happened to me It was the kind of building George Smiley would have been happy to call home. Anonymous and bleak, it’s the home of Operation Weeting, where 60 officers flog themselves to death every day in the biggest Scotland Yard inquiry in anyone’s memory. I am here by appointment. A charming woman detective has called me a couple of times — when you are a former tabloid editor that’s worrying in itself — and asked me to drop by ‘at my convenience’ to look at the fact that my name and mobile number had

The Spectator

Letters | 1 October 2011

Europe’s guilty men Sir: What exactly do Peter Oborne and Frances Weaver (‘The great euro swindle’, 24 September) think the pro-euro camp must be called to account for? Apparently for being on the losing side in a debate which they never showed much sign of winning anyway, not least because the Chancellor of the Exchequer set conditions for entry which he knew would not be met. The Financial Times and the BBC may well have lacked even-handedness in their presentation, but their influence was balanced by the solid euroscepticism of many newspapers. In truth, many Eurosceptics were their cause’s worst enemies. Nicholas Ridley’s comparison of Helmut Kohl to Adolf Hitler

Dot Wordsworth

Sustainable

When the friends of John Wycliffe set about translating the Bible, about 650 years ago, they came to the bit in St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians about charity, ‘which endureth all things’, and chose to make their own translation: ‘susteyneth alle thingis’. The Latin word it translated was sustinet and the original Greek hupomenei. The Wycliffites meant the same as King James’s committees in 1611: to endure. Yet when David Cameron and his disciples speak of a ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ they do not, I hope, mean that we must presume housing is something we must endure, a lasting blot on the landscape. What they do

Tanya Gold

Food | 1 October 2011

The Playboy Club on Park Lane was re-opened by Hugh Hefner in June, like an ancient bra he had suddenly remembered was lying under his bed. It has a casino, a bar, a barber’s shop, and a restaurant. My being here is pure masochism, and I should really write the review in the style of Stephen King’s The Shining — Red Rum, Red Rum! But here I am, with my boyfriend. He had to telephone to get a table, because in theory, it is Members Only — Frank Sinatra, James Bond, the King of Bhutan. But they let him in, so it isn’t. We go in. It is clean, expressionless,

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 1 October 2011

I wouldn’t normally take my wife and children to Dumfries and Galloway for the weekend, given the distance and the expense, but the organisers of the Wigtown Literary Festival offered to pay all our rail fares and put us up for the weekend. Wigtown was designated Scotland’s national book town by the Scottish Parliament in 1999 in an effort to breathe new life into it. At the time, it had one of the highest unemployment levels in Scotland following the closure of its two main employers, the creamery and the distillery. The literary festival has taken place ever since. Almost the moment we crossed the border, a drunk buttonholed my

Robin Oakley

The turf | 1 October 2011

Seeing me leaving the races early one day recently a friend inquired why. ‘Got to finish some painting,’ I replied. ‘Oh, really,’ he said in surprise. ‘Do you do watercolours or oils?’ I would have said, ‘No, walls,’ but he might then have imagined I did murals, so I had to explain that, surrounded as I am by plumbers installing new heating, bricklayers repairing our chimneys and electricians trying to trace the wiring in our 1797 abode, I have been trying to save a few pennies by doing the home decorating. But economies, alas, don’t always live up to the theory. As I tried to prise the lid off a

Melissa Kite

Real life | 1 October 2011

When the only man I’ve ever come close to marrying moved out after I broke off the engagement, he left me with his tropical fish. I begged him not to, but the separation arrangements included the absolute stipulation that I keep the fish tank. If I insisted on him taking the fish tank, he made clear, he would be forced to terminate the fish. After the termination of our relationship, the termination of the fish was too much. So I offered a safe haven to the little mites, unfathomable to me though they were. If I had known how long they would live, I would have felt a good deal

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 1 October 2011

When my uncle was a boy, he said, he was leading a horse down a hill near North Weald in Essex. The horse was pulling a wagon loaded with cabbages, and my uncle had got down, he said, to assist the horse because the hill was a steep one. The war was on. The hill was on a quiet country lane, so he was surprised to see three limousines approaching together in convoy at speed. As the limousines drew level, they slowed to a walking pace so as not to frighten the horse. Seated in the back of the middle car, his face close to the window, and staring out,

Taki

High life | 1 October 2011

Over the years, I’ve often written about Israel and not always in a flattering light. After President Rabin was assassinated — his wife once told me that she preferred Arafat to Netanyahu any day — I lost all hope that reason, wisdom and humanity might prevail in the Holy Land. I keep returning to a subject that does not exactly endear me to my Jewish friends partly because the mistreatment of the Palestinians offends my sense of justice. People often warn me to lay off. ‘Don’t get involved, it’s the last thing you need,’ they say. I have a pat answer. ‘A Palestinian mother who loses a husband or a

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 1 October 2011

The Greek people face serious austerity. How can their corrupt politicians (ask any Greek) possibly win them round? In 431 bc, the ‘Peloponnesian’ war broke out between the marine super-power Athens and the almost invincible land-based Sparta. Athens knew it could survive a siege (thanks to its encircling ‘Long Walls’ down to its harbour Peiraeus, built in 457 bc) but would not be able to prevent the Spartans ravaging its territory of Attica. So Athens’ leader Pericles set about persuading the citizen assembly (which took all decisions) that the only course of action was for those in Attica to abandon their homes and farms and take up residence within the

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 1 October 2011

Home Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, asked its conference: ‘Are you on the side of the wealth creators or the asset strippers?’ He criticised ‘predatory’ companies, and said that when it came to social housing we should not ‘treat the person who contributes to their community the same as the person who doesn’t’. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, sketched a five-point plan to invigorate the economy: to repeat the bank bonus tax; to undertake infrastructure projects; to reduce VAT; to reduce to 5 per cent VAT on home improvements; and to remove National Insurance for a year from new posts appointed by small businesses. He also apologised,

The Spectator

Barometer | 1 October 2011

Up in smoke A coroner in Galway has passed a verdict of spontaneous human combustion on a 76-year-old pensioner whose body was found burned in a house otherwise largely undamaged by fire. Not everyone will be convinced, however — any more than they were in 1763, when Jonas Dupont published De Incendis Corporis Humani Spontaneis, an account of numerous deaths attributed to the phenomenon. Among them was that of Nicole Millet, the wife of a Rheims innkeeper who was found burned to death in 1725. Her husband was charged with burning her body, but was saved by the testimony of a young surgeon, Nicholas le Cat, who convinced the court

Jonathan Jones

Briefing: QE2

Get ready for more Quantitative Easing. This week, Reuters found that economists think there’s a 40 per cent chance the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will announce another round when they meet on Thursday. And even if they hold off now, it’s unlikely to be for long. Weak growth and the worsening outlook for the economy seem to have changed minds. The Treasury has surveyed growth predictions from independent forecasters. Back in January, the average prediction was for 2 per cent growth in 2011. It has since fallen steadily to just 1.2 per cent. Similarly, expectations for 2012 have also been downgraded, from the 2.1 per cent growth

David Blackburn

Lansley’s trials

Andrew Lansley will arrive in Manchester having been chased up the M6 by a flurry of negative stories about his NHS reforms. The Guardian has gone to town on the news that the Lords Health Committee has expressed concern about Lansley’s plan. Their reservations stem from Shirley Williams’ concerns about the diminished role of the secretary of state; she worries that this will dilute accountability over the health service, which she views as unacceptable given the vast sums of money the secretary of state controls. The Lords will debate these matters later this month and amendments are expected to be tabled. Elsewhere, the British Medical Association has also fired another salvo

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 1 October 2011

In Competition No. 2715 you were invited to condense the plot of a well-known novel into 16 lines or fewer. In the interest of making space for the winners, I will follow your lead and keep it brief. Honourable mentions to G. McIlraith, Robert Schechter and Michael Grosvenor Myer, who pulled off the impressive feat of boiling down Moby-Dick to four lines. The prizewinners below are rewarded with £25 and the bonus fiver flutters into the lap of Alan Millard. Bright bonnie Connie, though less bonnie latterly, Marries a knight and becomes Lady Chatterley. Clifford, her spouse, tries his best to appease her But, being defective below, fails to please

Janice Warman

TRAVEL SPECIAL: Blue remembered hills

On a nostalgic return journey, Janice Warman wonders why the Eastern Cape is not thronged with tourists… The Eastern Cape has a bloody past: it’s where the English were settled to defend the frontier against the Xhosas in the 1820s, and where the terrible forced removals of the apartheid years happened. It’s the birthplace of Nelson Mandela. And it gained lasting notoriety worldwide for the death of Steve Biko in custody, a death that led to the film Cry Freedom, which portrayed the friendship of Biko and the liberal newspaper editor Donald Woods. It’s an unlikely holiday destination. Most visitors opt for the Garden Route through Knysna and Plettenberg Bay.

Tremayne Carew-Pole

TRAVEL SPECIAL: Swimming With Sharks

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the best way to deal with a phobia is to tackle it head-on in the most extreme way possible. I countered my fear of heights by completing the world’s highest bungee jump and of snakes by trying to hunt down a mamba in Zambia. I’ve cage-dived with crocodiles, but this time, it was my shark phobia that I wanted to defeat. The centre of great white shark activity, I discovered, was the town of Gansbaai a couple of hours drive up the Eastern Cape from Cape Town. Gansbaai is a quiet, windswept place. There’s a couple of small restaurants, a

Taffeta Gray

TRAVEL SPECIAL: Other animals

There’s more to South African wildlife than just the ‘big five’, says Taffeta Gray Anyone who has been on safari in South Africa will boast that there is nothing like seeing the ‘Big Five’. Even if you are in the bush yourself, thrilled at having just spotted one of the great beasts, you’re bound to find someone who insists they’ve seen better. The trick is not to compete with the naturalist know-alls, but to outsmart them. And the way to do that is to swot up on lesser-known creatures, and stalk them instead. Here’s my alternative five. Meerkats The adverts on TV make out that meerkats come from Russia and

James Forsyth

‘There are no exits’

William Hague always knew the euro would go up in flames. But now he’s focused on the rescue operation Politicians normally have to wait for history to vindicate them. For William Hague, vindication has come early. All his dire predictions about the dangers of the euro, so glibly mocked at the time, have come to pass. But as he makes clear when we meet in his study in the Foreign Office, he is not enjoying this moment. Rather, just days before the start of Tory conference, he is absorbed with trying to sort out the mess that others have created. Leaning back in a red leather chair in what he

Peter Jay

George, you need a holiday

Why is it all going so wrong for George Osborne? Only 16 months ago, the poor guy entered the Treasury full of sound principles and good intentions. He would put in order the dodgy public finances inherited from Gordon Brown’s regime, stand back and let market forces do the rest. The Office for Budget Responsibility would certify that he had. Within a short period, the benign influence of sound finance would restore confidence in the private sector; and room for it to take up the running in promoting national economic growth would be created by reining back the bloated public sector. Tory priorities and the national interest would happily cohere