Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Lead article: Disunited kingdom

David Cameron visited Scotland only once during the battle for its parliament’s elections. David Cameron visited Scotland only once during the battle for its parliament’s elections. Hadrian’s Wall is becoming a forbidding obstacle for the Conservatives: a boundary with an unfamiliar, inhospitable land redeemed only by opportunities for deer stalking and trout fishing. Ed Miliband ventured north a fortnight ago, in an attempt to save Labour’s Scottish campaign — but as The Spectator went to press it seemed that this, too, had proved fruitless. The Scottish Nationalist leader, Alex Salmond, has found to his delight that his opposition has crumbled. It is understandable that Cameron and Miliband have little interest

Martin Bright

The saddest politician in England

Nick Clegg’s time as the country’s darling was always likely to be fleeting. But poor Vince Cable was consistently feted as the man who got it right on the economy. But he has looked miserable from the moment he entered government. Why is this? I can’t be the only politico to have heard Vince say before 2010 that he would never enter government with the Tories. Oddly enough, he was far more polite about them than he has been on the radio this morning. The whole point about two-party politics is that it is tribal and ruthless, although anyone who has crossed sword with the Lib Dems at a local

Gilead Ini

Web exclusive: A grim panorama

Tom Giles’ attempt – on The Spectator’s Coffee House blog – to impugn CAMERA’s video documenting the BBC’s violations of its Editorial Guidelines is an example of the illogical and desperate flailing with which the BBC has consistently approached reasoned arguments about Panorama’s “A Walk in the Park”, a flagrantly biased documentary about Jerusalem.   Mr. Giles’s complaint relies in part on his assertion, with ominous undertones, that CAMERA’s brief video “re-edited” the Panorama documentary and shows only excerpts from the programme.   Of course, it’s obvious that a 15-minute video meant to draw attention to journalistic malpractice in a 30-minute documentary, and to highlight the BBC’s inadequate defence of

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 7 May 2011

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition In Competition No. 2694 you were invited to provide the female equivalent to Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man. Thanks to Phyllis Reinhard who submitted a pithy, witty entry that triumphed, she confesses, in a similar competition run by Another Magazine a decade or so ago. This disqualifies it from a place in this week’s winning line-up but not from being reprinted below for our pleasure: Pampers, pull-ups, PMS, Playtex pads, the Pill, Provera as your HRT, Then Pampers …life’s a thrill. The overall standard was high, and other competitors who impressed and amused were Noel Petty, David Duncan Jones, Jayne Osborn, Virginia Price Evans

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Politics: The rose garden romance is well and truly over

A little under a year ago, David Cameron held a party at Downing Street to thank all of those who had helped the Tory general election campaign. A little under a year ago, David Cameron held a party at Downing Street to thank all of those who had helped the Tory general election campaign. It was a bittersweet occasion: although Cameron was Prime Minister, the Tories had failed to win a majority. In his speech, Cameron told them that coalition was actually better than a small Tory majority. For the people who had worked tirelessly for the election of a Tory government, these words left a sour taste. But in

Christina Lamb

Out of the shadows

Bin Laden’s death has exposed Pakistan’s double game with the West Even those of us who did not believe that Osama bin Laden was producing his videos from a cave in a remote tribal mountain would never have guessed that he was, in fact, living in a ‘Come and Get Me’ three-storey house surrounded by cabbage fields just down the road from Pakistan’s top military academy. To many in Washington, here was final proof — if any were needed — that its supposed ally has been playing a double game; that, for the past ten years, Pakistan has been playing the role of US ally (and taking more than $18

Alan Judd

Terrorism after bin Laden

Two propositions: first, whatever its short-term consequences, the killing of Osama bin Laden will neither significantly hasten nor significantly delay the decline of al-Qa’eda. That is happening anyway. Secondly, however slowly or rapidly AQ declines, it will not significantly affect the global level of terrorism. We’re stuck with it anyway. But it’s manageable. Two propositions: first, whatever its short-term consequences, the killing of Osama bin Laden will neither significantly hasten nor significantly delay the decline of al-Qa’eda. That is happening anyway. Secondly, however slowly or rapidly AQ declines, it will not significantly affect the global level of terrorism. We’re stuck with it anyway. But it’s manageable. AQ began as a

Andrew J. Bacevich

Mission impossible

The killing of Osama bin Laden settles nothing, decides nothing, and repairs nothing. Yet the passing of the al-Qa’eda leader just might serve an important purpose. We confront a moment of revelation: coming across bin Laden comfortably ensconced in a purpose-built compound in the middle of major Pakistani city down the street from the nation’s premier military academy should demolish once and for all any lingering illusions that Americans retain about their so-called global war on terror. The needle, it turns out, was not in the haystack but tucked safely away in our neighbour’s purse — the very same neighbour who professed to be searching high and low to locate

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The 24-hour rush to certainty leaves plenty of room for conspiracy theories

I know that Wills married Kate last weekend because I saw it with my own eyes. I didn’t have much choice in the matter because my wife was camped out in front of the TV for 12 hours being catty about Victoria Beckham’s Croydon facelift and stupid hat and generously summoning me in whenever Lady Amelia Spencer, the pouting blonde baddun accused of lamping some bloke in a Cape Town McDonald’s drive-thru restaurant (that’s how I like my quasi-royals to be), hove into view. So, anyway, I had no objections when the BBC and ITV News that night reported their marriage as an unchallenged fact, nor when the newspapers said

Anthony Gardner

Net loss

The scene is a drawing-room at nightfall. A group of weekenders sit in time-honoured tradition around a crackling fire. One is engrossed in a magazine; another chats with her boyfriend; the rest debate whether the word ‘zapateado’ is permissible in their board game. But this is not a house party as Terence Rattigan knew it: the magazine is being read on an iPad; the lovers are exchanging endearments by text message; the game-players have swapped the Scrabble set for a laptop with access to Wordscrape. New technology is tightening its grip on our lives, and not even the country house weekend is immune. The CHW was once a little pocket

Hugh Sebagmontefiore

Spy fiction

Have historians exaggerated Ian Fleming’s role in the cracking of the Enigma code? Ian Fleming is best known for his novels about the superspy James Bond. But his reputation as a creative genius has been considerably enhanced by his exploits during the second world war as a lieutenant commander in naval intelligence. He has been praised in particular for coming up with Operation Ruthless, the first viable plan to capture naval Enigma codebooks for Alan Turing and his codebreakers at Bletchley Park. In the words of the official Enigma historian, this was ‘a somewhat ungentlemanly scheme’. That was putting it mildly. The plan was that a British pilot would crash

Peter Oborne

PAKISTAN NOTEBOOK

Karachi is a notoriously lively city, with gun battles on the streets a daily occurrence — so it seems only sensible to stay in the comfort and safety of the Sind Club, a grand institution built during British rule in the centre of the town. Karachi is a notoriously lively city, with gun battles on the streets a daily occurrence — so it seems only sensible to stay in the comfort and safety of the Sind Club, a grand institution built during British rule in the centre of the town. It was here that my travelling companion, Charles Alexander, and I watched the royal wedding in Urdu in company with

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Why can’t we just kill people quietly?

Am I allowed to say this? Hell, I’m going to anyway. Am I allowed to say this? Hell, I’m going to anyway. I’ll deny it if it ever gets me into trouble. I’ll claim The Spectator mistakenly put my byline on top of a column by somebody else. ‘Wasn’t me,’ I’ll say, when the extraordinary rendition SWAT team kicks down my door. ‘Must have been Liddle. He sounds the sort. I wrote the other one that week, maybe about the royal wedding. Nice balaclava, by the way.’ So here goes. I watched the American crowds, cheering into the night about the death of Osama bin Laden, and my first, overwhelming,

Theodore Dalrymple

Scarborough unfair

If it is evidence of the decline of British civilisation that you are after, you cannot do better than go to Scarborough. It is precisely because the material traces of that civilisation are still so much in evidence there, albeit dolefully altered, that the impression is so strong and so painful. The town retains its wonderful position, of course. One is still struck immediately on arrival by ‘the freshness of the air, so different from what is breathed in the interior of England’, as described by Dr John Kelk in his The Scarborough Spa, its new chemical analysis and medicinal uses; to which is added, On the Utility of the

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: Manual labour

I am writing this in the brown-carpeted lounge of Phoenix Sky Harbor, which claims to be America’s friendliest airport — and indeed that may well be so. I am writing this in the brown-carpeted lounge of Phoenix Sky Harbor, which claims to be America’s friendliest airport — and indeed that may well be so. Enough to make David Cameron gag with envy are the people of retirement age helpfully wandering about wearing badges which declare them to be unpaid airport volunteers, in which role they offer assistance to bemused travellers. You don’t get that at Heathrow Terminal 2, as far as I can remember. One of the reasons I like

The Spectator

Dear Mary | 7 May 2011

Q. A friend of ours went with his nephew to a funeral. The nephew is an absolute maniac driver. They flew up to Scotland and all the way our friend was terrified because the nephew was renting a car at the airport and then proposed to drive 50 miles. What to do? Just as the nephew was paying for the car, our friend asked to be added as a driver because he was thinking of buying the same model and could think of no better time to do a test drive! Problem solved. —D.P., by email A. Indeed. How considerate of you to share this solution with readers. Q. Consanguinity

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Axeman in chief

After a year in government, most ministers look ten years older. Not Francis Maude. He bounds into the anteroom of his ministerial suite to greet me, wearing his customary open-necked shirt with a red check that matches the colour in his cheeks. In a confident voice, he says, ‘I just need to get some things decided and then we’ll be right with you.’ It is more like meeting a businessman at the height of a boom than a politician in the age of austerity. In Maude’s office overlooking Horse Guards Parade, the businesslike atmosphere becomes even stronger. Phrases like ‘saving money off the overhead’ and ‘drive prices down in procurement’

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 7 May 2011

Warren Buffett isn’t always right – but he’s a $47 billion advertisement for optimism The legendary investor Warren Buffett has taken more flak than seems necessary for his lapse of judgment over his former lieutenant David Sokol, who bought shares in a company called Lubrizol before recommending it to Buffett as an acquisition for the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. Having been tipped as a potential successor if 80-year-old Buffett ever retires from running Berkshire, Sokol resigned abruptly in March. Buffett’s comment at the time, ‘Neither Dave nor I feel his Lubrizol purchases were in any way unlawful’, was widely regarded as inadequate. Belatedly, he introduced phrases such as ‘inexplicable and inexcusable’,

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 6 May 2011

Here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson listens to John Humphrys inadvertently make the case for No2AV, and reveals that this week’s Spectator considers life after bin Laden. James Forsyth says that electoral calamity may lead to concessions for Clegg, and explains the significance of this week’s Cabinet bust-up. Peter Hoskin notes that the CIA’s director has blasted Pakistan’s intelligence services, and has kept abreast of the Libyan campaign. David Blackburn interviews Nigel Farage, and explains why there may not be TV debates at the next election. Jonathan Jones has the figures from the recent Canadian election. Martin Bright thinks the Royal

Piotr Brzezinski

The AV ‘stabbed in the back’ myth

The referendum results haven’t even been announced yet, but the Yes campaign’s myth-making machine is already in full swing. Within moments of the polls closing, Simon Hughes took to the airwaves to dismiss a No vote as a “hollow victory” because of our “false facts and false figures”. Just as some people on the left never came to terms with losing to Thatcher – blaming the SDP instead – Yes supporters are already peddling the idea that they only lost because the No campaign fought dirty. So let’s set the record straight on the supposed ‘lies and distortions’ of the last few months: We did not say the BNP would