Society

Saturday

7 May 2011

Letters | 7 May 2011

The Queen and I Sir: I did not expect Andrew Roberts (‘The meaning of a marriage’, 23/30 April), to agree with my New York Review of Books article on the royal family but, since he quoted from it, I would have thought he might have read it all the way through. True, the piece begins by setting out the reasons why one might have assumed these to be ‘anxious times for the House of Windsor’, from austerity to the Duke of York’s travails. But the bulk of the essay is dedicated to explaining why ‘the appeal of the royals remains resilient’, citing the Queen’s near-perfect performance as head of state,

Toby Young

Status Anxiety: The unmovable and the irresistible

Until now, I thought David Cameron’s best week in politics was the one that began with the inconclusive result of the general election and ended with him standing beside Nick Clegg in the Downing Street rose garden. The skill with which he outmanoeuvred Gordon Brown reminded me of a comment made by Oliver van Oss, a former beak at Eton, about the Wall Game in Andrew Gimson’s biography of Boris Johnson. ‘It provides the perfect training for later work on boards, committees, royal commissions and governing bodies,’ he said. ‘The unmovable and the irresistible are poised in perfect balance. Nothing is happening and it seems unlikely that anything ever will.

Melissa Kite

Real life | 7 May 2011

As if by magic, a letter arrived with answers to all my composting questions. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had received warning from the council that I might be in a food waste recycling area. Nothing was definite about it. It hadn’t seemed to occur to the form-shoveller pursuivants that they might be the only people who knew the answer. Despite having invented the rules, they seemed determined to persist with the notion that they could not be held responsible for knowing whether they were applying them to my street or not. I tried ringing the council’s recycling line but it was permanently busy. Apparently they are

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 7 May 2011

We’ve ridden African elephants and done the evening game drive. In between I’ve had the full-body Swedish massage from a Zulu woman who used the point of her elbow and the side of her knee and was panting slightly throughout. Now we are six of us around a dinner table in a replica Zulu meeting hut. The waiters are Pedi. With each course a different wine is poured. My neighbour vulgarly asks the cost of the first, a silky red, and is told that it isn’t on the wine list. However, a bottle from the same vineyard, of an inferior vintage, can be had for the equivalent of £400. I’m

Taki

High life | 7 May 2011

Mme Nhu, who died two days before THE wedding, was a hell of a woman. Her maternal grandmother was a Vietnamese princess of impeccable credentials, yet when she was captured by the commies in Hue in 1946, she stood up to them until the French rescued her four months later. She was anti-French and anti-commie, yet the Western press named her the Dragon Lady, a nickname she didn’t deserve but one that stuck. She was a nationalist par excellence, but in the gathering storm of the Vietnam war the press had to have a villain (the commies were the good guys) and she played her role to the hilt. When

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern | 7 May 2011

Romans would have been disgusted by the death of bin Laden. They expected better of their enemies, even if mass murderers, than to be supinely dispatched, cowering behind his wife, without a fight or heroic gesture. Mithradates, king of Pontus in Asia Minor (northern Turkey), plotted against Rome for nearly 30 years. In 89 BC he launched his first assault against the Romans there, engineering the slaughter of 80,000 Roman residents on one night of the ‘Asiatic Vespers’. He was finally betrayed by his son in 63 BC while planning an assault on Italy. Having inoculated himself against poison, he ordered a slave to run him through, commenting that he had not guarded

The Spectator

Barometer | 7 May 2011

Rules of engagement The strike on bin Laden has been widely celebrated in the US, even though there are strong grounds to regard it as illegal. — Section 5(g) of Executive Order 11905 signed by Gerald Ford in 1976 states ‘No employee of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in political assassination’. — The order was reiterated by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, although the latter bombed Gaddafi’s compound in 1986. — US special forces could have been justified, however, if their intention had been to arrest bin Laden and then were forced to fire in self-defence. Money migrations The National Institute for Economic and

Charles Moore

The Spectactor’s Notes

The Americans committed an extra-judicial killing this week, violating the sovereign territory of a friendly power, and reaching bin Laden’s lair because of information obtained outside legal process at Guantanamo Bay. The Americans committed an extra-judicial killing this week, violating the sovereign territory of a friendly power, and reaching bin Laden’s lair because of information obtained outside legal process at Guantanamo Bay. And a good thing too, in the circumstances. But it is fascinating how little protest there has been from the people who are usually noisiest about any infringements of international law, and of human rights as currently interpreted. This must be because the perpetrator is Barack Obama. He

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 May 2011

Home Prince William was created Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathhearn and Baron Carrickfergus on the morning of his wedding to Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. The Duchess’s dress was designed by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen. It did not rain and a million or so people cheered in the streets, with 25 million in Britain watching on television. During the wedding a Union flag was burnt by republicans in Chetwynd Court in King’s College Cambridge. The Duke and Duchess returned two days later to their house on Anglesey. April was found to have been the warmest for 350 years. Wildfires broke out on heathland in England and Scotland, sweeping

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

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

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

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