Society

Saturday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 2 April 2011

‘OK, Jeremy, you sit there. Next to Sophie.’ We’re sitting down to lunch, eight of us, to celebrate our host’s birthday. The seating plan is male then female in alternate places. The host is a performance poet and about half of the other guests have been introduced to me as poets, but I’ve forgotten which. I’m rubbish at dinner parties. Mingling the friendly bowl with the feast of reason and the flow of soul I’m crap at. I just don’t seem to have the necessary social ease or articulateness or even basic sanity to play my part and it saddens me. I’m a good listener, though. If I’m seated next

Taki

High life | 2 April 2011

New York They say that when sexual attraction sets in all other brain functions shut down. It’s nature’s way of ensuring procreation. My brain shut down last week — and for a Hollywood actress, to boot. Of German extraction, Sandra Bullock is not the classic Aryan goddess, but most attractive in the flesh, more so than on the screen. I ran into her at the birthday party of Michael Mailer, who threw the bash in his father’s old house in Brooklyn, a wonderful location overlooking New York harbour, a place that brought back many memories of wild nights with Norman. Jimmy Toback, the director of Harvey Keitel’s gem of a

The Spectator

Barometer | 2 April 2011

Flowering wilderness A Bangor university study has claimed that Antarctica has become greener as the climate in the Western Peninsula has warmed. While most of Antarctica is under permanent snow and ice, one per cent of the continent’s surface area is warm enough in the summer for the snow to melt and expose two species of flowering plant, Antarctic hairgrass and Antarctic pearlwort. However, lichens are found closer to the interior of the continent. The world’s most southerly plant is a lichen found at 86 degrees south, about 260 miles from the South Pole. The most northerly is an arctic willow found at 83 degrees north, around 450 miles from

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 2 April 2011

People are right to worry about the royal wedding. The violence at the TUC anti-cuts demonstration on Saturday showed yet again that all large gatherings are now vulnerable to the malice of a few. Friends of mine walking with the marchers noticed how the people causing trouble were allowed to wear masks, and were unmolested when they attacked shops and banks, sometimes smashing them up for 15 minutes. They were often armed with fireworks loaded with coins which they threw among the police. These activities were all well-planned in advance on the internet. UK Uncut targeted specific businesses online in advance. Why should it be immune from prosecution? When this

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 April 2011

Home At a conference on Libya held in London, representatives of more than 40 nations and international bodies declared that Colonel Gaddafi’s regime had ‘lost legitimacy and will be held accountable for their actions’. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, told delegates that attacks would continue until Colonel Gaddafi met UN terms, and that supplying arms to the rebels was not prohibited. Outside, 100 protesters chanted: ‘Go to hell, Cameron.’ HMS Ark Royal was advertised for sale online. In Northampton a cat called Smokey was found to purr at 73 decibels. About 250,000 people marched through London in a TUC demonstration against spending cuts. Ed Miliband, the leader of

The Spectator

Leader: Police, cameras, action

How the paparazzi must have groaned about Prince William’s low-key stag do, which took place in secret last weekend. Last weekend, a relatively peaceful anti-cuts march through the capital was infiltrated by a small number of criminals armed with crowbars and intent on destruction. Their handiwork defined the march. All it took were a few iconic photographs — Santander’s windows being smashed, the occupation of Fortnum & Mason — and London looked to the world like a city under siege. The Metropolitan police could have and should have dealt with these disruptive thugs, but instead, as they wielded their weapons, they were surrounded not by police officers but by a

Gordon Hector

Trouble over the NHS reforms – inevitable or not?

Was the stooshie over health reforms inevitable? From much of the coverage, you’d think it was always going to end in tears, as people line up to criticise Lansley and rumours about Number 10’s search for a dignified exit strategy (£) swirl around the Westminster village. But it didn’t have to be like this. For a start, the basic idea is one that should be easy to sell to the public. Matthew Parris has pointed out (£) that people intuitively look to their GP as the route into healthcare. It shouldn’t be hard to convince the public they should lead commissioning. It’s been difficult mainly because the health professionals aren’t on-side.

David Blackburn

Planning to ruin Lansley’s party

How can Nick Clegg recover from defeat in the AV referendum? Andrew Grice considers the question in his column and reveals that Clegg is not too bothered about AV: his sight is trained on a bigger prize. ‘A U-turn in the controversial NHS reforms to hand 80 per cent of the budget to GPs and scrap primary care trusts (PCTs). Mr Clegg is convinced that there must be big symbolic changes to the NHS and Social Care Bill.  That would not be good news for Andrew Lansley…He knows that Mr Cameron will demand some changes and is prepared to see a few technical amendments to the Bill during its passage through

David Blackburn

Clearing up after the storm

The recession has made Britain’s banks less competitive and they should be broken up, concludes the Treasury Select Committee. As the banking system spiralled towards oblivion in 2008, the market became more concentrated. ‘The financial crisis has resulted in significant consolidation of the UK retail market. Well known firms such as HBOS, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford and Bingley have either exited the market or merged with rival firms. A large number of building societies have merged, undermining the diversity of provision in the sector. Whilst these ‘rescues’ were necessary in order to preserve financial stability, the consequence has been to reduce competition and choice in the market.’ Each merger

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Malcolm Tent

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s competition In Competition No. 2690 you were invited to invent names to fit jobs. This assignment was suggested to me by a regular and long-standing competitor-who-wishes-to-remain-nameless, and was also a favourite of the brilliant Mary Ann Madden, who for many years presided over New York magazine’s literary competition. Several of you fondly remembered Kenneth Tynan’s superlative ‘Charles Louis D’Ince’, bandleader, while Nigel Harding drew my attention to a Radio 4 report some years ago about an American financial planner called Rosie Scenario. Cyberspace is groaning with websites giving lists of comedy names of this ilk so I was looking for unprecedented levels of wit and

Ross Clark Ross Clark

A declaration of independence

In ten years’ time Oxford and Cambridge universities could be shining examples of social diversity, their student bodies reflecting the exact composition of the British population, a few sons of aristocrats educated alongside the children of benefit claimants from Teesside and a greater mass of suburban middle classes; all of them learning how to rub along with people of different cultures, attitudes and accents. In ten years’ time Oxford and Cambridge universities could be shining examples of social diversity, their student bodies reflecting the exact composition of the British population, a few sons of aristocrats educated alongside the children of benefit claimants from Teesside and a greater mass of suburban

Ivor Roberts

Oxford under siege

The government’s interference in university admissions is unjustified – and may yet push our strongest institutions to go it alone It is a well-worn tactic for politicians to distract attention from their own failures by picking on an outside target. Thus Nick Clegg’s recent attack on Oxford and Cambridge last month for proposing a maximum of £9,000 in tuition fees. ‘They can’t charge £9,000 unless they can prove that they can dramatically increase the number of people from poorer and disadvantaged backgrounds who presently aren’t going to Oxford and Cambridge,’ said the Deputy Prime Minister. Let’s set aside the role Nick Clegg’s predecessors played many years ago in the dismantling

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Adultery rewarded

Funny, isn’t it, how the unthinkable becomes the thinkable, then the possible, then the acceptable and finally the inevitable? You can see the process in motion when it comes to the prospect of the Duchess of Cornwall becoming Queen Consort in Waiting. Once, the Duchess was lucky to appear in public without getting pelted with bread rolls; now she’s allowed on The Archers, having redeemed her cameo appearance with a plug for osteoporosis awareness, and, ahem, for Duchy Originals shortbread. When a girl in Wiltshire asked her whether she was to become Queen, she said: ‘You never know.’ Which, in terms of ambiguity, equals Prince Charles’s response to a similar

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Are we supposed to think of heroin users as just another persecuted minority?

‘When I’m rushing on my run, And I feel just like Jesus’ son And I guess but I just don’t know, And I guess but I just don’t know.’ Lou Reed Would we be happier, do you think, if we all took large quantities of heroin? It would take the edge off some of the misery, I suppose. A house guest of mine once left the room to ‘jack up’ — as I believe the act is known — just as The X Factor came on the television. I remember thinking at the time — well, fair enough, mate. There isn’t enough alcohol in the world to dull the misery

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: Showdown season

There are few better feelings than the sporting mood swing that takes place at this time of year. The clocks go forward and leave behind frozen pitches, abandoned race meetings and the set menu of men chasing balls of varying shapes in fixtures of no relevance. Now is when things start to matter. Defeat at rugby or football can be season-defining, a knockout blow, a pack-up-and-go-home moment. That’s real sport, the kind that matters because the hurt from losing takes time to heal. There is no denying the appeal of the sharp end of the Champions League and Heineken Cup, but beyond lies a sporting summer of wonderful variety. Formula

James Bartholomew

Legitimate question | 2 April 2011

Yoshiko found she was pregnant and talked to her live-in lover about what they should do. His attitude was not exactly out of the PC book of ‘The Right Things To Say When Your Girlfriend Says She Is Pregnant’. He said he was prepared to marry her as long as she accepted that she would have to carry on with her full-time job; she must also care for the child and, for good measure, do all the housework. Just to make it crystal clear, he added, ‘I won’t help’ and ‘I like my life as it is.’ It is worth mentioning, too, that the man only had a part-time job

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

For happy travel across Europe, avoid the black hole of Paris

This week I narrowly failed to reach the Mediterranean coast of Spain from the north of England by train, within the daylight hours of a single day. The problem was Paris. Train buffs (and rail service planners) read on. Let’s begin at the end. High-speed rail from France has until this month always hit the wall at the Pyrenees. From Paris you set out on the TGV at a tremendous lick until Avignon, as high-speed track yields to something more sedate. And in the Languedoc, where the Pyrenees totter into the Mediterranean, everything used to slow down further. From Perpignan to the Spanish border the old line squeezes and sidles

Michael Tanner

Stirred into action

Kommilitonen! is Peter Maxwell Davies’s new opera, to a text by David Pountney, who also directs the première production at the Royal Academy of Music. Kommilitonen! is Peter Maxwell Davies’s new opera, to a text by David Pountney, who also directs the première production at the Royal Academy of Music. It makes a stirring, invigorating evening, though at the end it isn’t clear which direction it is pointing in, while the whole mode of the work makes you feel that it must be pointing somewhere. The title means ‘Fellow Students’, and there are three separate strands, which become interwoven towards the end. One is of the black American student James

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 2 April 2011

Farewell to a charismatic old bruiser who never threw in the towel George Walker, the former boxer, gangster’s minder and ‘leisure tycoon’ who died last week, was a persuader — both in the sense that he could be, as he once told me, ‘a bit rough with people’, and in the sense that if he decided to charm you, he was hard to resist. Fortunately, I fell into the second category. I got to know him during the period between his ousting as chief executive of Brent Walker, the conglomerate of pubs, betting shops, yacht marinas and other forms of amusement he built in the Eighties boom on a mountain

Friday

Adrian Hilton

Cutting the arts and decimating culture

Rationing Mammon emaciates the Muses. Plato knew it, and so does Polly Toynbee: it’s just simple cause and effect. And government cuts tend to be cyclical: seven fat years of abundance are invariably followed by lean years of famine. Unlike health and overseas development, the arts seem to have no divine right of exemption from the fiscal straitjacket presently being strapped around other departments of state: it is undeniably politically easier to cut Northern Ballet than hospital beds or malaria nets. But the suggestion that a reduction of £150 million amounts to little more than a slight nip‘n’tuck in a very fleshy sector is a little misleading. Certainly, there are