Society

Saturday

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern | 30 July 2011

The EU, cobbled together in Brussels for ideological purposes, is fast turning into a creaking alliance of rather disenchanted member states. Let us see if we can help little Herman Achille Van Rompuy, the EU’s current president, to rally his besieged troops in Brussels with a Periclean speech. In summer 430 bc Athens (Brussels) was having trouble with Sparta (its interest rate policy) and had just been struck by a murderous plague (collapse of the banks). Since it was Pericles (van Rompuy) who had insisted on this policy, which would enable it to keep a grip on its empire (the EU member states), Pericles came forward to remind the Athenians

The Spectator

Letters | 30 July 2011

The right path Sir: I have always had the greatest respect for Matthew Parris’s incisive comments. However, in his latest column (23 July), he misreads Tory supporters. The Conservative Home survey was statistically accurate. The views expressed were those of thousands of voters and reflect their opinions on ‘U-turn Cameron’. The most frequent comment about him is ‘we do not know what he stands for and if we did, he will change it when he wants’. That is why he did not win the 2010 election, in which he should have wiped the floor with the Labour party. No doubt support could have been found for 10 more ‘pet hates’

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety: Bringing up Boris

What’s the secret of successful parenting? Like most middle-class parents, I don’t just want my children to be happy. I want them to have proper careers as well. I’d like each of them to go to a Russell Group university — ideally Oxford or Cambridge — and then do a further degree. If they win a scholarship to do postgraduate work at Harvard or Yale, so much the better. And I want them to achieve all this without spending a penny on their education. The only parenting guide I’ve ever read is Andrew Gimson’s biography of Boris Johnson. You won’t find it in the ‘Parenting’ section of Waterstone’s, but it’s

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 30 July 2011

Q. I am one of eight retired golfers who once a week enjoy a sociable but not too serious game on our local course. Recently the wife of one of our group has taken to joining us and, although we are all good friends, we would prefer the weekly game to remain an all-male affair. To make it worse, the golfing wife is very competitive and is usually better than the rest of us. We do not want to sour relationships in what has become a very happy group. Can you suggest a good solution? – P.B., by email A. Collude with the others to build up your admiring responses

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 30 July 2011

‘Ha, ha! Caught you out,’ shouted my husband, holding a copy of The Spectator above his head and twirling beneath the hall light as I came in. He showed me a letter from a man (it is always a man) who suggested I thought noctae was the genitive of nox. In one sense, I was bang to rights, for I had typed the phrase ius primae noctae, which is wrong. But it is interesting what is needed to make a mistake. Fatal to an error is advertence. If someone had asked me, a girl who had not had her brothers’ advantages of a classical education, what the genitive of nox

Peter Hoskin

Some context for the death penalty debate

Something quite remarkable has happened over the past couple of the days. It started with the launch of the government’s new e-petition site, which promises that any petition which secures 100,000 signatures will be “eligible for debate in the House of Commons”. And it continued with Guido Fawkes submitting a petition to reinstate the death penalty for “the murder of children and police officers when killed in the line of duty.” Now national newspapers and MPs alike are adding their voice to Guido’s campaign. And an issue that has huge public resonance, but which is rarely discussed in Westminster, is suddenly getting an airing. Even if — like me —

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 30 July 2011

Four letter word In Competition No. 2706 you were invited to submit an entertaining and plausible piece of prose using words of only four letters. ‘This must hold some sick joke!’ wailed Shirley Curran. ‘Lucy, show more pity next time,’ pleaded Barry Baldwin. But you are clearly a masochistic lot; despite the howls of protest and pleas for future clemency, the challenge generated a big postbag. I allowed contractions, within reason, but extra points were awarded to those who managed to avoid them as much as possible. The winners get £25 each. The bonus fiver is Alan Millard’s. ‘Poor Jack,’ Jill says, ‘sore head, huge lump, deep scar!’ ‘Poor Jill,’

Bruce Anderson

Drink: A taste of chivalry

In Rome, there is a palace which is the capital of the world’s smallest state. In Rome, there is a palace which is the capital of the world’s smallest state. The medieval Church had many mansions. As well as orders devoted to prayer and contemplation, there were other bodies, for whom the way of the cross was also the way of the sword. In the 11th century, the Papacy established the Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St John, whose headquarters were in Jerusalem. The Knights protected pilgrims and fought to preserve the crusaders’ conquests. But as the power of Islam grew, they were thrown on the defensive. Driven from Palestine,

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man When the rules change, government targets stay the same

I recently stumbled on a Wikipedia page on American diner lingo: ‘sunny side up’, ‘pigs in a blanket’, ‘peel it off the wall’ and so on. I recently stumbled on a Wikipedia page on American diner lingo: ‘sunny side up’, ‘pigs in a blanket’, ‘peel it off the wall’ and so on. Whether or not these phrases were all commonly used (did anyone really ask for ‘shit on a shingle’ when requesting minced beef with gravy on toast?), the list’s length hints at the remarkable breadth of 1930s American street food. Then McDonald’s came along. While the old diner offered choice and customisation, the fast-food restaurant offered the opposite —

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

If you think the left is twisting Norway’s tragedy, check out the neo-Nazis

So is Anders Breivik mad, or just right-wing? His lawyer has decided to go with the former, presumably on the basis that the Norwegian courts will look more kindly upon someone who is doolally than on someone who is a shade to the right of centre. He is probably right about this. There is a (usually) unspoken subtext within the liberal media here that the two are in any case synonymous, an elision between these two states of mind, right-wing and doolally. This was borne aloft on the palpable triumphalism that it wasn’t a Muslim wot done it, as we all thought; quite the reverse, it was instead one of

Peter Hitchens

The thrills of summers past

How my heart sinks at the sight of those little features on ‘summer reading’. Follow these recommendations and you will strain your shoulder and your purse, buying and carrying books that will stay unread at least until the cool blast of the autumnal equinox, and probably forever afterwards. Ignore the log-rolling, the favours to friends and publishers, the favouritism of the bookshop display tables. As an occasional author, I long ago realised that at least half the book reviews in Britain are written by people who haven’t read the book they are writing about, and don’t much care. If you want something to read in the summer months, plunge instead

Camilla Long

Amy Winehouse became more helpless with every photograph

Amy Winehouse was found dead at home at 3.54 p.m. last Saturday afternoon. A day earlier, a Norwegian gunman had let off a bomb in central Oslo, shooting youth workers and teens in a national horror-show that was still ongoing. For a couple of hours, editors deliberated who they should ‘go with’ as the top story. In the ‘hierarchy of death’, as one commentator grimly put it, was Anders Behring Breivik bigger than the sadly predictable demise of the dark star of British pop? Not for the tabloids, who hungrily ‘went’ with the 27-year-old singer. They splashed her across the front pages, the Star, the Mirror, the Sun, the Express,

John Laughland

Vive les vacances!

‘Vous partez?’ ‘Vous partez un petit peu?’ ‘Quand est-ce que vous partez?’ Since early June, Parisians have been asking and answering these questions remorselessly, their minds fixed on holidays and nothing else. Since early July, the capital has been emptying out dramatically: the markets are deserted, shops are boarded up, food supplies even run down. Children vanish as mothers take them to the country or send them on Scout camp, leaving the fathers to join the family when the office permits. The city will slow down even further in August, so much so that it does not even charge for street parking during that languid month. Given that September is

Andrew Gilligan

A gold medal for idiocy

The Olympics are a gigantic folly – and you still have time to be part of it Would you like to compete for Britain at the 2012 Olympics? No, seriously, compete in the real Olympics, march in the athletes’ parade, wear our national colours? Vacancies are still available. Complete beginners most welcome — no experience necessary. You don’t even have to be, well, British. I promise I am not making this up. Among the many inventive ways which London 2012 has devised to waste public money, Team GB Handball is my personal favourite. Three million pounds is being spent to create, from scratch, a British Olympic squad in a sport

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 30 July 2011

Barely a flicker of growth, but Osborne mustfollow his instincts and stick to his guns Cut taxes now, or pile more taxes on to the bankers? Cut spending even faster to compensate for flagging tax revenues, or slow the cuts to ease the dole queues and boost confidence among consumers who still have public-sector jobs? Ban royal weddings, or at least the ones that cause the nation to stop work for a week and a half? Print more money, or tell Vince Cable to sod off and stop rocking the boat? George Osborne has a rich menu of choices as to how to respond to the news that second-quarter growth

Anita Brookner

A singular voice

Barbara Pym, now thought of as a reliable and popular novelist of the 1950s and 1960s, has almost disappeared from sight, overshadowed by the more explicit and confessional writers we are accustomed to reading today. Indeed her eclipse was sudden and unforeseen: her mature novels were rejected by three major publishers when she was only midway through her career, and it was only through the generous comments of two of her admirers, Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil in the Times Literary Supplement in 1977, that she was brought again to public attention. That her admirers in this instance were men rather than women was a more than welcome reversal

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 29 July 2011

Here are some of the posts that were made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson undermines Ed Balls’s spin about growth and the cuts. Peter Hoskin previews George Osborne’s summer of pain, and introduces the Game of Growth. Jonathan Jones wonders how you measure cuddles. Martin Bright has some questions for the police. Alex Massie responds to Tim Montgomerie’s cover article for the latest Spectator, asking: was the coalition a mistake? The Spectator Arts Blog reviews the latest production of Somerset Maugham’s For Services Rendered. The Spectator Book Blog has a hatful of facts about PD James. And the Business Blog sifts through the rubble of America’s debt

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Was the Coalition a Mistake?

Tim Montgomerie is a bonnie fighter but his essay in this week’s magazine (Subscribe from as little as £1 a week!) is a splendid example of the pundit’s fallacy: if matters were arranged as I think they should be everything would be for the best and David Cameron would have a thumping majority. Well, maybe even if past experience suggests the kind of “Mainstream” Conservatism (has that label been ditched, yet?) Tim favours had a limited electoral appeal. That was then, however, and this is now. (It’s also fair to note that Tim accepts a good deal of the Cameron Project). Tim complains that “The Cameroons’ mistake was to combine

Daniel Korski

The revolution remains on track

The Egyptian revolution has pulled itself back from the brink in a quite an extraordinary way. Everyone feared a clash in Tahrir Square today but, so far, a deal struck between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, the pro-democracy activists and the military is holding. Tahrir Square is teeming with white-clad Hajis. But everything is calm. The military gave into to a number of key demands from the protesters, including making some changes in the newly-promulgated electoral law. The Muslim Brotherhood feared being blamed by the military for a confrontation and being seen as too close to the Salafists. And the Facebook liberals wanted to keep the revolution united for now.