Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 26 March 2011

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that attacks on Libya to protect civilians from Colonel Gaddafi were ‘necessary, legal and right’. He told the Commons that the UN resolution authorising them ‘explicitly does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gaddafi’s removal from power by military means’. MPs voted by 557 to 13 in support of the military action. The moon came within 221,565 miles of the earth, its closest since 1993. In a budget that he called fiscally neutral, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced consultation on unifying income tax and National Insurance. He removed 43 tax relief measures to simplify the system. He

Daniel Korski

The Libyan resistance is on the front foot

The fight between Colonel Gaddafi’s forces and the resistance to his rule will clearly take some time, but the rebels have had a good 24 hours.  In Brega, Gaddafi’s forces deserted in large numbers, handing 10 vehicles over to rebels. A loyalist brigadier was killed and in Ajdabiya government forces withdrew overnight, while rebels also made progress in Zintan.   The RAF made a key a contribution: its aggressive supported the rebels holding out in Misrata, taking out a number of APCs and a loyalist tank.  Best of all, however, is the news that a Brazilian plastic surgeon has told Gulf News how he took fat out of Colonel Gaddafi’s

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ed Miliband is an Idiot

I don’t think there’s any point in pretending that Ed Miliband is not an idiot. All the evidence the prosecution needs comes from this typically self-aggrandising passage in his address to protestors in London this afternoon. We come in the tradition of those who have marched before us. The suffragettes who fought for votes for women and won. The civil rights movement in America who fought for equality and won. The anti-apartheid movement who fought the horror of that system and won. Our cause may be different but we come together today to realise our voice and we stand on their shoulders. We stand on the shoulders of those who

Martin Bright

Does the coalition know what it’s doing?

On the morning of the March for the Alternative, a friend alerted me to the brilliantly angry Andrew Lansley rap (chorus: “the NHS is not for sale you grey-haired manky tosser”). Admittedly not the most sophisticated political polemic, but as agit-pop goes, pretty effective. Andrew Lansley’s health reforms are fast become a deep embarrassment to the government. The Liberal Democrats hate them. The country is suspicious. Nobody quite understands how David Cameron took his eye so spectacularly off the ball on this one and now he is left with a policy nobody wants. I have always been mystified that the coalition decided to reform and cut at the same time.

David Blackburn

Marching with no alternative

Thousands have converged on London today, to march against the monolithic evil of ‘cuts’. They have not stated an alternative, a fact that led Phil Collins to write an eloquently savage critique in yesterday’s Times (£). That the protesters are incoherent beyond blanket opposition to the government is not really an issue: as this morning’s lead article in the Guardian argues, the Hyde Park rioters of 1866 weren’t brandishing drafts of the Second Reform Bill. But it’s intriguing that Ed Miliband has decided to address this rally, thereby endorsing it. The Labour party hierarchy recognises that it is taking an enormous and perhaps totally unnecessary risk. First, Ed Miliband’s oratory

Interconnect

A guide to scholarships and bursaries

We all know that private education can be terrifyingly expensive. Yet for parents not possessed of a vast fortune, there are ways of affording it. Scholarships and bursaries are more common than you might think, and your child doesn’t necessarily have to be a genius to get one. Here, we list some of the best on offer…   School Location Boarding? For… Annual fees Scholarships / Bursaries Available Criteria Wycombe Abbey School Buckinghamshire Boarding Girls £29,250 (boarding) Academic scholarships: up to 5% of fees; academic exhibitions: £600 pa exam & Day £21,930 Music scholarships:     (day) tuition on 2 instruments audition     Music exhibitions: (about Grade 5 on

Interconnect

The best of the best

Top boys’ boarding schools by A-level results Rank % A/B School Day fees Board fees No. pupils 1 99.4 St Paul’s School, London £17,928 £26,562 1,291 2 98 Westminster School £20,364 £29,406 747 3 96.2 Eton College – £29,862 1,314 4 96.2 Tonbridge School, Kent £22,335 £29,913 764 5 93.3 Harrow School – £29,670 810 6 91.5 Abingdon School £13,905 £28,515 1,119 7 90 Dulwich College £14,184 £28,971 1,743 8 88.4 Warwick School £10,107 £21,567 1,141 9 86.6 Loughborough Grammar School £9,960 £17,994 1,031 10 82 Monmouth School £12,345 £21,498 589 11= 81 Shrewsbury School £19,125 £27,300 722 11= 81 Charterhouse School, Godalming £24,330 £29,430 742 Top girls’ boarding schools

William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt on fives

It may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a ball against a wall — there are things indeed which make more noise and do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches, and answering them, making verses, and blotting them; making money and throwing it away. It may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a ball against a wall — there are things indeed which make more noise and do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches, and answering them, making verses, and blotting them; making money and throwing it away. But the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Fab fives

It may not be widely played, but this is a great sport for everyone, says Freddy Gray   Fives is not a popular sport. In fact, if the internet is to be believed, no more than 4,000 people play it in Britain, with a scattering of die-hard enthusiasts abroad. But then very few people have ever had the opportunity to play. Fives, which is similar to squash — save that it is played with a hard ball, which is hit with gloved hands instead of a racquet — is played almost entirely in British public schools. Some state schools do have courts, but not many. If it is thought of at

Claire Gascoigne

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Hard lessons

Claire Gasgoine asks Brewin Dolphin’s Simon Blowey how parents and grandparents can meet the frightening cost of education Education maketh man, according to the philosopher John Locke. But these days, education can also maketh the man’s parents very poor indeed. With large school fees increases and the removal of the cap on university tuition fees, it’s never been harder to ensure your child has the education they deserve. Much foresight and planning is needed to mitigate the costs when playing this particular game. Recent years have seen fee rises, in some cases considerably ahead of inflation; over a generation, fees have risen fivefold from an annual £3,000-6,000 in 1986, according

Stanley Johnson

An Old Shirburnian remembers

 I went to Sherborne in January 1954. The first view I had of my housemaster was at the TC ­inspection parade held on the first day of every term. TC stood for tinea cruris or ‘crotch-worm’, an ­infection which boys were thought to be prone to during the holidays. Col H.F.W. ‘Hughie’ Holmes moved down the line of boys, inspecting for tell-tale pustules, as they cupped their hands over their private parts. When he reached me, he straightened up. ‘Ah, you must be Johnson!’ he barked. ‘Welcome to Lyon House!’ I was lucky enough to win a £150 scholarship to ­Sherborne. £150 was a great deal of money in those days. It represented half

Ed Howker

Different class | 26 March 2011

 I’ve always found Britain’s education system ­bewildering. Our public schools are private; our church schools take the children of committed ­atheists; and ‘distance learning’ happens at home. My old school, Bradford Grammar School (BGS), is not a ‘grammar school’ in the way most ­people would imagine. It is a member of the Headmasters’ Conference and it charges fees. That a school’s name tells you next to nothing about what it does reflects decades of bizarre and often contradictory political reform. Almost every piece of school legislation after Rab Butler’s 1944 Education Act, which created grammars, has meant trouble for my old school. At the time of its creation — 1548 — the school was intended

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The revision thing

 The first time I heard of a crammer school I assumed it was a 16th-century foundation by Thomas Cranmer, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, where boys walked about the cloisters in long cloaks with copies of the Book of Common Prayer stuffed under their arms. I guess we didn’t take revision quite so seriously in my day. In fact I know we didn’t. Revision was something you did in the week before your exams, and if you had to do it in public you tended to hide your book of calculus inside a copy of Smash Hits. It was brought home to me just how much things have changed since

Ed Smith

Swards of honour

Our independent schools have a proud tradition of cricket — and cricket grounds.Former England batsman (and Old Tonbridgian) Ed Smith picks his favourites   The excellence of the cricket grounds of England’s independent schools is a double-edged privilege. On the one hand, they are some of the most beautiful grounds on which to play and watch cricket anywhere in the country. On the other, the public schools contribute an increasingly high proportion of England’s professional cricketers. That’s great for the public schools; not so great for everyone else. In recent decades English sport has improved in many respects, but it’s hard to argue that meritocracy is one of them. My dad

Hilaire Gomer

Open secrets

Any parent would want to see a school before sending their child there, says Hilaire Gomer – but not everyone makes the most of their visits  Prospective parents have to visit the schools to which they’re interested in sending their offspring. Now this is fine if it’s just one or two and they’re not too far away, but more is a chore. A tip is to kick off with school web sites: you won’t need a satnav. When it comes to open days, there are three types of prospective parents. The first group are those who know the school already, having gone there themselves 25 years earlier. These go round

Ben Davies

AFL DIARY

The greatest game in the world returns this weekend for Season 2011, and too much football will never be enough. Season 2010 will be remembered for the most controversial defection since Anakin Skywalker went over to the Dark Side, as Gary Ablett Junior abandoned Geelong to play for the new Gold Coast team. But if you thought Skywalker Senior’s defection had some far-reaching consequences for an entire galaxy, it was nothing compared with the impact of Ablett Junior’s defection on the Geelong universe. For 22 of the past 27 years, Geelong has had a genius named Gary Ablett performing miracles on a regular basis and arousing the passions of fans

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Epigrammatic

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition In Competition No. 2690 you were invited to invited to submit quatrains reflecting on current events in the Middle East in the style of Edward FitzGerald/Omar Khayyam. FitzGerald is, of course, master of the beautifully turned aphoristic phrase. And, as Cedric Watts points out in his introduction to the Wordsworth Classics edition of the Rubaiyat, though he makes it looks effortless the rhyme scheme he uses in his translation — mostly AABA, though occasionally AAAA— is difficult to maintain; especially, as he does so fluently, for stanza after stanza. So the bar was set high. Frank McDonald triumphs this week and bags the bonus

Paul Kennedy

Hot shots with cold feet

When the United Nations sanctioned the use of force against Colonel Gaddafi, it could not quite bring itself to use the word force. The word force is, well, forceful. It suggests ruthlessness. Force is something that gets things done, and those in its way tend to get swept aside. The German word is Macht, and we have all heard about that. A powerful waterfall close to where I grew up in the north of England is called ‘High Force’; you only have to go there in springtime to witness the literalness of that name. The West has never had more force at its disposal, while being oddly squeamish about deploying