Society

Saturday

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

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: Making a hash of things

According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, every alien race in the universe has independently invented an intoxicating drink called ‘jinantonix’ or at least something that sounds very similar. According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, every alien race in the universe has independently invented an intoxicating drink called ‘jinantonix’ or at least something that sounds very similar. It’s an idea which probably arose from the fact that, phonetically, ‘Gin & Tonic’ (or more often ‘Gin-Tonic’) is on a par with ‘OK’ or ‘Coca-Cola’ in being understood in every country on earth. Even languages which use a word for beer that sounds nothing like ‘beer’ generally refer to

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Don’t expect us to keep cheering on this vague and bizarre adventure

Actually, it’s a good question. How long is a piece of string? I’ve often wondered, and I’ve seen some string in my time. The problem is, they were all of different lengths, these bits of string, some long, some shorter. I suppose the mean length of string I’ve come across would be about nine inches, disregarding whole balls of string, obviously. Having worked this out perhaps I could be co-opted into whatever government department is running the war against Libya, as they do not know how long a piece of string is. Actually, it’s a good question. How long is a piece of string? I’ve often wondered, and I’ve seen

Pavel Stroilov

The Gorbachev files

The international stage is dominated by two men this March: Muammar Gaddafi, fighting like mad for the survival of his regime, and Mikhail Gorbachev, celebrated around the world on his 80th birthday for not being a Gaddafi. Nobody knows what will now happen in Libya; but the Gorbachev celebrations will culminate next week in a splendid gala at Royal Albert Hall, with a crowd of celebrities and tickets on sale for up to £100,000. Some 20 years ago the communist dictators faced the same choice as the Arab dictators today: to surrender their regimes or to massacre their people. Some chose massacre, like the Chinese comrades, who slaughtered thousands of

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: The two Libyas

The Foreign Office is contemplating the possibility that — as in Iraq, where the 1992 no-fly zone allowed the Kurds to take control in the north — the current intervention may split Libya. It would revert to what it had always been up till 1911: two entirely separate administrations, one eastern and one western. A very sensible idea, too. In the 7th century bc, Greeks colonised Cyrene on the north African coast. Herodotus tells the story. A deputation from Thera (modern Santorini) had gone to Delphi to consult the oracle on various matters and was told to found a city among the Libyans. By Libyans, Greeks meant the people who

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

What does Sarah Palin see in Israel that makes her think of Alaska?

In the world of sectarian Scottish football, as you may know, they have adopted the Israeli-Palestinian fight as their own. Celtic fans wave Palestinian Authority flags, in an attempt to draw parallels between the Middle East and the troubles they wish people were still having in Ireland. Rangers fans wave Stars of David in response. I always thought this was the crassest, stupidest, most historically illiterate appropriation of a conflict imaginable. But then this week Sarah Palin went to Israel. What a chump. What a cloth-eared, small-minded, blinkered idiot. She turned up wearing a Star of David T-shirt, and went on to tell some Israel politician that she has the

Ed Smith

Amateur hour

Thrilling as the race was, last week’s Cheltenham Gold Cup will leave an even more remarkable legacy: the winning jockey, Sam Waley-Cohen, did it as an amateur. Being a jockey isn’t his day job — he is the CEO of a dental business — and he races for love, not money. It’s not supposed to happen these days. According to the logic of professionalism, it is impossible to compete at the highest level, let alone win, unless you sacrifice all else. The word amateur has gone from being an accolade to a term of abuse. When coaches get seriously angry they call you ‘amateurish’, meaning sloppy and inept. When they

Jeff Randall

Abu Dhabi Notebook

With oil trading at more than $100 a barrel, Abu Dhabi holds a jackpot-winning ticket in the lottery of life. The emirate sits on reserves of nearly 100 billion barrels, about 9 per cent of the world’s proven supply. At today’s pumped-up price, its subterranean treasure is worth at least $10 trillion. That’s $10,000,000,000,000.Abu Dhabi finds almost nothing unaffordable. Were Croesus reborn tomorrow, he would discover that the Al Nahyan royal family could match his outlay. In recent years, hospitals, universities, hotels, museums, racetracks, golf courses, marinas, airports and a five-star airline have sprung up ex nihilo. When its naughty neighbour Dubai, which has very little oil, ran out of

Deborah Ross

Mad about the boy

I love this film. It’s terrific. You should go see it, and go see it now. Just abandon everything and go. The children? They’ll be fine, so long as you put all sharp objects and poisons out of their reach. Don’t use that old excuse! Now, how best to sum it up? OK, if you’ve ever wished that another Gregory’s Girl would come along, but with a darker underbelly — and who hasn’t? Particularly in the early hours — then this is it although, by mentioning Gregory’s Girl, I’m not saying Submarine isn’t original, because it is. I’m just trying to give you the flavour of it. Sometimes, I do

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 26 March 2011

Next, Osborne should tackle the plague of charity shops depressing our high streets The dramatic form of the modern, Brownian Budget speech requires a headline-grabber at the end to deflect commentators from analysis of the statistical soup and re-announced tax-tinkering that went before. But the politics of being ‘all in it together’ means that the rabbit in George Osborne’s hat was never going to be abolition of the 50 per cent top rate of income tax — and he made that pretty clear long before he got up to speak. So if you were planning to spend this weekend restocking your cellar with first-growth clarets (following Christopher Silvester’s excellent advice last

Allan Massie

Life & Letters | 26 March 2011

When cares attack, and life seems black, How sweet it is to pot a yak, Or puncture hares or grizzly bears, And others I could mention; But in my animal Who’s Who No name stands higher than the gnu, And each new gnu that comes in view Receives my prompt attention. Wodehouse, of course, as I am sure all Spectator readers won’t need to be told, from one of the Mulliner stories as I remember, and a perfect snatch of light verse, witty and dancing. Just what constitutes light verse is no more easy to define than to decide what separates verse from poetry. Auden included Kipling’s ‘Danny Deever’ in

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Half-Cocked Operation in Pursuit of Half-Formed Goals. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

So NATO will now “lead” the Libyan intervention. That makes everything fine and dandy, right? Well, no. There’s no need for anyone unpersuaded by the wisdom of this operation to make a case against it. Not when its supporters do such a good job pointing out its shortcomings. Take my friend Brother Korski, for instance. Yesterday he wrote: The Libya intervention goes on, with as many question marks hanging over the operation as airplanes in the sky. What is the aim? Who will run it? Can the United States, Britain and France keep allies such as Turkey on board? Good questions! There’s more too: Realistically, the UK should in the

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Agreement in principle reached for Nato to take command of operations over Libya 

I understand that agreement in principle has now been reached to pass command of the Libya operation to Nato. The United States has been keen to relinquish control for days now–the Obama administration has no desire for Libya to turn into another American responsibility–but agreement within Nato about the alliance taking over command of the mission could not be reached. This has led to an embarrassing situation where no one appears to want to actually be in charge of the operation. The blockage, up to now, to transferring control to Nato has been Turkey. Ankara is not keen on the whole intervention and is furious about not having been invited

Daniel Korski

Libya: next steps

The Libya intervention goes on, with as many question marks hanging over the operation as airplanes in the sky. What is the aim? Who will run it? Can the United States, Britain and France keep allies such as Turkey on board? Behind the scenes, officials are said to be looking at various options, including if and how to support the rebels. But the hand-wringing is now even audible across St James Park. Realistically, the UK should in the first instance work towards establishing a stalemate between loyalists and rebels. From such a stalemate a political process can then begin, which, though it may take many years and continue during the

Peter Hoskin

Will the government break its health spending pledge?

Let’s make one thing clear right from the off: the IFS did not just say that the government would break its pledge to increase health spending in real terms. What it did say is that the government is coming close to breaking it — and that’s the truth. Here’s the graph that we’ve put together to compare the real terms health spending figures in last October’s Spending Review (the green line, calculated using last November’s inflation figures) with those in yesterday’s Budget (the red line, calculated using yesterday’s inflation figures):   Hang on. Doesn’t that show health spending going down in real terms, after this fiscal year? Well, yeah, kinda.