Society

Saturday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Hell hath no fury like a public-spirited ex-wife

I think we’re all very relieved that Vicky Pryce, the estranged wife of the Cabinet minister Chris Huhne, is not motivated by revenge in writing a book about her ex-husband and dobbing him in to the police. I think we’re all very relieved that Vicky Pryce, the estranged wife of the Cabinet minister Chris Huhne, is not motivated by revenge in writing a book about her ex-husband and dobbing him in to the police. If the book was motivated by spite and revenge because Chris had recently dumped her for a strange mannish woman who ever-so-slightly resembles the late TV comedian Jack Douglas, I think we’d all feel a little

Matt Ridley

A green dark age

The government’s new emissions target will despoil the countryside, rob the poor – and enrich landowners like me ‘Greener food and greener fuel’ is the promise of Ensus, a firm that opened Europe’s largest (£250 million) bio-ethanol plant at Wilton on Teesside last year, and has now shut it down for lack of profitable customers. This is actually the second shut-down at the plant — which takes subsidies and turns them into motor fuel — the first being a three-week refit to try to stop the stench bothering the neighbours. Welcome to the neo-medieval world of Britain’s energy policy. It is a world in which Highland glens are buzzing with

Christian House

Our friend in the north

The last surviving leader of Norway’s anti-Nazi resistance Oslo Even in the glare of a crisp spring day the execution ground at Akershus Fortress is a chilling place. Snow still fringes the old gun battery and the Oslofjord clinks with ice. Sitting above this small patch of ground, in Norway’s Resistance Museum, I’m reminded of the risks taken by the man sitting next to me. Seventy years ago, Gunnar Sønsteby, the most decorated man in the country and the last remaining leader of the resistance movement, spent five years fighting the Nazi occupation. Avoiding the firing squad in that courtyard was his highest priority. Sønsteby is a fine reed of

Dennis Sewell

Who speaks for the world?

In the field of public diplomacy, the tiny Gulf state of Qatar has become a mouse that roars. According to Hillary Clinton, the Emir of Qatar’s television network, Al Jazeera, is knocking spots off the broadcasters of three superpowers in a global struggle for influence being played out across the airwaves. ‘We are in an information war and we are losing,’ Clinton warned the Senate foreign relations committee in March. Making only the briefest mention of the enormous expansion of international broadcasting funded by the Russian and Chinese governments in recent years, the US secretary of state went on to declare that ‘Al Jazeera is winning.’ Through the Arab Spring,

Peter Hoskin

Never-never land

Liverpool The payday loan shop in Breck Road erupts from its grey surroundings. Everything is painted yellow, black and red — colours that in the natural world mean ‘do not touch’ but that serve here as a lure. ‘Need cash now?’ ask the posters in the windows, in scarlet block capitals on a sunburst background. ‘We can help.’ The shop is well placed. Breck Road is where Everton meets Anfield — the centre of Liverpool’s football rivalry, but also of its destitution. Industrial decline has put the streets around here into a decades-long slump. One in three adults is out of work. There are plenty of people here who need

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Why are men now so despised? I blame Hugh Grant

I’ve always wondered about the strike-rate of men who, in that fine media phrase, ‘aren’t safe in taxis’. I’ve always wondered about the strike-rate of men who, in that fine media phrase, ‘aren’t safe in taxis’. It must be pretty high, you’d have thought, otherwise we’d tend to hear about them before they, for example, got accused of rugby-tackling chambermaids in New York hotels. Only, if it is, that would suggest that large numbers of women are actually quite aroused at the thought of a mauling from a lusty old codger in the back of a black cab, and I’m just not sure this can be true. You know that

Melissa Kite

Real life | 21 May 2011

May God forgive me, but I paid the fine. I couldn’t fight them any more. Wearily, shamefully, I picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Good afternoon. Welcome to the London Borough of Lambeth. Your life may be ruined for quality and training purposes. Please press the star key on your keypad if you have any strength left in your fingers despite the onset of a small stroke at the thought of giving us yet another £60 for a non-existent parking offence. ‘Thank you. Please listen carefully to the following evils. If you cannot decide which is the lesser of the evils, please press zero at any time. ‘For extortion demands,

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: Shopping for a self-image

Judging by the television channels in international hotels, Europeans must think Anglo-Saxons are the most boring people in the world. While Italian, French or German stations show a mixture of soap operas, game shows and other cheerful nonsense, English-language channels are confined to news bulletins and the kind of rolling financial programming once parodied by The Day Today. This means I am often reduced to watching foreign television simply to relieve the monotony. A rare high point was when I beat both contestants on Des Chiffres et Des Lettres, the French precursor to Countdown, with an eight-letter word, though admittedly the word was ‘minigolf’. The strangest moment came when I

Tim Price

INVESTMENT SPECIAL: The trend is your friend

In the 1983 comedy Trading Places, two unscrupulous commodity brokers wagered that they could take a vagrant off the street and turn him into a successful trader. The film was a hit, symbolic of a more innocent age when interference in ordinary people’s livelihoods by gambling financiers was the exception rather than the rule. What is less well known is that its plot was essentially true. Also in 1983, the commodities trader Richard Dennis set out to show that anybody could trade provided they were taught properly. His partner, William Eckhardt, disagreed, and a wager was born. Dennis placed classified ads in the back of the financial magazine Barron’s. Experience

Ian Cowie

INVESTMENT SPECIAL: Grey rights

Like sinister Siamese twins, the words ‘pension’ and ‘scandal’ seem to have become joined at the hip. So perhaps it is no surprise that some very good news — perhaps the coalition’s most important extension of choice during its first year — was largely ignored by the media last month. Most people these days are deeply suspicious of all forms of pension scheme — and rightly so. Traditional insurance company funds have a reputation for high costs and low returns, with far too much of savers’ money sticking to the salesman’s shovel. Company schemes are being slashed as firms concentrate on surviving rather than worrying about their former employees’ old

Jonathan Davis

INVESTMENT SPECIAL: Anything but gilts

In search of the next ‘trade of the decade’ Imagine you were sitting in St Paul’s at the 1981 royal wedding, waiting for the mismatched bridal couple to arrive and idly speculating about the best way to save up for a wedding present for their first-born, a generation hence. The odds are you would not have given much thought to British government stock, or gilts, as the investment of choice. At the time, gilts had become a pariah of the financial markets, shunned by anyone who had followed their calamitous decline in value over the postwar period. Inflation is the great enemy of bonds, and so great was the loss

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 21 May 2011

Another tale of the Great Seducer and my tip for the woman to succeed him When I was young I knew a man whose opening gambit with any pretty girl was, ‘Hello, shall we go straight to bed?’ He reckoned one in 20 said yes, so if he asked the question 20 times a day, he would never be lonely. All accounts of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF chief and would-be French presidential candidate who has been charged with sexually assaulting a New York hotel chambermaid, suggest a similar approach. In the late 1990s — during the tenure of ‘DSK’ as France’s minister of finance and not long after his third

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The End of the World is Nigh

The Rapture is almost upon us. According to Harold Camping, the 89 year-old Family Radio network in Florida. The righteous, he has calculated, will ascend to heaven at 6pm EST tomorrow (11pm in the UK). Those of us not fortunate enough to be called to Heaven must suffer the consequences of the damned. As you might expect this has occasioned much hooting and hollering on Twitter today. I made a feeble joke about it myself. And now, via Hopi Sen, I feel a wee bit of a heel for mocking the afflicted. This is Camping’s second Rapture date, the first having mysteriously failed him. While we need not necessarily spare

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Hugh Grant and Low Life

I’ve always rather admired Hugh Grant, so it was almost a pleasure to be beaten up by him on Newsnight last Friday. He was attacking the celebrity-hunting media, whereas I set out to defend free press and self-regulation of the media. If you’re going to have sympathy with any Hollywood figure, you’d have sympathy with Hugh: he’s a single man who has never tried to moralise, and has cameras pointing at him everywhere he goes. Besides, he made an impassioned and powerful case against the intrusion of the paparazzi — while yours truly was left defending the Press Complaints Commission. But I didn’t know, until I met him that night,

The Spectator

The week that was | 20 May 2011

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson ponders the power of Eurovision. James Forsyth reveals that the Cameroons can’t wait to get of Ken Clarke, and considers the fallout from the leaked Liam Fox letter. Peter Hoskin notes George Osborne return his attention to the post-bureaucratic age, and analyses the latest inflation figures. David Blackburn is pleased to see Andy Burnham drop his blanket opposition to free schools, and watches Clegg’s drive for Lords reform falter. Martin Bright warns of a disaster waiting to happen. Rod Liddle is disappointed by Slut Walk. Alex Massie celebrates the achievements of Garret Fitzgerald. And Melanie

Alex Massie Alex Massie

CTB Sues* Twitter

Well, this is going to be interesting. But I don’t see how it can end well: Twitter Inc. and some of its users were sued by an entity known as “CTB” in London, according to a court filing. While the document gave no details, CTB are the initials used by the court in a separate lawsuit to refer to an athlete who won an anonymity order banning the media from publishing stories about his alleged affair with a reality-television star. The Twitter suit was filed May 18 at the High Court in London according to court records, and named as defendants the San Francisco-based company and “persons unknown responsible for

David Blackburn

The World Service versus al-Jazeera

Yesterday’s debate on the future of the World Service was an unqualified success for its convener, Richard Ottaway. His motion received very extensive cross-party support and the MPs involved are confident of victory. As one source put it, “I haven’t met anyone – anyone – who agrees with that cut.” For its part, the government will “reflect carefully on the issue.” Parliament and Whitehall ring to anxious talk that cuts to the World Service will diminish Britain’s status abroad, and that less impartial state broadcasters, notably al-Jazeera, are capitalising on our withdrawal: al-Jazeera’s dominant coverage of the Arab Spring is a case in point. Ottaway said: “It is the cuts

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Debt as a security concern

Is Britain’s growing national debt a matter of national security? In a speech this morning, Liam Fox said so. Sure, he said, you can protest at the defence cuts — but strength comes from having a strong economy and strong national accounts. “Those who are arguing for a fundamental reassessment of the Defence Review are really arguing for increased defence  pending. But they fail to spell out the  inevitable result — more borrowing, more tax rises, or more cuts elsewhere. The bottom line is that a strong economy is a national security requirement and an affordable Defence programme is the only responsible way to support our Armed Forces in the long term.” In

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Garret FitzGerald, 1926-2011

How do you measure a politician’s life? By the standards of the political (or any other) breed Dr Garret FitzGerald, who died this morning, was an uncommonly decent, humane, kind individual. Partly because of that his two terms as Taoiseach were less than wholly successful. Yet their legacy has been immense and FitzGerald should be remembered as a transformational figure whose lasting impact on Irish life and society was, in many ways, greater than that of his great rival Charlie Haughey. Though each came from political families and could boast the necessary nationalist credentials, they were opposites in so many ways. Haughey the brilliant plotter and manipulator, FitzGerald the donnish

Peter Hoskin

DSK resigns from IMF

The IMF has issued three press releases on Dominique Strauss-Kahn since his arrest last week, but none more resonant than the latest. It contains this statement from their now former-Managing Director: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board, It is with infinite sadness that I feel compelled today to present to the Executive Board my resignation from my post of Managing Director of the IMF. I think at this time first of my wife—whom I love more than anything—of my children, of my family, of my friends. I think also of my colleagues at the Fund; together we have accomplished such great things over the last three years and more. To