Society

Saturday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

If the slebs think the tabloids are bad, let them deal with the people who read them

Well, knock me down with a Ferrari, who’d have thought it? Jemima Khan and Jeremy Clarkson! The fragrant, pouting Mima — epitome of well-bred, bankrolled, metro liberal hand-wringing faux angst — getting it on with the dishevelled reactionary so far to the right-of-centre-he’s-almost-in-the-median-strip petrolhead Jeremy. Well, knock me down with a Ferrari, who’d have thought it? Jemima Khan and Jeremy Clarkson! The fragrant, pouting Mima — epitome of well-bred, bankrolled, metro liberal hand-wringing faux angst — getting it on with the dishevelled reactionary so far to the right-of-centre-he’s-almost-in-the-median-strip petrolhead Jeremy. It’s like finding out that Harriet Harman has been secretly knocking off Jim Davidson behind our backs. Or Shami Chakrabati

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The chattering classes

Louise Stern on what the deaf really think of ‘hearing people’ I’m at my desk in London chatting to a deaf woman in Mexico. We are communing through the internet. At 17.57 GMT, an instant messenger bubble pops on to my computer screen: ‘Louise Stern: Hi Freddy, it’s Louise’ and the interview has begun. It’s miraculous, when you think about it. Louise Stern is the author of Chattering Stories, a recently published collection of short stories about adventurous deaf girls in the big noisy world. Louise has a very original writing voice, and critics say that she enables them to understand for the first time what it must be like

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Neighbourhood botch

‘Localisation’ is an expensive path to greater political corruption The last time the Dorset village of Cerne Abbas played a part in national debate was in the 17th century, when — recent studies suggest — locals carved a rude chalk parody of Oliver Cromwell into a hillside. It failed to unsettle Cromwell, but the village may yet be the nemesis of another Oliver: Oliver Letwin, architect of the government’s pet policy of localism. Cerne Abbas is one of 17 communities selected by the Department for Communities and Local Government to prepare a ‘neighbourhood plan’. This, theoretically, is the opposite of Labour’s top-down approach in which government planners in Whitehall or

Patrick Marnham

CONGO NOTEBOOK

Kisangani, capital of the province of Orientale, Democratic Republic of the Congo, once Zaire, is the setting for A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul’s grim masterpiece, published in 1979, about post-colonial reality in central Africa. Naipaul’s plot describes a tribal war that threatens the city. This actually happened 20 years later, when Kisangani became a battlefield for the bandit armies of Uganda and Rwanda. The city is now controlled by General Jean-Claude Kifwa, commander of the 9th Military Region of the Armed Forces of the DRC. We arrive to find that the temperature has reached a seasonal 40 ºC. A thunderstorm lasting most of our first night reduces this

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Is there any hope in politics for pointy-headed intellectuals?

When the Alabama governor George Wallace described intellectuals as ‘pointy-heads who couldn’t ride a bicycle straight’, he coupled two insults. When the Alabama governor George Wallace described intellectuals as ‘pointy-heads who couldn’t ride a bicycle straight’, he coupled two insults. The first — ‘pointy-heads’ — went straight into the legend and remains there, though I’d always thought intellectuals had domed heads. Less remembered is the second barrel of Wallace’s revolver. But in five words it contains a potent argument. ‘Couldn’t ride a bicycle straight’ is a subtle insult for it suggests that what intellect needs as an accompaniment — and ‘intellectuals’ may lack — is instinct. To balance on a

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Magnificent young men are ready to die for us, but that doesn’t mean we should let them

I’m in Dallas, Texas, for a Heritage Foundation conference when who should march into my hotel but a battalion of US marines, ahead of their deployment to Afghanistan. I’m in Dallas, Texas, for a Heritage Foundation conference when who should march into my hotel but a battalion of US marines, ahead of their deployment to Afghanistan. I watch, agog. The marines all look desperately young, even the ones who’ve done several tours of duty. Interestingly, though they all must have bonded intensely in the field, off duty they still socialise by ethnic group — blacks with blacks, Hispanics with Hispanics, and so on. Later, I ambush a senior NCO and

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 14 May 2011

The latest mis-selling scandal is one more symptom of a deeper problem The payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal is, by common consensus, the worst case of financial mis-selling until the next one. These policies were foisted by banks on personal borrowers, supposedly to cover repayments if they fell ill or lost their jobs or encountered some other misfortune. But in many cases borrowers were not aware they were being charged for the cover, or were told falsely that they were obliged to buy it. If they were self-employed or too old, they would never have been able to claim on it anyway. Now the banks, led by Lloyds and Barclays,

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: Who now carries the spirit of Seve?

Anyone concerned that their tear ducts might not be in working order should take a look at the 2009 Sports Personality of the Year show, when Severiano Ballesteros was given a lifetime achievement award. The gong is presented to Seve at his home in Spain by his friend (and the other half of surely the greatest ever Ryder Cup pairing) José Maria Olazábal. After a while, Olazabal cracks up in tears and can’t go on. So Seve — poor, dying, cancer-ridden Seve — consoles him, squeezing his knee and with a smile, saying, ‘You’re doing OK. You’re still swinging the club well too…’ What a man. If you’re old enough

Michael Tanner

Berlioz traduced

After its brief detour into magnificence with The Return of Ulysses at the Young Vic, ENO has returned to its hell-bent form with, appropriately enough, a dramatisation of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. After its brief detour into magnificence with The Return of Ulysses at the Young Vic, ENO has returned to its hell-bent form with, appropriately enough, a dramatisation of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. Not that the composer would recognise his work, first performed in 1846, from the production, described in the programme thus: ‘The extraordinary creative journey of Terry Gilliam reaches the operatic stage for the first time’, while the Synopsis begins, ‘Our production follows the trajectory

Cressida Connolly

Wheels of fortune

There are among us a churlish few who consider the term ‘sports personality’ to be an oxymoron. There are among us a churlish few who consider the term ‘sports personality’ to be an oxymoron. John Foot’s sparkling study of Italian cycling is a welcome corrective, alive with terrific characters: Toti, a heroic one-legged cyclist who was killed in the trenches; Coppi, a barrel-chested adulterer who became the nation’s darling; a blind coach who could divine victory or defeat in the feel of a cyclist’s muscles; and, more recently, a champion who died of a cocaine overdose in a seaside hotel. Many of the greats follow a satisfying rags-to-riches trajectory, starting

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 13 May 2011

Here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. Coffee House has an A to Z of the coalition’s first year in office. Michael Thomas Duffy, a veteran of charter schools in the US, gives his exclusive insights on the free schools programme in England. And Ed Howker reveals that some Labour figures are supporting Gove’s reforms. Fraser Nelson comments on the gulf in opinion between rulers and ruled over the European Union. James Forsyth reports on the mood on the Lib Dem benches, and considers how the coalition might get out of its current difficulties. Peter Hoskin explains where Cameron has drawn the boundary for

David Blackburn

Bin Laden strikes from beyond the grave

And so it starts. The news that suicide bombers have attacked the military base at Shabqadar, northern Pakistan, sounds a chilling note. The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attacks, committed in retaliation for the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Security experts and politicians warned that it would be so. It is, we are told, inevitable that similar atrocities will be attempted closer to home. There will also be concern that this may aggravate the already strained relations between the US and Pakistan, which would only strengthen the terrorists. Perhaps Bin Laden has become a more potent force since his death. The sight of a squalid man sitting in

Alex Massie Alex Massie

An Increasing Population is a Good Thing. So is Immigration.

Plenty of folk seem to think otherwise. Including George Bridges who has written a very curious post for the Motherblog in which he seems most perturbed by the prospect of this happy isle’s population increasing. He even suggests he’s not doing his bit since Mrs Bridges is expecting their third child, presumably furthering the onrushing demographic apocalypse. Piffle. Good for Mrs Bridges and her fecund husband. Congratulations to them. May they produce this and many more little Bridges. A rising population is a feature of a healthy society, not the beginning of the end for this sceptered land. Of course an increasing population puts pressure on any number of public

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Obama Men & Bush Measures?

Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan have been debating the extent, if any, to which Barack Obama’s foreign policy has broken with his predecessor’s. Ross’s point in his column this week is that Obama’s approach is more consistent with Bush’s than is generally supposed. I think that’s true, though some of Andrew’s criticisms of that view are plausible too. Ross responds here and Andrew has another go here during which post he writes: As for the impact of Obama on the Iranian revolution and the Arab Spring, I agree it’s too facile to draw a direct linkage. History and perspective will again help. But the Cairo speech – defending democracy in

George Bridges

The challenge of demographic change

There may be a lot of debate about what the “big society” means, but there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on: we live in a big society – and it’s getting bigger. 62 million today. 64 million in five year’s time. And then on up to 70 million by 2028, according to the government.  (No, I’m not doing my bit, as my wife is about to have our third child.) What’s odd is how little debate there’s been at Westminster about all this. Why? Partly because it means you have to talk about immigration (still seen as toxic by many in SW1); partly because it is

David Blackburn

Laws punished but in the clear

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir John Lyon, has delivered his report on David Laws’ expenses claims. The headline is as expected: ‘Mr Laws was guilty of a series of serious breaches of the rules’, and it is recommended that he be suspended for 7 days from 7 June. It is a stern punishment for a serious transgression. However, nothing has really changed since Laws resigned from the government last May, because Lyon has not disinterred anything new. Crucially, the report accepts Laws’ explanation that he was conniving to protect his privacy, not to increase his personal wealth. For example, in paragraph 36 Lyon says that Laws would have been

Wednesday

Jonathan Jones

The Coffee House A-Z of the Coalition: N-S

Here are letters N to S in our A-Z guide the coalition’s first year. A-F are here. G-M are here. N is for No Nothing has frayed coalition relations quite like the AV referendum has. This was always going to be the case, but the viciousness it inspired has still been fairly shocking. Need we remind you of Chris Huhne’s outburst in Cabinet last week? Or of George Osborne’s stinging riposte? Even David Cameron seems to have relished taking it out on his coalition stablemates, trashing their pet policies with a vigour that would have been unthinkable only a few months ago. As Tim Montgomerie reveals in his exhaustive guide

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Wouter Weylandt’s Cortege

There was no racing in the Giro d’Italia yesterday. Instead the peloton rode at a funereal pace to honour Wouter Weylandt, the Belgian sprinter killed in a crash on Monday. Then Weylandt’s Leopard-Trek team-mates came to the front to lead the field into Leghorn. With them was Garmin-Cervelo’s Tyler Farrar, Weylandt’s best friend in the peloton. Watch from the 25 minute mark if you like: Dignified. Emotional. Perfect. And something you never want to see again. As I said on Monday, however, it’s amazing how rare these deaths are (and Weylandt, the pathologist reported, almost certainly died instantly). By my back-of-an-envelope calculations* the peloton completes about a million miles of

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Today’s lesson for David Willetts

What a knotty problem David Willetts has created for himself today. Speaking to the Guardian this morning, he floated an idea to help the universities make a bit of cash: they could, he suggested, sell extra places to students who were prepared to pay exaggerated fees up front. This isn’t yet government policy, and the students needn’t do the paying themselves (they could be sponsored by charities or employers, for instance), but the Guardian pounced nevertheless. “Extra places at university for rich students,” blared its front page headline. Not a good look for the coalition, at a time when access to university is such a general concern. Not a good

David Blackburn

Cameron in new war with his backbenchers

The House is united in loathing of IPSA, which explains why Tory MP Adam Afriyie’s amendment to the Parliamentary Standards Bill 2009 is proving so popular. Afriyie’s aim is ‘to simplify the way in which expenses and salary payments to Members of Parliament are made’ and attempt to limit IPSA’s costs.   The government, however, is wary of Arfiyie’s reform – sensing, perhaps, that the public might not stomach changes to the expenses system so soon after the recent scandal.   The bill’s second reading will take place this Friday and it is now understood that enough Labour backbenchers will support the motion to allow it to pass. It is