Society

Saturday

23 Apr 2011

Letters | 23 April 2011

Rubio for President? Sir: Richard Littlejohn’s idea of a President Rubio (‘Who will fight Obama?’, 16 April) is little more than wishful thinking. The Florida senator is at most a lukewarm conservative, which will become increasingly obvious over his six-year term. (Obama is only the second man in 50 years to go directly from Senate to White House — it’s a difficult path because legislative service forces a politician to commit his views to the record.) Littlejohn is impressed that Rubio could draw a crowd of 5,000 in his home state, yet there are a half-dozen other Republicans with at least as much pull — including figures such as Palin,

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 23 April 2011

Q. My friend John sets the standard of dress for our small community. It has come to his notice that HRH the Duke of Edinburgh is sporting black suede shoes with black tie. I think John is keen to adopt this mode of dress but is unsure about it. I think he should stick to black leather. What do you advise, Mary? Also, should suedes be worn during daylight hours? —G.A., Crewkerne A. As is revealed in the forthcoming biography ‘Young Prince Philip’ by Philip Eade (Harper Press), the Duke has never been that interested in ‘correct’ dressing. In his early life his valet battled to keep him out of

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: Roman weddings

It was military triumphs and generals returning loaded with gold and silver that triggered great public celebrations. Marriage in the Roman world was, for the most part, a private affair. A legal digest defined it as ‘a joining together of a man and a woman, and a partnership for life in all areas, a sharing in human and divine law’. So whatever family interests may have been in play — and Roman aristocratic marriage often looks like a business deal — marriage ultimately depended on the personal will of the couple involved, affectio maritalis keeping them together. Naturally, marriages broke down, but the ideal was there. Further, the family home

Toby Young

Status Anxiety: Going for a fifth?

I came in late the other night to discover my wife watching One Born Every Minute, a Channel 4 programme featuring women having babies. I sat down next to her on the sofa and it wasn’t long before my hands were clamped over my eyes. A young woman was howling in pain as her insides were twisted into a pretzel, with all manner of unspeakable muck seeping out on to the bedsheets. As her ordeal came to an end, after hour upon hour of screaming agony, the hospital room looked like a butcher’s shop that had been blown up with a cluster bomb. ‘They should show this to 14-year-old girls,’

Alan Judd

Motoring: Power and glory

The skies are brightening over Warwickshire, where they breed Aston Martins. The recession reduced staff from 1,200 to 900 but now they’re back up to 1,000 and are opening a dealership in — of all places — Dublin. After spending almost a century in the red, they’ve finally nudged into profit under the leadership of Dr Ulrich Bez. If asked by a friend to let him have an Aston at cost price, Dr Bez need no longer reply by quoting former owner David Brown: ‘You couldn’t possibly afford that. It’s cheaper in the showroom.’ It takes about six weeks to make one, which includes 50 hours’ paintwork and 70 to

Robin Oakley

The turf: Useful lessons

The Newbury race day that finally for me switched the focus of racing from the jumpers to the sleek equine whippets racing on the Flat was appropriately devoted to the emergency services. Sadly, they are a vitally needed accompaniment to the training and riding of horses. Only in horse racing and motor racing are the participants followed by an ambulance, and accidents don’t just happen on the course. Many a Lambourn lad out on the gallops with a shattered leg or a lung-puncturing set of broken ribs has been only too grateful to see looming out of the sky the choppers and crew of the Thames Valley and Chiltern air

Melissa Kite

Real life | 23 April 2011

A dimly lit street in a drab south London suburb at 8 p.m. on a weekday night. A girl driving to her friend’s house for dinner. Suddenly the girl gets a blinding headache and needs to pull over. She searches in vain for a space but cannot see anything. The headache gets worse and worse until just when she thinks she is going to pass out from the pain she spots a small opening by the curb outside a shop. Thank goodness, she thinks, I can get some painkillers. There is an eerie atmosphere in the dark street as she parks. A climate of fear seems to prevail. If this

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 23 April 2011

The Spectator is a civilised paper. If they give you a weekly column, they are pleased for you to say what you like. The only editorial interference you can expect, apart from being hired, is the sack. They’d all rather die a slow and horrible death than exert the slightest influence over what you write. Each week I email this column to the infinitely forgiving Arts editor, Liz Anderson, who has cheerfully fielded my usually late copy for ten years. The only time she interferes with the content — and always with tremendous reluctance and a profusion of stricken apologies — is when the lawyer has indicated that he is

Taki

High life | 23 April 2011

New York How fair a rule is monarchy? A Byzantine scholar wrote that it was the fairest, to the point that God sustained it, as long as the emperors were elected by the army or an aristocratic senate. With their coronation, legitimate successors and usurpers alike automatically became sacred. The ancient Greeks went a step further. They did not require a god-like sustenance nor perfection from their kings, only greatness. Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus, Achilles, Leonidas — they were all great kings but not perfect human beings. Practical Romans distrusted Greek morality about kings and heroes, and in Marcus Aurelius they produced the supreme type of philosopher-king that Plato had merely

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language: On behalf of

Someone, so the Times reported, was asked about young people being unemployed. ‘The problem is not the lack of jobs,’ came the reply, ‘but a lack of determination on behalf of young jobseekers.’ What he meant was ‘on the part of young jobseekers’. It was they who lacked determination, not anyone else on their behalf. This strange use of behalf has become so widespread that it is impossible to tell, out of context, what a speaker means. The new sense is ousting the old, just as bad money drives out good, as Gresham’s Law declares. The only difficulty is that perhaps the old money was never quite as good as

The Spectator

Barometer | 23 April 2011

Easter day The late date of Easter this year has rekindled one of Britain’s lengthiest political debates: the implementation, or rather non-implementation, of the Easter Act 1928. The act was to fix the date of Easter on the Sunday following the second Saturday in April — meaning that it would wander between 9 and 15 April rather than between 22 March and 25 April. — The act demanded that before it could be implemented ‘regard shall be had to any opinion officially expressed’ by a Christian church. That has been the stumbling block. In 1966 the Church Assembly of the Church of England passed a motion in favour. The Catholic

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 23 April 2011

The coalition wants to change the ‘discriminatory’ law of succession and allow any first-born daughter to ascend to the throne. The coalition wants to change the ‘discriminatory’ law of succession and allow any first-born daughter to ascend to the throne. People witlessly nod their heads at the idea that male primogeniture is an ‘anachronism’. Mr Murdoch’s Sunday Times has decided that such a change would be ‘a perfect wedding present’ for Prince William and Kate Middleton. I think they’d prefer an electric toaster. Why, after all, is primogeniture itself not an anachronism? Why is succession by blood allowed at all? Once you start asking these questions, it is hard to

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 April 2011

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, made a joint statement on Libya with President Barack Obama of the United States and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, saying that ‘so long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations’. British and French military officers were being sent to Libya to train opposition forces. The frigate Cumberland, which had evacuated hundreds of people from Libya, arrived at Devonport to be decommissioned. The Ministry of Defence posted on the internet secret information about Britain’s nuclear submarines, by not properly blanking out sections of the documents. The Commons Education Committee recommended that Ofsted should be split into two

David Blackburn

The changing face of Andy Burnham

Here’s a thing. What’s happened to Andy Burnham? The affable scouser’s leadership manifesto had an appealing tone: the red background enlivened by a blue streak on law and order, aspiration and tax reform. But Burnham lost the race and since then he has been matching Ed Balls for bellicosity, opposing each of Michael Gove’s education reforms out of an antediluvian tribal loyalty. In recent weeks, Burnham has attacked cuts to the Educational Maintenance Allowance and the Building Schools for the Future fund. He’s at it again today. He will speak to the NASUWT teaching union later and he is expected to say: ‘This Tory-led Government’s education policy consists of broken

Lucy Vickery

Competition: What Alice did next

In Competition No. 2693 you were invited to supply a hitherto unpublished extract by Lewis Carroll relating the further adventures of Alice. The location was left up to you. Parliament was the most popular choice of venue, which was no surprise. Westminster feels like a natural successor to Wonderland, with its circular arguments, twisted logic and cast of bickering contrarians. Unlucky losers this week were Frank McDonald, John O’Byrne and Max Ross. In the money, to the tune of £30 apiece, are the winners, printed below. Brian Murdoch bags the bonus fiver. Alice’s chair expanded, then she was in a room full of people, all screaming. Alice shouted, ‘Order! order!’

Andrew Roberts

The meaning of a marriage

‘A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind,’ wrote the great constitutional theorist Walter Bagehot. ‘A royal family sweetens politics by the seasonable addition of nice and pretty events. It introduces irrelevant facts into the business of government, but they are facts which speak to men’s bosoms and employ their thoughts.’ Bagehot was writing about the marriage of the future King Edward VII to Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863, but his sentiments equally apply to the coming royal wedding, for he concluded that one half of the human race at least ‘care 50 times more for a marriage than a

Hugo Vickers

Royal Notebook

No one was more irritated than I was when the royal engagement was announced on 16 November. Not, I hasten to say, because I did not welcome the news, but selfishly, because I realised I would miss a rare lunch at the Historic Houses AGM — and many further lunches over subsequent weeks. Since then, as when the Princess of Wales was killed, I have been a prisoner of the media. The engagement took everyone by surprise — and the calm discretion with which the whole process has been handled since must be a delight, and even possibly a surprise, to Buckingham Palace and Clarence House. Nothing leaks. I also

Rod Liddle

All theatrical bigots should be equal in the eyes of the law

What, to your mind, constitutes a ‘hate crime’? I’ve been wondering about this since reading the comments of Paul Marshall, of the Cumbria CID. What, to your mind, constitutes a ‘hate crime’? I’ve been wondering about this since reading the comments of Paul Marshall, of the Cumbria CID. Paul had been expressing his great satisfaction that a shaven-headed lumpenprole idiot called Andrew Ryan had been sentenced to 70 days in prison for burning a copy of the Koran in public. Speaking in the manner of a Premier League football club manager, Marshall said: ‘Today’s result shows how seriously we take hate crime.’ And he added: ‘The incident was highly unusual

Quentin Letts

How to play the big day

Through fashionable London the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton is causing confusion. Privately, the snoots of Islington and Notting Hill are no different from the rest of us. They think Kate looks cracking and RAF pilot William would make a fine son-in-law. Is there not always something irresistible, my dears, about a tall, young prince with a chopper? Yet metropolitan smoothness makes them hesitate. Is royal fever socially wise? Is it ever acceptable for a cool cat in designer denim to wave little Union flags and sing the national anthem? Metro-smoothies fret about expressing their gaiety at this fairytale wedding. They do not want to be reported to

Mary Wakefield

Harlem renaissance

A massive project to change the lives of America’s poorest children It’s raining in Harlem this morning — big fat American rain tipping out of the big gray sky, sluicing down the crumbling brownstones, over the awning of the Manna soul food and salad bar (‘we serve oxtail, collard green, candy yam, fried fish, chips and tea’) and on to the corner of 125th street and Madison in an oily pool of such enormity that the word puddle is no good as a description — you’d have to call it a pond. Each Harlem citizen manages the pond in his own peculiar way. Two gangster-looking guys with hats askew take