Society

Sunday

Beeban Kidron

An Education by Film

Nick Hornby’s Oscar-nominated film, An Education, seems at first to have a misleading name. After all, the central character struggles with Latin, is discouraged from French and gives up a very privileged education for an older man, who turns out to be married. Thankfully, in both film and in real life, the protagonist – the impressive journalist and theatre critic Lynn Barber – learns her lesson. Barber gets into Oxford and then the rest, as they say, is history. When we first tried to get children to watch An Education at FILMCLUB (an after-school club that shows quality films to over 200 000 children a week), it was greeted with

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

News International: will one more scandal be enough?

At the start of the phone hacking scandal, I was sceptical that News International’s pursuers would get far. There is an omerta on Fleet Street. Reporters do not blab about their employers because they know they will lose their jobs and guess, probably correctly, that no other paper will hire them once they have a reputation for speaking out of turn. Who, I wondered, was going crack the story open? Silly question, and I ought to have known the answer: the lawyers would, of course. Except in extraordinary circumstances, reporters can only take a story so far. Politicians caught up in a scandal who demand we produce a “smoking gun”

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 22 January 2011

Q. How, when you have asked people for drinks at seven, can you make sure that they do not stay all evening? We recently moved to the country at weekends and my husband has invited some neighbours to come up for a drink on Saturday night. It did not occur to him that, because they are the sort of people who have ‘tea’ at six, they may think they are invited to stay for the whole evening. — Name and address withheld A. It is too late now. Your husband should have made himself clear when issuing the invitation. The formula would have been, ‘We’re going out on Saturday at

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety Paternity leave, no — immigrant nannies, yes!

I appeared on Radio 4’s PM programme earlier this week as a token male chauvinist pig. The issue under discussion was the government’s proposal to make it possible for fathers to take up to six months’ paternity leave. I argued this was bad news for dads since it means we’ll no longer have a much-needed excuse for going back to work the moment there’s a newborn in the house. I wondered beforehand whether my opponent would be a harridan feminist or a wet man and the answer was a wet man: Rob Williams, chief executive of something called the ‘Fatherhood Institute’. He wasn’t in the studio, so I couldn’t tell

Robin Oakley

The turf: Star crossed

‘Why should those of 60-plus use valet parking?’ inquired one of my Christmas cracker mottos. ‘Because valets don’t forget where they park your car.’ Life does catch up on you, as I recently discovered when my son beat me 3–0 at table tennis despite the secret training session I had sneakily put in before we knocked up. (In the Oakley household table tennis is not a gentle ping pong: it more closely resembles war to the death.) What really stung was his gracious reference afterwards to how the results used to be the other way round, even if only by a point a game, and to the inevitability of the

Melissa Kite

Real life | 22 January 2011

Some sadistically cheerful young popsy called Keeley or Tasha, I can’t remember which, terminated the call because I breached security. My own security. This is a bit rich, even if I didn’t keep completely to the rules. I always cheat during the beginning of the recorded message when the Patricia Hewitt sound-alike tells you to enter your membership or connect card number. I did enter the details once, you see, and the automated hell into which I descended was so macabre that I vowed never to risk an encounter with it again. Since discovering that the more you co-operate with an automated system the more options it generates, I have

Jeremy Clarke

Low life Jeremy Clarke

This old tin miner’s cottage that I’m now living in is normally uninhabited in winter. The remoteness, incessant foul weather, guaranteed frozen pipes and impassable roads make the place unattractive for short-term tenants. ‘See how you get on,’ said the owner dubiously, when I offered to pay up front. ‘It might not be easy. You might hate it.’ I didn’t tell her that a little hardship, a little masochism, some exposure to the elements, is exactly what I am looking for. There is no running water at present. The pipe taking water from the stream and delivering it to the inside taps is still frozen, so I’m collecting my cooking

Taki

High life | 22 January 2011

Gstaad Having spent a great part of my life charting the decline of civilisation, I am not at all surprised at the goings-on in Tunisia, especially as I never considered the place to be civilised. How apt that the arch crook dictator Ben Ali (Baba) slithered away to Saudi Arabia, itself a beacon of democracy and human rights — especially for women — instead of embarrassing my little community of Saanen and landing here in good old Helvetia. Mind you, Saanen airport can only take very small jets, something a crook like Ben Ali Baba would never deign to escape in. But it’s nice that crooks and dictators help each

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 22 January 2011

U and non-U saw their birth in 1954, in volume 55 of Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. A.S.C. Ross’s ‘Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present-Day English’ was presented to the world in the same learned journal that later published the linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky, though much of the world waited in ignorance until 1956, when Ross’s ideas were collected by Nancy Mitford in Noblesse Oblige. Ross’s thesis was that in England, ‘it is solely by its language that the upper class is clearly marked off’. He conceded that some non-linguistic markers remained, such as playing the game real tennis or a dislike of the telephone. Nowadays that might perhaps be mobiles. Ross acknowledged that verbal

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 22 January 2011

To interview people for my biography of Lady Thatcher, I often go the House of Lords, where many of the best witnesses lurk. Recently, the place has become so crowded that queues form at the Peers’ Entrance and mobs of petitioners are kettled beside the coat-racks. The reason is that New Labour created more peers than any government since Lloyd George, so the coalition felt it had to balance the numbers. As controversial legislation, such as the Alternative Vote referendum, is debated, three-line whips have become frequent. This week, we had the great sleep-in. The place is an ermine slum. Now reformers are saying that it is disgraceful that some

The Spectator

Asking the wrong questions

The plot thickens It is as if we are stuck in a hideous loop. The plot thickens It is as if we are stuck in a hideous loop. Every few months, it seems, Tony Blair is once again hauled up to give evidence to the never-ending Iraq inquiry. Each time he is dragged from a luxury hotel in some distant land to London, where he gives the younger political generation a masterclass in how to evade direct questioning. The questioning always proceeds along the same lines: why did we go to war? But the real scandal is the British army was defeated in Basra, and the Iraqi people abandoned to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Extremism – not just violent extremism – is the problem

Charles Moore has an important piece in the Telegraph today criticising Baroness Warsi’s muddle-headed speech [a speech which interestingly doesn’t appear on her page on the party website]. In it, he reveals that the Prime Minister himself has been devoting much thought to the question of how to deal with Islamic extremism. Charles writes that Cameron will give a significant speech on the matter in the next few weeks in which he’ll argue that the government and society need to tackle extremism per se, not just violent extremism. This is welcome news. To say that extremism only becomes a problem when it turns violent is to miss the point. If you

Martin Bright

Does the coalition hate young people?

The real question raised by Suzanne Moore’s latest impassioned piece for The Guardian is whether the coalition government likes young people at all, or even gave them a thought when considering their cuts-reform double whammy.   Here’s the rub: “There are no jobs. The most beautifully manicured CV will not get you a minimum-wage job in a pub. Your brilliant degree is meaningless when what employers repeatedly emphasise is ‘experience’… Every rite of passage of becoming an adult – a job, an income you can live on, affordable housing, independence from parents – is being taken away.”   This is overstated for effect. It isn’t quite true that there are

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What would Tony do?

It is easy to tell when David Cameron is wading into trouble during interviews. He becomes defensive, audibly irritated and — as an emergency self-calming measure — tries to force a little laugh. He performed this telltale routine on the radio on Monday, when challenged over his NHS reforms. He had promised the country no more upheavals to the NHS — and had clearly reneged. How to get out of this tight spot? Cite Tony Blair. In a speech later that day Cameron invoked the former PM’s name to justify himself. Bringing in these health reforms was just what Blair would have done. How could any sensible person disagree with

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Sir Humphrey’s new suit

A friend of mine has just come back from a few days of Civil Service in-house training. He managed in no time to get the hang of the exercise, namely, the mastery of another language. Not a foreign language, which might have been handy, but not English either. ‘I learnt,’ he said proudly, ‘about “brain-friendly learning”, “career pathing”, “energy management” and — my absolute favourite — “impact residue”, which is what you leave behind when you have met someone: what the uninitiated would call a lasting impression. I was encouraged to “flex my styles” and identify “meta-objectives”. In short, I am a new man.’ In other words, he’s learned management-speak.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

From the land of the risk assessment, everywhere looks as dangerous as Beirut

There was a stupid woman on the television news the other night, interviewed the day after she and her family had arrived for their holiday in — yes — Tunisia. There was a stupid woman on the television news the other night, interviewed the day after she and her family had arrived for their holiday in — yes — Tunisia. The rioting had been going on for the best part of a week by the time she showed up, but this fact had entirely escaped her notice. She told the reporter that upon arrival she saw some holiday-makers milling in the hotel lobby and approached one to ask cheerfully if

Dominic Prince

The racehorse diet

Being married to Rose, one of the greatest cooks in the country, is an especially pleasurable thing. No meal is ever dull. Breakfast can be a variety of treats from toast to scrambled eggs to a fried venison liver. Lunch is usually a sausage, perhaps some lentils or something leftover from the evening before. Dinner kicks off around 6 p.m. with a cocktail or two followed by wine. In winter we are great consumers of game, partridge, hare and pheasant. Thick creamy curries, poached fish, beef dripping with red blood. Great hunks of homemade bread lashed with butter and topped with a piece of artisan cheese. There are always leftovers. Rose

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Sometimes, freedom requires doing your homework

‘Have you heard about the vast Libertarian conspiracy? We’re going to take over the government — and then leave you alone!’ This is the kind of joke that makes me proud to be libertarian, as a lot of the wisest, funniest and best people are these days, from Kelsey Grammer to Clint Eastwood to Trey Parker from South Park. ‘Have you heard about the vast Libertarian conspiracy? We’re going to take over the government — and then leave you alone!’ This is the kind of joke that makes me proud to be libertarian, as a lot of the wisest, funniest and best people are these days, from Kelsey Grammer to

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Triplicate

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s competition In Competition No. 2681 you were invited to submit a treble clerihew about a public figure who was prominent in 2009 or 2010. Jaspistos, who ran a similar competition some years ago, noted that it was E.C. Bentley’s son, the author and illustrator Nicolas Bentley, who invented the double clerihew form. Examples of the treble are difficult to track down; my predecessor was breaking new ground with this assignment. Honourable mentions to John O’Byrne and Frank Osen. Shorter entries mean space for more winners this week. Those printed below are rewarded with £20 each. W.J. Webster storms home with the bonus fiver for the

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: Tweaking the Formula

The annual Ferrari junket to Madonna di Campiglio in the Italian Alps last week is, understandably, regarded by motor-racing journalists as the king of freebies. Expect a whole slew of sports stories about the new Formula One season, which roars off in a few weeks in Bahrain. But, in truth, 2011 has a fair bit to live up to. There was an excellent narrative last year as the championship battle went to the wire in Abu Dhabi with four drivers still in the hunt. The season might have been a thriller but it was still very apparent that modern grand prix racing cars aren’t very good at their core purpose: