Society

A rare, unvarnished honesty: Pete Postlethwaite remembered

Pete Postlethwaite, with whom, sadly, I never worked, belonged to that group of journeymen actors who command the respect and admiration of their peers but are denied the wider honours until death claims them. How amazed he would have been by the enormous photograph that graced the front-pages of the newspapers — his unique, craggy face that had never known botox or cosmetic surgery, displaying more character than many of his more vaunted fellow thespians. It is sometimes forgotten that an actor’s career is more often than not sculptured in snow and disappears so quickly when he or she is removed from public view, for it is an inescapable fact

At war with the Greeks

America’s love of the ancient republics has had military consequences in the present If you’re 40 or older and I ask you to think back to the worst moments of your life as a schoolchild, memory will probably take you straight to Latin class. Remember how it was taught by a wizened old beak in a faded gown, who favoured merciless drilling, responded to grammatical errors with a rap of the cane, and squeezed the fun out of even the most heroic Roman tales? Latin has largely disappeared from English schools and I dare say that 19 out of every 20 among you don’t miss it. By contrast, it is

James Delingpole

Am I offending the wrong Americans?

Q. Why did God give liberals annoying, whiny voices? A. So that even the blind could hate them. Q. Why did God give liberals annoying, whiny voices? A. So that even the blind could hate them. This is probably my favourite joke from a new book I just published in the US, (hence the use of ‘liberal’ in its American sense), called 365 Ways To Drive A Liberal Crazy. Though I don’t think it’s quite as funny as the Obama ‘Men Who Stare At Goats’ joke or the one about Nancy Pelosi and the sheep on the desert island, I like it a) because I invented it (or, rather, adapted

Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 8 January 2011

A knighthood for the last banker who put his shareholders’ interests first The New Year honours list is always a vivid indicator of the times just gone by. No brand better encapsulated the feelgood consumer frenzy of the last decade than Lush, the purveyor of organic soaps and Fairtrade lotions alongside campaigns to save sharks and rainforests, whose name has (perhaps coincidentally, but it can’t have done sales any harm) become slang for something luxurious and desirable. Lush’s founding couple, Mark and Mo Constantine, collect an OBE apiece. As for the dark side of the last decade, the financial services sector, which accounts for almost 10 per cent of the

Competition: Going for a song

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s competition In Competition No. 2679 you were invited to usher in the New Year with a teetotallers’ drinking song. As usual with this sort of challenge, many that read well on the page didn’t lend themselves to being sung aloud. But an impressive entry yielded some rousing and not unpersuasive calls to shun the liquid devil. Their authors of the following earn £25 each while Ray Kelley nabs £30. In the instructions for Competition 2681 the year should have read 2010. Figures from either 2009 or 2010 will be acceptable. Charge your pannikin with water, Toast in springsprung H2O Staunch Aquarius, transporter Of the finest

Folkie supergroup

The Fence Collective is a loose association of singers, musicians and songwriters, at least a few of whom live in and around Anstruther in Fife. The Fence Collective is a loose association of singers, musicians and songwriters, at least a few of whom live in and around Anstruther in Fife. Anstruther is a fishing village and not the first place you’d go looking for a revolution, but the Fence Collective has other ideas. It hosts events and festivals and even has its own record company. I was brought up in Fife, so when I heard about Fence I was curious. Soon thereafter I was part of the congregation and singing

Lloyd Evans

Bookends: Divinely decadent

The film-maker John Waters specialises in weirdos. His new book, Role Models (Beautiful Books, £15.99), is a collection of interviews and anecdotes seasoned with off-beat fashion tips. The film-maker John Waters specialises in weirdos. His new book, Role Models (Beautiful Books, £15.99), is a collection of interviews and anecdotes seasoned with off-beat fashion tips. One of his earliest films, Multiple Maniacs, was a reaction to the Manson family massacres of 1969. He attended a pre-trial hearing where ‘the atmosphere was electric with twisted evil beauty.’ He later befriended Leslie Van Houten, sentenced to life for the LaBianca murders, and he now lobbies for her to be granted parole. There are

Responding to CoffeeHousers on inflation

Inflation is one of the most important topics around right how so I thought I’d respond to CoffeeHousers’ comments in a post rather than the original thread. Nick and Gareth Sutcliffe say that inflation is due to global forces (and they’re right insofar as metals, food, etc are all going up). But if the money supply is managed properly, this needn’t push consumer prices too high – most other countries have stable inflation, as the first chart in my post shows: Britain is in Greek territory. My point: the British level of inflation is exceptional. Greenslime suggests price controls – a very bad idea. Even Marx saw this. The prices

The week that was | 7 January 2011

Here is a selection of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson is pleased that Gove’s school reforms have reached a ‘tipping point’, and weighs up King’s ransom. James Forsyth charts the political fallout from the VAT increase, and says there is all to play for in Oldham East. Peter Hoskin observes IPSA offering MPs an olive branch, and asks if Osborne will be vindicated in 2015. David Blackburn says the right should have few causes of concern, and examines the flaws in Ed Miliband’s economic argument. Daniel Korski is concerned for democracy in Belarus. Martin Bright considers the new enterprise allowance. Nick Cohen notes the

Chaytor in chokey

Log it in your diaries, CoffeeHousers: on this day – Friday, 7th January, 2011 – a former MP was sent to jail for abusing the parliamentary expenses system. Yes, David Chaytor has been sentenced to eighteen months for, ahem, “false accounting” his way to £18,000 of taxpayers’ cash. He’s the first former parliamentarian to be sent down since Jeffrey Archer in 2001. As fallout from the expenses scandal goes, it’s probably the most searing example yet. But the question now is whether there will be any fallout from the fallout, so to speak. While Chaytor’s punishment draws a line under his involvement in this sorry saga, it could yet turn

From the archives: Protesting the price hikes

The week began with grim projections about petrol prices, and has been coloured by the twin topics of tax and inflation since. So, a decent opportunity to look back on the fuel protests of 2000, in the latest shot from the Spectator archives. Here’s a piece from the time, by Coffee House regular, and Spectator theatre critic, Lloyd Evans:   Do you want a smack in the mouth?, Lloyd Evans, The Spectator, 16 September 2000 As I write this, the gravest crisis in our island story is unfolding before my eyes. The great four-star emergency of September 2000. Where it will lead, no one can tell. Frequent bulletins from BBC

James Forsyth

David Aaronovitch and the social conservative consensus

David Aaronovitch is one of the preeminent voices of the liberal-left in this country. He is no social conservative and has been dismissive of those who want a lower time-limit for abortion. But today he wrote something that reminded me of that famous Peggy Noonan column about the Columbine massacre and ‘the ocean in which our children swim.’ Aaronovitch writing about the Times’ investigation into sex gangs says: ‘Sometimes I look at what the surrounding culture says to our kids and wonder whether we are mad. On the one hand we can be persuaded only with difficulty to give them decent sex education, so terrified are we by their latent

Balls strikes at delicate Clegg

Ed Balls has been biding his time on Control Orders, but now he has struck. Writing on his blog, he appealed for consensus on this ‘sensitive issue’. ‘I have told Theresa May that, wherever possible, I will support her over the counter-terrorism measures that must be taken in the national interest – and we will play our part in building a new consensus for the future… that’s what a responsible Opposition should do.’ Balls knows that May favours retaining Control Orders, so perhaps this is a subtle endorsement of her position against the Lib Dems. He continues, conceding that he does not possess the facts. (The Home Secretary, of course,

Fraser Nelson

Gove’s school reforms approach a tipping point

Today marks something of a milestone for Michael Gove’s school reform agenda. Free schools – i.e. ‘Academies’ which are independently run, yet within the state sector – now account for more than 10 percent of British secondaries. This is what I have always thought of as a tipping point – where independent schools offer real competition to council schools (i.e. those run by their local authority). One hesitates to sound too confident, but the genie of choice seems to have been yanked out of the bottle, and a few facts are worth nothing: 1. There are now 407 Academies open, twice the amount in May 2010. The 400 mark was,

Central government and local government lock horns over bin collection

It seems that Cardinal Walter Kasper was right: parts of Britain are suggestive of the Third World. The Sun has been leading the tally-ho against council leaders in Exeter and Birmingham, who have allowed rubbish to lie in the streets for more than a month. And today, Local Government Minister Bob Neil joined (£) the fray, condemning councils for failing to deliver ‘one of the most basic services’. (He also mentioned executive pay, again.) Recalcitrant councils have issued a plethora of meteorological excuses, but these are mostly a distraction. Many councils managed to remove rubbish over Christmas; David Cameron commended them for their efforts. Others remained inert on grounds of

Stable house prices won’t happen by themselves

Grant Shapps has impressed in the housing brief, arguing that house prices rising faster than wages is not a good thing (with which Policy Exchange’s report, Making Housing Affordable, agreed). He has probably been encouraged by the fact that some recent polls have shown even a majority of owners want prices to stop rising. Perhaps having your kids live with you until they are 40 just isn’t a popular option? More so, rising house prices only benefit those who downsize (now rare) or own multiple properties; and in the wider economy it mostly discourages productive investment and encourages borrowing – hardly good things.   But while Shapps’s aim is laudable,

Alex Massie

Land of the Unwell

I’m afraid this blogging-hiatus is likely to continue for another day or so. Or at least until the batch of plague from which I’m currently suffering moves on to victims new. Assuming it ever does… Meanwhile, here are the answers to the 2010 edition of the Christmas Quiz: CHRISTMAS QUIZ 2010 ANSWERS: 1. Where could you find a countryside poet, a TV doctor, a defeated Presidential candidate and an English detective? These are all Irish counties: John Clare, Dr Kildare, John Kerry and Ruth Rendell’s Chief Inspector Wexford. 2. What didn’t happen in Berlin in 1916 or in Tokyo in 1940 or London in 1944? The Summer Olympics were due

James Forsyth

The VAT argument bubbles along

Today has been one of predictable political sparring over the VAT increase. But, as one Tory MP said to me last night, the crucial question is how long people keep talking about it. If the public come to blame the VAT rise for every price rise they encounter—as Ed Miliband wants them to—then the coalition has a problem. But if the new VAT rise just becomes a fact of life then the coalition will pay a low political price for the rise. Indeed, if the VAT rise ends up helping provide money for an income tax cut later in the parliament then the coalition could actually benefit from it. (Note

Across Europe, students are protesting against the end of their entitlements

A month ago I found myself in the space of one week in two different countries, yet in the midsts of what felt like the same phenomenon: the political awakening of a new generation. In both London and Rome, students took to the streets to protest against government policies in numbers and in ways that those who graduated just a few years before would have found anachronistic, odd even. Unsurprisingly, given the historical, political and even emotional differences between Britain and Italy, there were differences between the protests. But as I walked the packed streets, listened to the protests, read their slogans, I heard similar arguments – particularly about the