Society

Saturday

Toby Young Toby Young

What’s happened to the chaps?

Bad news this week for those who fear we’re becoming a nation of girlie men. According to a survey carried out by Demos, a third of men who graduated from university this summer would give up their careers to care for their children. In addition, more than half the men surveyed said they frequently dress up in women’s clothing, while 66 per cent admitted they still hide behind the sofa during Doctor Who. Okay, I made that last part up, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The feminisation of the latest generation of young men never ceases to amaze me. With their long, blow-dried hair, their expensive designer clothes, their ‘man

Robin Oakley

Irish connection

Shepherd’s Walk in Epsom has seen plenty of horse action over the years. Jack Reardon trained there 70 years ago and it was from that leafy lane that John Sutcliffe sent out Specify to win the 1971 Grand National and from where John Benstead would patiently prepare slow-developing stayers for Hamdan al-Maktoum. A few years ago, though, several trainers having moved in and out, the proud morning parade of horses heading across to the grandstand and the training grounds had dwindled to a trickle. All that has now changed. Fifty-plus equine athletes wind through the trees of a morning again. Roger Teal has scored at top level, and at Ermyn

Melissa Kite

Real life

If you’re Eric Pickles, please look away now. I think it only fair to warn the Secretary of State for local government, in case he happens to be reading this in a precious moment of relaxation, that I’m about to have another rant about the catastrophic events that unfolded after one of his advisors sent me a text message while I was riding my horse one Sunday afternoon. For those who don’t know the back story, this thrusting young spin doctor, probably thinking he was being really on his game in a retro-Alastair Campbell sort of way, attempted to monster me for a news story I had written which he

Jeremy Clarke

Low life

A friend of a friend has been staying for a few weeks until her new house is ready to move in to. She is 50 years old, divorced, never stops talking, works with deaf people. She is as shallow as the Thames at Southend when the tide’s going out, but I quite like shallow. I’m shallow myself, come to think of it. In her spare time her interests are men, wine, Golden Virginia and cannabis sativa. She claims to be a socialist, but I think the extent of her solidarity with the toiling masses is that she might buy a Daily Mirror occasionally to catch up with the showbiz gossip.

Taki

High life

Gstaad The new look requires a new, improved Taki. From now on gravitas will be my middle name. There will be no more of this jet-set stuff. Constant classical themes will mix with references to songs by Schubert, and stories inspired by Horace and Racine. Taki the social commentator is dead; long live Taki the philosopher, humanist and classical scholar. (And if you believe that, it’s time for the men in white coats.) But let me try, for this time only at least, to justify my new middle name. Eight years ago Pat Buchanan, Scott McConnell and I founded the American Conservative, a national biweekly whose purpose was to expose

The Spectator

Letters | 18 September 2010

The ventures of faith Sir: Peter Hitchens eloquently describes the moral vacuum created by the permissive society, and suggests recourse to the Book of Common Prayer (‘In the shadow of the Pope’, 11 September). The world, however, will never be saved by beautiful prose. Indeed, aesthetic indulgence may all too easily substitute for moral rigour. ‘We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings,’ we Anglicans pray; ‘the remembrance of them is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable.’ How glorious to surrender to such seductive self-flagellation. And then we go out and sin again. The Christian message is that we can overcome sin only

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 18 September 2010

‘Quick, darling, you’re missing the last taboo,’ shouted my husband from the drawing-room with the television on, as I was working in the kitchen. ‘Quick, darling, you’re missing the last taboo,’ shouted my husband from the drawing-room with the television on, as I was working in the kitchen. He is a collector of last taboos. Once, it was death. Since there’s been geriatric sex (when he loudly complained of the misuse of geriatric), sex-change surgery live, The Vagina Monologues, Tourettism and Joan Bakewell. Yet linguistic taboos about race, sex (‘gender’) and disability have multiplied, despite the popularity of ever more ingeniously obscene slang. On the same principle as Wikipedia, these

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 18 September 2010

It is a convention of modern politics that cuts in public spending must be made sorrowfully. Etiquette seems to demand that phrases like ‘unpleasant task’ and ‘sharing the pain’ be used. Just before writing this, I heard Francis Maude on the Today programme deploying such terms with studious moderation. But one notices that most top-quality politicians, including Mr Maude, actually take some professional pleasure in the work. They are right to do so. It should be an absolute condition of taking money from the public through taxation that the person taking it minds wasting it. It is an absolute certainty, given the amounts of money taken, that huge amounts will

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 18 September 2010

Home Pope Benedict XVI was expected to conclude a four-day state visit to Britain with the beatification of Cardinal Newman in Birmingham, after addressing Parliament at Westminster Hall and meeting the Queen in Edinburgh. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, called the visit ‘incredibly important and historic’. The Queen’s Speech, outlining the government programme of legislation, which was expected in the autumn of 2011, has been delayed until spring 2012. Derek Barnett, the president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, said that austerity is likely to lead to ‘disaffection, social and industrial tensions’. Unions at the BBC planned two 48-hour strikes, affecting coverage of the Conservative party conference. A 2,000-year-old Roman bronze

The Spectator

Benedict brings hope

But, if the protestors know where Benedict XVI stands on issues of sexual morality, they have a very shaky grasp of his precise relationship to these issues. The arrival of Pope Benedict XVI in Britain has provoked protests that, in the intesity of their anger, far exceed those that greet the state visits of blood-drenched dictators. That is because the Pope is seen to represent — in ascending order of secular distaste — religion, Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church and the conservative wing of Catholicism. Fair enough: Benedict does represent all of these things. He opposes atheism, regarding it as a desperately sad alienation of man from his creator. He

The Spectator

Spot the difference

You may notice that your Spectator looks a little different this week. We have updated its design, but cautiously, taking the best ideas from past magazines, and refreshing the rest. Even the tidiest house needs a little spring-cleaning from time to time. Many read the Spectator back to front, so our peerless books and arts sections now have their own opening page. Some readers felt that Taki and Jeremy Clarke were buried at the back of the Arts section, so we’ve given them a section of their own — Life begins at page 71. And we’ve made room for some shorter features as well as long reads. And what of

The Spectator

Barometer | 18 September 2010

Papal visit Pope Benedict XVI visits Britain this week, only the second pope to do so. The first was John Paul II in 1982. Some facts and figures from his visit: — John Paul II’s native Poland was still behind the Iron Curtain and it was to be another 22 years before it joined the EU. Nevertheless, 24,000 Poles then living in Britain attended a mass at Crystal Palace. — As the media coverage intensified, 350,000 people attended open-air mass at Coventry Cathedral, a million lined the streets in Liverpool and 180,000 attended mass at York racecourse. —By the time the Pope reached Manchester, interest had waned. Only 200,000, compared

The Spectator

No Fly – Best of the Rest

Costa Cruises www.costacruises.co.uk 0845 351 0552 Inspired by music, the colourful interiors of the Costa Pacifica characterise the lively atmosphere onboard. The Pacifica sails from Dover to Savona in Italy for a nine-night cruise calling at Guernsey, Vigo, Lisbon, Valencia, Barcelona and Monte Carlo. On board there is a Grand Prix Simulator, a spectacular outer deck with glass roof and night cinema, and a theatre with exceptional sound quality. For relaxation, there is the Samsara Spa. From £689 per person. Cruise & Maritime Voyages www.cruiseandmaritime.com 0845 430 0274 Britain’s newest cruise line, Cruise & Maritime Voyages, has two small ships, Marco Polo and Ocean Countess that sail from six different

The Spectator

Enrichment – Best of the Rest

Azamara Club Cruises www.azamaraclubcruises.co.uk 0844 493 4016 Azamara offer upscale boutique cruises within the Royal Caribbean Cruise portfolio. Azamara prides itself on offering guests two or three nights in ports such as St Petersburg, Sorrento, Venice and Monte Carlo. Its two ships, Azamara Quest and Azamara Journey, take just 650 passengers each and are able to enter smaller harbours. Every cruise has a ‘destination specialist’ on board to give in-depth information about the ports of call. In December Quest will sail from Singapore to Hong Kong and in January it sets out for a 14-night Chinese New Year voyage. In the spring it will sail from Dubai to Athens. In

Julian Allason

A learning experience

The wash from the cruise ship Crystal Serenity sends spray splashing up to the Hotel du Cap Eden Roc, where F. Scott Fitzgerald finished The Great Gatsby. That’s the sort of fact that passengers aboard this luxury ship appreciate. Guests on Crystal Serenity have opted to be ‘enriched’, meaning they have eschewed the kind of uncomprehending, mass experience they might get on bigger cruises. They want instead an atmosphere of erudition and culture. They are cruising not just to enjoy, but to learn. Enrichment is not a matter of sophistication, nationality or class and certainly not one of wealth: one does not need to be rich to be enriched. Indeed

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 18 September 2010

Thought-crimes mainly refer to what we all think about those stupid laws and bossy official directives only designed for your benefit, sir. Romans did not face these but rather what George Orwell in 1984 understood by thought-crime: wholly innocent activities interpreted as threats to state security. The historian Tacitus is full of them. When one of Rome’s best-loved sons, Germanicus, mysteriously died, many suspected the jealous emperor Tiberius was involved. So in ad 28, when a distinguished Roman, Titius Sabinus, started helping out the widow and family, some ambitious public figures saw a chance to prove their loyalty to the emperor by stitching up Sabinus good and proper. One of

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Review of Spectator arts funding debate

‘Time for the arts to stand on its own two feet and stop sponging off the taxpayer’ From the start, the combatively worded motion came under attack. Culture secretary Ed Vaizey called it ‘brutal, vulgar, left-wing, and hostile to excellence and quality.’ He urged us not to think of the arts as a layabout teenager watching Neighbours and eating cold pizza all day. The arts doesn’t sponge off the taxpayer, he said, it’s the other way around. The subsidy supports the burgeoning tourism market. He revealed that the independent arts sector welcomes stated-funded art and regards it as a research and development department. He defended free entrance to museums with

Melanie Phillips

I think, therefore I’m guilty

Britain is a liberal and progressive utopia – and the authorities will arrest anyone who disagrees Everyone can agree that today’s Britain — which we’re always being told has become so much more liberal — is the very model of a forward-looking, tolerant society in which freedom of expression is paramount. Correct? If only. In fact, the intellectual trend in Britain is a remorseless slide towards a dark age of intolerance, reverting to a reason-suppressing, heresy-hunting culture in which certain opinions are being turned into thought crimes. Astoundingly, people are being arrested by the police — even if the case against them eventually falls — because of what they have

Alan Rusbridger

How to stifle the press

It feels wrong, as a journalist, to be letting outsiders into this secret, but it is really quite easy to cover things up in England. If you are determined enough it won’t cost you a penny to buy silence. Nor does it even much matter whether you live in this country: our legal system stands ready to help all-comers. It couldn’t be simpler. You hire a solicitor with a working knowledge of Britain’s libel laws to fire off a fierce letter to whichever journalist has been pestering you. It will be the opening salvo in a process which rapidly threatens to become eye-wateringly expensive. If it’s a local paper that

Christopher Booker

Scientists in hiding

Academics who dare to question the scientific establishment’s consensus on Darwinism or global warming increasingly find themselves ostracised and demonised Three months ago I spent a fascinating few days in a villa opposite Cap Ferrat, taking part in a seminar with a dozen very bright scientists, some world authorities in their field. Although most had never met before, they had two things in common. Each had come to question one of the most universally accepted scientific orthodoxies of our age: the Darwinian belief that life on earth evolved simply through the changes brought about by an infinite series of minute variations. The other was that, on arriving at these conclusions,