Society

Saturday

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Are we the only nation in the world where nice, middle-class girls aspire to be concubines?

Do you think it might be possible to plot a link between the apparently vast pool of girls who dream of sleeping with Wayne Rooney for cash, and how rubbish The Vicar of Dibley was? I’m keen that we should. In general, in fact, I feel the rubbishness of The Vicar of Dibley should be considered the cause of as many world evils as we can throw at it. Disease, war, earthquakes, whatever we’ve got. You know those teary-eyed socialists who loathe Tony Blair because they used to love him, but then he betrayed them over Iraq? I’m like that with Richard Curtis. When I was a teenager, the man

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The arrogant tone of Dave the tax gatherer won’t lead to reconciliation

Another time,’ began the Gospel reading last Sunday, ‘the tax gatherers and other bad characters were all crowding in to listen…’ Bible scholars will have spotted that our curate chose the New English version of the parable of the lost sheep, and that ‘tax gatherers and other bad characters’ is the modern rendering of ‘publicans and sinners’. Another time,’ began the Gospel reading last Sunday, ‘the tax gatherers and other bad characters were all crowding in to listen…’ Bible scholars will have spotted that our curate chose the New English version of the parable of the lost sheep, and that ‘tax gatherers and other bad characters’ is the modern rendering

Lucy Vickery

Competition No. 2664: In two minds

In Competition 2664 you were invited to submit a dialogue, in verse or prose, between two parts of yourself at odds with one another. As usual, verse entries vastly outnumbered prose ones. In an excellent field, Brian Murdoch, Adrian Fry, Bill Greenwell and Fergus Pickering stood out. Basil Ransome-Davies scoops the bonus fiver for a hilarious exchange between id and superego. This is your superego calling, Who finds your conduct quite appalling. do da dirty do da sin dump da pussy in da bin To raise us from the primal swamp We must curtail the instinct’s romp. why dont we do it in da road up ya bum ya moral

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Federer has lost his grip

What with all the whoring, coke-snorting and match-fixing, it has been a tricky few weeks for those of us, ahem, who look to sport for moral guidance. Incidentally, it’s worth remembering that all those stories which, quite rightly, have set huge waves rolling across the news and sport agenda appeared in the News of the World, a paper that has come under heavy fire recently — though if you listen closely you can hear the squeal of axes being ground. So keep in mind that without papers such as the Screws, some very dodgy people will continue to get away with some very dodgy deeds. As Donald Trelford, the former

Mary Killen

Dear Mary

Q. Friends have just moved into a new house — let’s call it Gamekeepers Folly. I am planning to give them a handmade visitors’ book as a present, but am in somewhat of a quandary as to what to tell the embosser to put on the front. Should I have the missing apostrophe inserted or not? The official records do not have it. My friends are well-educated people but I have not yet had their new notepaper so do not know if they have picked up the point. And if so, should I assume there was only one (‘Gamekeeper’), or several? — Name withheld, Shaftesbury A. If it really were

Michael Tanner

Murdering Mozart

While the Royal Opera is touring Japan, its home team opened what looks to be mainly an unadventurous season with revivals of two celebrated productions by Jonathan Miller, for which Miller himself returned, having, it seems, modified his view of Così fan tutte drastically, while there probably aren’t two ways of looking at Don Pasquale. While the Royal Opera is touring Japan, its home team opened what looks to be mainly an unadventurous season with revivals of two celebrated productions by Jonathan Miller, for which Miller himself returned, having, it seems, modified his view of Così fan tutte drastically, while there probably aren’t two ways of looking at Don Pasquale.

Friday

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: John Paul II’s visit to Britain

No need to explain why we’ve disinterred this piece by Peter Ackroyd, on the last papal visit to Britain, from the Spectator archives. And, to the left, the cover image by Garland from that week’s issue. As news emerges that five people have been arrested in connection with a terror plot against Benedict XVI, a reminder that papal visits are always replete with global-political significance: The Pope and his princeling, by Peter Ackroyd, The Spectator, 5 June 1982 The pilgrims arrived in Canterbury, carrying their fold-up chairs in plastic Sainsbury bags; strange rumours on the train from London: ‘You can’t get into town without a permit. They say they’ve stopped

David Blackburn

Andrew Mitchell: the answer to global terrorism

Al Shabaab and al Qeada are brothers in arms – Somalia is a hothouse for terror. Jonathan Evans, director general of MI5, has openly expressed his view that it is ‘just a matter of time’ until Somalia and the Yemen export terrorism to Britain’s streets. That striking statement contains one oversight: they do already. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, was trained in the Yemen and two of the 7/7 bombers were Somali. How to eradicate this threat? The legacies of Iraq and financial retrenchment have made armed intervention an absolute last resort. Counter-terrorism is essential, but well targeted aid is the easiest remedy for chaos. In a speech

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Sad Wurzels

Yorkshire cricket is the epitome of hard, correct cricket. Lancashire cricket is always bowling into the wind, beating the edge and wondering if luck will ever shine on the Red Rose. Kent cricket, I somehow feel, should always be played in a manner that has the ghosts of Woolley and Cowdrey murmuring their approval. These, of course, are generalisations. So if Trent Bridge remains the loveliest of Test grounds (“A lotus land for batsman”, as Cardus wrote, “where it is always afternoon and 360 for 2”), I’ve nonetheless always thought of Nottinghamshire as a kind of junior Yorkshire. From Arthur Carr and Larwood and Voce to Clive Rice and Richard

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Introducing the new-look Spectator

You may notice that today’s Spectator looks a little different. We have updated our design, introducing some new features and bringing back some old ones. I suspect that a good number of our readers will not really notice the new design as such – just, I hope, that the magazine looks better. As ConservativeHome says, why tamper with a winning formula? I know that many CoffeeHousers would not dream of paying for dead-tree publications, but for those who are interested in these things I thought I’d run through what we have done, and the thinking behind it. The problem really hit me last Christmas, when a friend of mine bought

Ruth Richardson

Pulling off a public finance rescue mission

This is the next of our posts with Reform looking ahead to the Spending Review. Earlier posts were on health, education, the first hundred days, welfare, the Civil Service, international experiences (New Zealand, Canada,Ireland) and Hon Ruth Richardson’s recent speech and selling the case for cuts to the public.   George Osborne was right to frame the forthcoming UK Spending Review as a once in a generation opportunity to reshape government.  While it is convenient to see the current fiscal debate as cyclical, the truth is that heavily indebted countries such as the UK have a structural problem rooted in the overreach of government. So Mr Osborne will succeed if

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Picture of the Day: Last Hours of Summer

The Yarrow Valley, yesterday. More later, including a post on Freddie Flintoff plus the excruciating conclusion to the County Championship. But for now, a pastoral scene to soothe overstretched Somerset nerves… UPDATE: Bloody Notts have taken the three wickets they needed to steal the Championship from Somerset. 119 years of not winning the title now. And still the wait goes on. A sad, bitter day for wurzels everywhere.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Popish plots

What exactly did Cardinal Walter Kasper of the Vatican mean when he said that Britain was like “a third world country”? More specifically he said that “when you land at Heathrow” it’s like arriving in a Third World Country. Most people have cheerfully taken this to be a racist observation – ie, that there are all too many black and Asian people milling around, unlike in Cardinal Kasper’s home town of Stuttgart where by law everybody has to be white. But it may be that he was simply observing hell of Heathrow Airport in general where you receive the sort of service which you might expect in a third world

David Blackburn

Labour draws level with the Tories

Leaderless Labour is neck and neck with the Tories for the first time in more than two years, according to the Reuters/IPSOS Mori monthly poll. This follows the trend that Pete observed a couple of days ago, and surely Anthony Wells’ prediction will come to pass: Labour will overtake the Tories. However, these grim figures are not terminal. Theoretically, this parliament has another four and half years to run. More than 60 percent of the population believe cuts are necessary, but 75 percent contest that retrenchment must come this fast. That’s healthy scepticism rather than mass-revulsion. Providing the coalition holds, time is on its side. The longer Labour opposes measures

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Who’s Afraid of Catholic Schools?

Since it’s Pope Day, let’s consider this tediously-hardy perennial too. Commenting on this post, Fifer asks: Since you’ve given this some thought, then, perhaps you can answer me this – why, exactly, are my taxes being used to fund an education system divided in Scotland on sectarian lines when, out of a population of 5 million, only 65,000 can be bothered turning up to see the head of their faith preach? Even Celtic can manage that turnout a few times a year. If we really are in the dire financial straits we’re told we are, perhaps it really is time to “think of the children” and educate them all as

Peter Hoskin

On the Pope’s visit

The Pope, as I’m sure you know, has touched down in Britain. Here, for CoffeeHousers, is the editorial on his visit from this week’s new-look issue of the magazine: Benedict brings hope 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

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Let’s move on from Stephen Fry’s Pope bashing

Stephen Fry is good at taking himself seriously while pretending not to take himself seriously. But slowly, as he gets older and grander, his self-effacing mask is slipping. He’s becoming less and less of a comedian, more and more a sanctimonious bore. Look at the way he has taken it upon himself to denounce, with such gravitas, Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain. In his interview with the BBC yesterday – see above – Fry insists that the Pope should be free to come to Britain. “How could I hold my head up if I objected to that?” he says. What Fry cannot not accept, he explains, is that the Pope’s time

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Hello Pope!

And welcome to Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Of all the pointless activities in all the world you’d think telling the Pope he’s wrong must rank pretty highly. So I don’t think there’s much point in standing outside Bellahouston Park today shouting “There is no God you know” at the 70,000 Roman Catholics attending the Papal Mass. Nor do I think there’s much to be said for wasting time and energy complaining, in effect, that the Pope has the effrontery to be, well, the Pope. But it seems that there’s no exhausting the appetite for being outraged these days. This week it’s the Pope’s visit but last

Wednesday

Andrew Haldenby

How the unions oppose the achievement of more for less

The TUC’s attack on a leading public sector reformer, reported today, was designed to embarrass him and discredit the idea of reforming the public sector.  In fact, it has shown that they will oppose any change to the public sector workforce, even if it results in a better service for the public.   According to reports (here and here), TUC staff yesterday handed out copies of the transcript to Reform’s conference on public sector productivity.  They highlighted a quote from the presentation by Tony McGuirk, the chief fire officer of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (FRS), that, “we’ve got some bone idle people in the public sector”.  Tony McGuirk