Society

Saturday

4 Dec 2010

Real life | 4 December 2010

I once met a woman who claimed to have been incarcerated in an addiction unit because her family found her scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. She said cleaning had become a mental and emotional obsession and that the amount and regularity of her scrubbing binges meant she had to admit she had hit rock-bottom. I remember thinking at the time, ‘Yep, this woman is stir fry. No one who cleans the floor with a toothbrush is in what could be described as a good place. Nor are they, in all probability, safe to walk the streets. You wouldn’t want to meet such a person in a dark alley.’ At

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 4 December 2010

Cow girl, my first encounter on the dating website, said she wanted to see me again, so the next weekend we met at the same hotel for another portion of the same. During the week she sent an email saying she couldn’t eat, and I’d assumed she was joking. But when she sprang out of her VW Golf to greet me she was visibly thinner, which was surprising, as she hadn’t had an ounce of fat on her to speak of to start with. She’d lost 5lbs, she said. Even more surprising was the admission that she’d been off her grub because she’d been in an emotional turmoil over the

Taki

High life | 4 December 2010

The irony is such that the word itself loses meaning. The ultimate Afghan conman, an oxymoron if ever there was one, is someone Hollywood couldn’t make up. A catch-him-if-you-can type of script wouldn’t make it past the first rewrite. Even ‘based on a true story’ wouldn’t help. If it weren’t for the dead and maimed for life, I’d be laughing my pants off. Just as funny was the timing, at least from my point of view. I’d gone up to Connecticut to spend the weekend with Graydon and Anna Carter, he being the supremo of Vanity Fair. Once there, I was given a Robert Harris book, Selling Hitler, about the

The Spectator

Letters | 4 December 2010

Pecksniffian bureaucrats Sir: I bought your 27 November issue purely on the promising cover illustration and was not disappointed. Josie Appleton’s masterly article (‘A common sense revolution’) held up to deserved ridicule the Criminal Records Bureau, a classic example of a very worthwhile idea hijacked by as big a bunch of Pecksniffian bureaucrats as ever wrung their hands. Of the many howling idiocies dragged whining and wailing into light, the crowning example was that of the cathedral flower guild who might have ‘paedophiles infiltrating’ their group because of a toilet-sharing arrangement with choirboys. On that basis, I would have thought it much more likely that a pervert seeking a happy

Toby Young

Status Anxiety: The real WikiLeaks revelation: Washington’s addiction to gossip

One of my tasks as an employee of Vanity Fair back in the mid-1990s was to compose weekly memos to my boss, Graydon Carter. These were supposed to be ‘intelligence briefings’ on the topics dominating the headlines, but I quickly discovered that he had no interest in news and current affairs. The only thing that interested him was gossip. I became the author of a weekly gossip column with a readership of one. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I could easily have parlayed this skill into a career in the State Department. Judging from the latest batch of WikiLeaks, American diplomats spend most of their time gathering

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 4 December 2010

I’ve been having as much fun as Citizen Kane must have had on his first outing with Rosebud, for the Oxford English Dictionary has this week fitted a powerful engine of analysis into its online version. I’ve been having as much fun as Citizen Kane must have had on his first outing with Rosebud, for the Oxford English Dictionary has this week fitted a powerful engine of analysis into its online version. One of the things it does is to tell you where in print the first citation of various words comes from. The Spectator boasts, if it ever boasts, 140 words first found in its pages, and another 3,469

Peter Hoskin

How the OBR measures up

There are only so many Labour interviews a blog can take, so I’ll skip over Yvette Cooper in the Guardian (sample: “I did think about standing, and Ed said he thought I should stand and if I wanted to stand he would not stand”). Instead, another catch-up on how the Office for Budget Responsibility’s growth forecasts are shaping up against those made by other institutions. Since I last did this, two new documents have been processed into the public domain: the OBR’s latest economic and fiscal outlook, of course, as well as the the Treasury’s round-up of long-term independent forecasts. So here’s how the panorama of forecasts looks now:

Alex Massie

Stick It Up Your Punter

There are only three things wrong with this Australian side. They can’t bat, they can’t bowl and they can’t field. A harsh verdict and one that may need to be revised before the end of the series, but one that’s an accurate appraisal of Australia’s most recent efforts. This is a good but hardly great England side. It ain’t Jack Hobbs and Wally Hammond hammering these hapless Aussie bowlers but Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott… “There’s only one side playing cricket out there – and it’s not Australia” said a commentator on Test Match Sofa* which is the kind of deliciously piquant assessment England supporters have been waiting to dish

Mary Killen

Dear mary your problems solved

Q. I volunteer for a charity one morning a week. This happens on one of the mornings when my cleaner comes. I have a feeling that as soon as I have gone out she knocks off early, knowing I won’t be back, although she still has another 45 minutes to go. I cannot put my finger on why I think this; it is just instinct. She is generally reliable but I think this is a temptation too great for her to resist. As I pay her £12 an hour, I find it annoying. What can I do, Mary? —J.F., London SW12 A. Why not get into the habit of loading

Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: A lifetime of Lent?

What divides the left from the right nowadays is almost never the wildly divergent aims each group claims to believe in: it’s simply that, at a personal level, each finds the other bloody irritating. What divides the left from the right nowadays is almost never the wildly divergent aims each group claims to believe in: it’s simply that, at a personal level, each finds the other bloody irritating. The left finds people on the right selfish and self-satisfied. They’re not wrong. A philosopher friend of mine says he dislikes the City ‘not for the money they earn but the unquestioning sense that they deserve it’. The right’s aversion to the

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 4 December 2010

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2675 you were invited to submit a book-jacket blurb for a well-known work of fiction that is designed to be as off-putting as possible. You were on sparkling form all round this week, especially Marion Shore, Robert Schechter and John O’Byrne. The winners, printed below, earn £25 each and in a photo finish the bonus fiver goes to Chris O’Carroll by a nose. At last, a book that children and adults alike can turn to for a comprehensive analysis of the sexual mores and socio-economic paradigms that defined England in the 1930s. Mary Poppins is a stern young spinster employed by

Martin Vander Weyer

Any Other Business | 4 December 2010

What Ireland lacks now are statesmen who can make the case that recovery is possible The screen at Manchester airport tells me I’m about to board an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, but there’s a Lufthansa plane at the gate. ‘Blimey,’ I mutter, ‘this bailout’s moving fast.’ I’m looking at the wrong gate, however, and it’s an Aer Lingus stewardess who becomes the first of many people during my 36-hour visit to wish me ‘the best of luck’. Luck looms large in the Irish psyche and it’s what they long for right now — an oil find would help, I hear one passenger remark — plus a bit less attention

Carol Sarler

Hard labour

More women than ever are having their babies by Caesarian section. Not the old last-resort emergency type, either; the ones where mothers howl for days, to the point of peril for self or child, until mercy descends in a scalpel — life-saving, but adding to existing trauma. No. This marked increase, by as much as 40 per cent in one year at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, has been among women who elect a Caesarian; those who plan, often months in advance, to be delivered calmly, swiftly and relatively free of pain in a modern, controlled, 21st-century environment. In short: an increase in women who are aware that there is a choice and

Rod Liddle

What is the racial composition of a hobbit?

What colour are hobbits, do you suppose? When I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s book, as a child, I gathered that they were very short, hirsute, quite swarthy and fairly stupid — so probably Portuguese, or at a pinch Galician. They didn’t seem to be, from the descriptions of their behaviour and living arrangements, quite — you know — white. Nearly white, maybe, but not quite. Proper white people, I thought, are taller than hobbits, less hysterical and tend not to live underground. But this was back in the days before I had heard of John Bercow. Also, proper white people had electricity, cars and supermarkets. One’s views change markedly over the

Owen Matthews

A crackdown on kleptocrats

The law is catching up with Russia’s corrupt oligarchs Moscow’s White House is a fairly pleasing pile, at least by the standards of late Soviet architecture. Its colonnaded white stone façade enjoys handsome views over the Moscow River, and its interiors are a symphony in green malachite, light teak and gold ormolu, a mid-1990s decorating style best described as mafia rococo. From the corner offices, now occupied by the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, and his deputies, one can gaze over gridlocked traffic, enlivened by the blue flashing lights of government Mercedes as they charge down the reserved central lane. ‘Do you remember Mabetex?’ I asked one of Putin’s deputy premiers

The Spectator

The Spectator’s Notes | 4 December 2010

Part of the pleasure of the WikiLeaks revelations is that they confirm the view now universally reviled as ‘neocon’. Part of the pleasure of the WikiLeaks revelations is that they confirm the view now universally reviled as ‘neocon’. It emerges that whereas the public pronouncements of the Arab world all concentrate on Israel as the villain of everything, what really worries the Arabs is Iran. The Arab regimes share Israel’s view that Iran is an ‘existential threat’. They also turn instinctively to America to sort out the problem. While President Obama has tried unsuccessfully to pursue a doveish policy, real, live Muslims want Ahmedinejad’s nuclear ambitions stopped, if necessary by

James Forsyth

Will the Milibands’ drama turn into a revenge tragedy?

‘If this was a play, David would come back in two years’ time and take the crown from Ed,’ one David Miliband supporter whispered to me moments after the Labour leadership result was announced. ‘If this was a play, David would come back in two years’ time and take the crown from Ed,’ one David Miliband supporter whispered to me moments after the Labour leadership result was announced. As we shuffled out of the hall together he chuckled at the thought, at how absurd it was. In real-life, this Miliband family drama was surely a one-act play. Some David supporters, though, are refusing to accept that when the curtain falls,

Friday

3 Dec 2010

James Forsyth

What Germany gets out of the euro

The Guardian has an intriguing story tonight. It reports that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a recent EU Summit meeting that Germany might leave the euro if it didn’t get its way on a bail-out mechanism. The threat is academic as Merkel largely got what she wanted. But there’s one other thing worth remembering: however galling bailing out other euro-zone members is, Germany benefits from the euro. If Germany had its own currency, it would be worth far more than the euro is which is kept down by the problems of the PIGS. A Germany that was still using the Deutschmark would not be able to export anywhere near

The Spectator

The week that was | 3 December 2010

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson argues that David Cameron can be proud of his World Cup bid, and reveals Sweden’s recession remedy. James Forsyth says that England’s defeated World Cup bid was a national embarrassment, and says that the Lib Dems need to get their act together over tuition fees. Peter Hoskin digs out a leaked embassy memo about Margaret Thatcher, and observes a grim turning point for Ed Miliband. David Blackburn outlines what the statist left thinks of the liberal right, and watches the government take the fight to students. Daniel Korski highlights the Guardians Wiki-spin. Martin Bright reveals

Peter Hoskin

Frank Field’s report highlights the coalitions within the coalition

Frank Field’s review of child poverty policy covers a daunting expanse of ground. From breast-feeding to the little society (“the younger sister of the Big Society”), it’s stuffed with more ideas than reviews that are twice the size – and will take some time to digest properly. But, in a way, that’s precisely the point. Field’s central argument is that New Labour took an overly simplistic view of poverty. For Brown & Co. it was all about funnelling cash handouts to poor families, often to lift them from just under an arbitrary poverty line to just above it. For Field, it is more about improving opportunities across the board, with