Society

Low life | 27 November 2010

After swapping emails for three days, Cow Girl sent me her mobile number and I rang it, and we agreed that I should drive up to north Wales and meet somewhere. Meeting for a coffee, the usual drill, seemed a bit pathetic to us, so I booked us into a country hotel and spa for the weekend. I arrived at the hotel first. As I signed on the dotted line at reception, I had a text from her saying she was minutes away. Somewhat apprehensive, I wandered out to the car park to wait. I was apprehensive for two reasons. One, I’d lied about my age on my profile. Forty-five

High life | 27 November 2010

The actor Harvey Keitel and I are good friends and we go way back. For any of you who hate movies and Hollywood as I do, Keitel is your man. He was on Broadway for ten years then made Mean Streets, the first of many gritty films with Robert De Niro depicting young Italian toughs around tough New York neighbourhoods. De Niro and Keitel are very close friends, but the latter is a very open person, not at all shy or — God forbid — a Hollywood type. We became fast friends as soon as we were introduced. It went something like this: Me: ‘What’s a nice little Jewish boy

James Forsyth

ANTI politics

Tim Montgomerie has a thoughtful essay in the Daily Mail about the ANTIs, those who feel so let down by the political status quo that they have given up voting for any of the mainstream parties. These five million people, according to a recent set of research, feel angry at the political class, neglected financially, that their traditional values are being trampled on and worried about large-scale immigration. Obviously, politics can’t just be about these voters. But there’s clearly something substantially wrong when such a large chunk of the country feel so alienated from mainstream politics. One thing that worries me is that I don’t see many political figures who

Blair versus Hitchens

Two gentle proselytisers debated in Toronto last night. The motion: ‘Religion is a force for good in the world’ was defeated by a margin of 68 percent to 32. The New Statesman has a complete transcript, but here a couple of quotations distilling the basic arguments. Hitchens: Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick, and commanded to be well. I’ll repeat that. Created sick, and then ordered to be well. And over us, to supervise this, is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea. Greedy, exigent, greedy for uncritical phrase from dawn until dusk

Competition | 27 November 2010

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2674 you were invited to submit an elegy on the death of Paul the Octopus, who died peacefully in his tank last month aged a respectable two-and-a-half. Paul was catapulted from the obscurity of an aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany to international celebrity when he accurately predicted the outcome of several World Cup matches. Commendations to Jerome Betts and Bill Greenwell. The bonus fiver is Noel Petty’s. His fellow winners get £25 each. Great Paul, the psychic octopus, is dead, His wisdom lost, locked in that mighty head. Eight times his art was tried, eight times it passed, Thus proving that the

Lloyd Evans

‘Forget the special relationship. America is just not that into us’: a Spectator debate

Churchill popped up early at last week’s Spectator debate, which was sponsored by Brewin Dolphin. Churchill popped up early at last week’s Spectator debate, which was sponsored by Brewin Dolphin. James Crabtree, the Financial Times’s comment editor, deplored the way our war leader’s bust had been ‘removed from the White House’ by an incoming Barack Obama. It marked the terminal point in a relationship that once shaped world events. America was looking east. Obama had pledged to run ‘a Pacific presidency’. Crabtree repeated Helmut Schmidt’s gag about our alliance with the Americans, ‘a relationship so special that only one side knows it exists’. Nile Gardiner admitted that Obama was no

Hugo Rifkind

I no longer understand what ‘Ireland’ means

The defining commentary of this on-going financial crisis, for me, came from Gerald Hill of the Midlands, in a letter to the Times in March 2009. ‘Sir,’ he wrote, ‘I can now understand the term “quantitative easing” but realise I no longer understand the meaning of the word “money”.’ I’m with Gerald. Take the IMF and EU bailout to Ireland, intended to calm market fears over that country’s debt crisis. I understand ‘IMF’ and I understand ‘EU’. I understand ‘bailout’ and I understand what a ‘debt crisis’ is, and why this particular one has happened. I also, pretty much, understand ‘the markets’, even if I do struggle to grasp why

How to marry a prince

The turbulent but often triumphant record of Britain’s royal weddings is full of lessons for Kate and William The popularity of the monarchy has been slowly improving since the Queen’s ‘annus horribilis’ speech in 1992. But the vital spark needed to win over the country was missing. Not even the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday could fully repair the damage caused by years of controversy and embarrassing revelations. It is only now, with the engagement of Prince William to Kate Middleton, that the monarchy has a real opportunity to remake itself for the 21st century. But first, the handlers and planners for the royal event need to learn from history. Good

A common sense revolution

Last January, Annabel Hayter, chairwoman of Gloucester Cathedral Flower Guild, received an email saying that she and her 60 fellow flower arrangers would have to undergo a CRB check. CRB stands for Criminal Records Bureau, and a CRB check is a time-consuming, sometimes expensive, pretty much always pointless vetting procedure that you must go through if you work with children or ‘vulnerable adults’. Everybody else had been checked: the ‘welcomers’ at the cathedral door; the cathedral guides; the whole of the cathedral office (though they rarely left their room). The flower guild was all that remained. The cathedral authorities expected no resistance. Though the increasing demand for ever tighter safety

Lessons from south London

Having transformed his inner-city primary, Greg Martin has bought a stately home in Sussex – and is preparing to turn it into a fully free state boarding school We’re chatting poolside, which feels somewhat incongruous since this isn’t the Riviera or a spa hotel, but a primary school in Stockwell, one of the rougher districts of south London. Greg Martin, the school’s executive head, leans forward confidentially. ‘Look,’ he whispers, pointing to the door. ‘Here comes the middle class now.’ There’s a sudden inrush of boys and girls who seem familiar. Is it the Boden or the John Lewis catalogue they stepped out of? For sure, these children are not

Mohammad Sawalha: Apology

On 2 July 2008 we published an article entitled “Just look what came crawling out” which alleged that at a protest at the celebration in London of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, Mohammad Sawalha had referred to Jews in Britian as “evil/noxious”. We now accept that Mr Sawalha made no such anti-Semitic statement and that the article was based on a mistranslation elsewhere of an earlier report. We and Melanie Phillips apologise for the error.

Martin Vander Weyer

Any Other Business | 27 November 2010

My tip for enterprise tsar from Cameron’s list of loads-of-money peers: Lord Fellowes of Downton Who, I wonder, will advise David Cameron on entrepreneurship now that Lord Young of Graffham has been fed to the sharks by the Downing Street crew for his unguarded remark that in this ‘so-called recession… most people have never had it so good’? Even some voices on the BBC were prepared to admit that the former Cabinet minister, corporate chief and venture capitalist wasn’t entirely wrong: technically speaking, Britain came out of recession a year ago, and although it was longer and deeper than previous downturns (thus ‘the worst in living memory’), low interest rates

The week that was | 26 November 2010

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week The Spectator welcomes Nick Cohen as its latest guest blogger. The Spectator Book Blog congratulates 2 old friends of the magazine on their appointment to the Booker Prize judging panel. Fraser Nelson praises Michael Gove’s education white paper, and analyses the political precedents of Howard Flight’s loose talk. James Forsyth explains why Spain matters. David Blackburn watches the coalition forge another impressive compromise, and thinks that Ed Miliband must begin to define himself and his party. Mark Littlewood reports on the centre right’s changing conception of society and why Jon Cruddas is exercised by it. Martin Bright

Iberian blues

I’m finishing a two-day trip to Spain and am about to board a plane, just as the bond markets turn their attention to the Iberian Peninsula. As James wrote yesterday, the gap between Spanish 10-year government bonds and those of Germany has widened to as much as 2.59 percentage points – the biggest gap since the introduction of the euro. For its part, the Portuguese government said it was under no pressure from the European Central Bank or other Eurozone member-states to accept financial aid to ease its debt and deficit problems. That sounds like the noise before the defeat. Portugal was brought to a halt yesterday by a strike

From the archives: The Royal Marriage Question

Like father, like son. Prince William took his time to propose to Kate Middleton, almost as long as his father took to take the plunge in 1981. The press brayed on both occasions. Here’s what Auberon Waugh made of the Prince of Wales’ dithering over Diana. It was tragically prescient. The Royal marriage question, The Spectator, 10 January 1981. In the death of Princess Alice of Athlone at 97 last Saturday the Queen lost not only first cousin twice removed but also a great aunt by marriage. Under the circumstances, it might seem humane to allow a period of time to elapse for her to get over this double shock

Fraser Nelson

Flight’s loose tongue

Has Howard Flight just done a Keith Joseph? The latter’s run for Tory leader ended when he made a speech about poor people breeding.  As David said earlier, plain speaking can have its problems. But Flight’s danger is in being mistranslated. He sought to make a simple point: that many working families can’t afford to expand their families, while the state provides a substantial cash incentive for those on benefits to do so. But his use of the word “breeding” sounds like he’s into eugenics, and the language – talking about the poor – sounds dodgier still. Given his struggle with foot-in-mouth disease, it’s surprising that Cameron ennobled him.  But

How to pay for the Royal wedding? Simple: public subscription

Now that we have a date in the diary, we can begin the traditional rites and customs on the path to the Royal Wedding. These traditions stretch back to Queen Victoria – street parties, pageants, commemorative china, bunting and flags, and an almighty row about how much it’s all costing. The cost of the monarchy is a perpetual controversy, given new impetus by any major monarchical occasion. Already, David Cameron’s decree that the date will be a public holiday is causing disquiet among some business leaders, who will lose a day’s trade. As Guido Fawkes points out, the additional day-off, coupled with Good Friday and Easter Monday, will make for

Oh dear | 25 November 2010

Howard Flight has always been an outspoken man. The new Conservative peer is reported to have said: ‘We’re going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it’s jolly expensive. But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that’s not very sensible.’ He may well be proved correct. But, plain-speaking and politics have never mixed, and especially not now. Following the Lord Young debacle, Downing Street has moved quickly to distance itself from Lord Flight’s comments. A grovelling apology won’t be far away. UPDATE: The IFS did some very interesting work on the rising birthrate (15 percent) among what it termed ‘low income