Society

Saturday

Toby Young Toby Young

The government makes for Hay while the sun shines

I’m writing this from the Hay Festival which seems to be populated by an unusually large number of government ministers. I spotted Michael Gove wandering along Newport Street eating an ice cream on Sunday afternoon and later this week I’m hoping to catch Nick Clegg being interviewed by Philippe Sands. If this annual gathering of the liberal intelligentsia is anything to go by, the Guardian-reading classes are completely at ease with the coalition government. This was evident in a very good-humoured event I attended at which Jon Snow, the urbane Channel 4 newsreader, interviewed David Willetts, the Minister of State for Universities and Science. Willetts is in town to promote

The Spectator

Letters | 5 June 2010

Don’t bring it home Sir: Charles Moore is right when he questions the benefit of holding the 2018 World Cup in England (The Spectator’s Notes, 29 May), but he doesn’t go quite far enough. Given the mindless, violent and xenophobic behaviour of many English football ‘fans’ since England won the 1966 World Cup, one can only hope that we don’t host the 2018 World Cup and that England are sent home at an early stage from South Africa in the imminent games. If England wins, we can expect another three generations of boorish and misplaced patriotism. Laurence Fowler-Stevens Clanfield, Hants Land of the fee Sir: Charles Moore’s revelation that 170,000

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 5 June 2010

Monday What a way to spend the bank holiday weekend, up to my eyes in sleaze on the Lib Dem vetting unit. Dave rang from Chequers on speakerphone to read us the riot act while playing tennis. Balls ponging v angrily. So far we’ve found a couple of affairs, some flipping, a cash-for-planning row and a second home claim for a sunken Jacuzzi bath with ‘erotic massager jets’. Also a lot of junketing. These Libs certainly like their overseas democracy monitoring. The Maldives seems to be having its ‘first free and fair election’ about three times a year according to their Register of Interests. What’s really odd is that they

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 5 June 2010

I was interested to see in the Daily Telegraph a suggestion, in an article marking the 60th anniversary of The Archers, that the original name of the river that runs through Ambridge was the Ambra. Today it is called the Am, but, like the Cam in Cambridge, that is a back-formation from the name of the town. There is a river Amber in Derbyshire, and ambra is a pre-Saxon Celtic word meaning ‘water’. It is related to the Latin imber, meaning ‘rain’ — or ‘showers’ as the Book of Common Prayer translates it in the Benedicite. There are some puzzles in the place-names of Borsetshire, a county deriving its name

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 5 June 2010

Mr David Laws resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after it was revealed that he had used parliamentary allowances to pay £40,000 rent over five years for a room in the house of a man with whom he had long had a sexual relationship. Mr David Laws resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after it was revealed that he had used parliamentary allowances to pay £40,000 rent over five years for a room in the house of a man with whom he had long had a sexual relationship. ‘My motivation throughout has not been to maximise profit,’ Mr Laws said, ‘but to simply protect our privacy and my

The Spectator

Bad habits | 5 June 2010

The idea that you can jack up prices — by taxation or other means — and thereby shape society seems to mesmerise politicians. So the new estimates by the Department of Heath that a minimum price for alcohol — of 50p per ‘unit’ — would mean precisely 43,800 fewer crimes a year and 296,900 fewer sick days is like a magic wand to be waved at the dispatch box. What officials forget is that people find ways of adapting to and circumventing government rules. Tobacco in Britain is very heavily taxed, purportedly to discourage its use. The Treasury now estimates that one in five cigarettes smoked in Britain has been

The Spectator

Not British

Search any official document published by BP plc, the oil giant now battling not only to cap the Mexican Gulf oil spillage but to save itself from a terminal collapse of investor confidence, and you will not find anywhere the words ‘British Petroleum’. Search any official document published by BP plc, the oil giant now battling not only to cap the Mexican Gulf oil spillage but to save itself from a terminal collapse of investor confidence, and you will not find anywhere the words ‘British Petroleum’. The full version of the company name was dropped more than a decade ago, when the merger with US oil giant Amoco turned it

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 05 June 2010

Experience may count for nothing. Look at Gordon Brown — ‘capable of being emperor — had he never been emperor’ indeed, as Tacitus said of Galba, emperor for seven months in ad 68-69. Experience may count for nothing. Look at Gordon Brown — ‘capable of being emperor — had he never been emperor’ indeed, as Tacitus said of Galba, emperor for seven months in ad 68-69. But there is something to be said for having been round the block a few times — or even just once — and the parachuting of Danny Alexander (five years ago, press officer for the Cairngorms National Park) from the Scottish office into the

David Blackburn

The war on poverty opens a second front

I detest the use of the word ‘Czar’. Everything has a Czar – potato regulation, multi-story car parks and Twitter being my favourite three. But the war on poverty needs to be fought by free-thinking absolutists. The appointment of Frank Field to conduct an independent review into poverty and life chances confirms David Cameron’s, and the coalition’s, non-partisan commitment to social mobility and betterment.   Field presents his analysis in a succinct piece in the Telegraph.  He writes: ‘Over recent decades, the Left and centre-Left’s answer to poverty and inequality has been to spend more money, to redistribute from richer to poorer. Yet this central social democratic ideal is being

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The papal visit is in jeopardy

Damian Thompson reveals the turmoil behind the scenes in the preparations for Pope Benedict XVI’s keenly awaited visit to Britain — and how the trip has been hijacked by a Blairite cadre Last week, the Catholic Arch-bishops of England and Wales were summoned to a private meeting in London where they were given astonishing news about Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain. The pontiff is due in four months’ time (16-19 September), yet preparations were going badly wrong. Some of the major venues, while announced, had still not been booked. And worse, the Church’s share of the cost of the four-day trip had veered wildly out of control, from £7

Rian Malan

Don’t let fear spoil the World Cup

South Africa has all but bankrupted itself to stage a glorious World Cup, says Rian Malan. Shame that all foreigners can do is worry about the nation’s crime rates Here in Johannesburg, the most striking symptom of World Cup fever is a steady procession of taxis bringing foreign correspondents to my door in search of tips as to how the land lies. Honour requires hacks to help each other, so I always invite the visitors inside to meet my dog, Arabella, pointedly introduced as a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Those whose nostrils wrinkle at the word Rhodesian don’t stay long. Those who laugh get to share my coffee, cigarettes and pensées about

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

No one outside England thinks we’ve got a prayer

Rod Liddle wouldn’t risk more than a tenner on the team getting beyond the group stage in the football World Cup. The truth is, we usually perform more or less exactly as well as might be expected given the size of the country Nobody outside of this country thinks that England stands a cat’s chance in hell of winning the association football World Cup, which is due to kick off in South Africa very shortly — if all the teams are not abducted upon arrival and shot. Almost to a man the leading foreign players and pundits predict a final between Brazil and Spain, and on the rare occasions there

James Silver

‘His only vice is women’

Vittorio Sgarbi, the mayor of Salemi in Sicily, is a notorious philanderer who is obsessed with art, beauty — and the mafia. James Silver spends a day with him When Silvio Berlusconi was in trouble last year, accused of trysts with girls young enough to be his granddaughters, his former undersecretary for culture Vittorio Sgarbi rode nobly to his defence. ‘The thing you have to understand about Silvio,’ he declared, ‘is that unless he gains sexual satisfaction he cannot govern properly.’ Such a claim could only be taken seriously in Italy, where womanising is a national pastime and the more colourful public figures are widely admired. They don’t come much

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The City warmed to David Laws because he knew how to play the bonus game

Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business ‘Does anyone remember David Laws?’ a former City colleague asked me during the brief interlude between the Lib Dem MP’s debut as financial secretary last Monday and his descent into hell on Friday. Judging by the sketchy accounts of his banking career in the weekend papers, with their references to a ‘billion-dollar gamble’ that made him a ‘multimillionaire’, few journalists bothered to track down City sources who really knew him in those days. But in fact he held the same title of managing director of Barclays de Zoete Wedd (BZW, the forerunner of Barclays Capital) that I once held myself. Laws joined BZW from

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 5 June 2010

In Competition 2649 you were invited to submit a news bulletin on the outcome of the general election delivered by a well-known figure from history. Well done, everyone: it was a strong entry and a pleasure to judge. Narrowly missing a place in the winning line-up were Bill Greenwell, J. Seery, Shirley Curran, P.C. Parrish and John Whitworth. Those who made the final cut earn £25 each and Brian Murdoch nets the extra fiver. News reaches me in the Elysian Fields of the outcome of the senatorial competition in our remote province of Britannia. Every haruspex had correctly foreseen a triumvirate outcome with ensuing confusion, nor was this surprising, given

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 5 June 2010

A few years ago a leisure centre advertised ‘Keep-fit classes for the over-60s’. Nobody turned up. To broaden the appeal, they advertised ‘Keep-fit classes for the over-50s’. The sessions sold out. Not one of those joining was under 65 years of age. How many 65-year-olds want to attend anything aimed at the over-60s? And how many small cars would be sold if advertisements showed them being driven by pensioners (the people who actually buy them) rather than elfin 27-year-olds in capri pants? ‘User imagery’ it’s called, and it is a more powerful force than any of us would like to admit. Not only in what it makes us do, but

Deborah Ross

Extreme violence

The Killer Inside Me 18, Nationwide Michael Winterbottom’s latest film has already caused outrage and charges of misogyny, and while I did not like it at all, and did spend a good portion of the time hiding my head in my hands moaning, ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, please make it stop,’ I can’t say it’s a bad film. I want to say it’s a bad film. I long to say it’s a bad film and that, as a woman who once marched to reclaim the night — even though the night never marched for me — I was both repulsed and offended by the explicit, prolonged violence. But? Although this isn’t

Aidan Hartley

Let’s do business

Tanzania Here’s this Chinese guy in the midday sun. Straw hat, faggy in his mouth, bright eyes, tanned face. I feel like crying. We’re in the middle of nowhere and he’s building this fantastic road through the Tanzanian bush. He’s fit, young, staring into the future, like one of those Mao-era posters. I give him the thumbs-up. ‘Keep up the good work, mate!’ He ignores me and I don’t blame him. As I zoom down smooth tarmac through wide-open spaces, I think about how my family has been associated with Tanzania on and off for 81 years. My British forefathers in Africa had purpose, a devotion to duty. Hardship or

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s generation game

I see from today’s Evening Standard that the film that Peter Mandelson allowed to be made about himself during the election campaign has been pulled from the Hay Festival at his insistence. Now, in these cases there is often an innocent explanation: I would suspect that we’ll get to see the film soon enough But if Mandelson’s memoirs are going to be as frank as he is suggesting and deal with his whole career, then they are going to make comments—some unflattering—about a whole host of still active Labour politicians. There are bound to be comments in there on all three of the serious leadership challengers and the acting leader

David Blackburn

The transparency revolution is this government’s immediate lifeblood

Transparency is the government’s immediate obsession. It costs nothing to enact and gives power to the people. In an excellent post for Con Home, Stephan Shakespeare explains why publishing the COINS database is a revolutionary, seminal moment in British politics. The whole piece is worth reading, but here is an excerpt: ‘It is one of those moments that changes things for ever. When people can’t see where their money goes, they can make no comment, they can have no influence. Governments live and die by public approval; and once you can link spending decisions to identifiable civil servants, their careers will also live or die by our approval; so this