Society

Competition No. 2660: Body language

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2660 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of a bodily part that has been overlooked by poets. You turned out in force to celebrate the unsung heroes of our anatomy. Sonnets to the spleen rubbed shoulders with paeans to the pancreas and odes to organs I’d never heard of. Some made me queasy, others — Mick Poole, especially — made me chortle; but everyone impressed, so congratulations all round. The winners, printed below, earn £25 each and G.M. Davis pockets £30. There are those whose gonads ripple at the mention of a nipple, While others prize the knuckle

I want to kill my cat

The road to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions. And so was the road to Eric. Eric is our cat. My wife and I rescued him from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in July 2008: two wide-eyed ‘parents’, excited about giving a young life a fresh start. Two years on, I want him dead. In fact, unbeknown to my wife, I have just asked the vet if he will put him down. Don’t get me wrong, I love animals — and I believe Battersea is a noble enterprise. But although Eric appeared initially to be shy and gentle, he has grown into a monster. He deserves an asbo.

James Delingpole

It is not drugs that cause the problems, it’s the wholly unwinnable war on drugs

At a dinner party a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to be sat near one of my heroes, Roger Scruton — like being a couch away from Socrates at a symposium. But then, halfway through, the great man began sounding off on one of the two things he is completely and utterly wrong about (the other one being pop music): drugs. By ‘drugs’, of course, dear, brave, brilliant Roger didn’t mean to include the alcohol he had been quaffing all evening nor yet the highly addictive yet legal nicotine death sticks of which the Fawn and I had partaken before dinner. What he meant was yer proper,

Roger Alton

Forever England | 21 August 2010

There’s a chant they sing at Anfield to the tune of Yellow Submarine — ‘We all dream of a team of Carraghers…’. And so they should. The doughty old Scouser has emerged as something of a hero. There was his gift of £10,000 to Andy Burnham’s Labour leadership campaign, one of the most startling acts of political activism since Robbie Fowler showed his ‘I support the Dockers’ T-shirt. Carragher ended his international ‘retirement’ to turn out for England and Fabio Capello in the World Cup, so his gift shows that his appetite for lost causes is undiminished. Even more surprising, and engaging, was his warmth towards the England manager. Everyone

Rural rides

‘Ring us when you get lost and we’ll come and get you,’ was the reaction of the gamekeeper at the farm where I keep my horses when I told him I was going on a trail ride with three female friends. ‘Really,’ I said, ‘just because four women are going off on a riding holiday does not mean we’re going to get lost and need a man to rescue us. We can read maps, you know. We’ve got a compass. And a TomTom.’ ‘Right you are,’ he said, giving me one of his deadpan looks. Which was unfair, I thought, because we were very well prepared. We packed all the

Fraser Nelson

In praise of British ingenuity

Two spitfires have just flown over our offices at The Spectator, to commemorate the Battle of Britain. The aircraft are deservedly iconic, but it’s a bit of shame that over the years they’ve eclipsed the de Havilland Mosquito in the public memory. They were developed too late for the Battle itself, but were incredible aircraft when they were deployed. And, crucially, privately-developed. In 1937, the British had only 46 bombers where the Germans had about 800 – and the speed at which the RAF developed was extraordinary. The battle of Britain exposed the weaknesses in the Luftwaffe – and Nazi procurement policy. Hitler relied on a vast, unwieldy bureaucracy to

Alex Massie

CNN Fail

Via Chris Bodenner. Plenty of folk seem surprised by the fact that, apparently or at least according to one poll, 18% of Americans think Barack Obama is a muslim. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Since at least 10% of the population can be relied upon to believe any old nonsense I’m not sure that this is quite so impressive or troubling a finding as many people seem to think. Rather more people, for instance, think that the sun revolves around the earth or, I dare say, that Elvis is still alive. More importantly, however, it permits one to mock cable news.

Give women a sporting chance

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Women’s Rugby World Cup. Twelve teams will be competing for the title of World Champion right in our own back yard, at Twickenham Stoop. That’s right: Britain, hosting a World Cup. So why haven’t we heard more about it in the press?   It seems to me to be symptomatic of a wider problem – the media’s general lack of interest in women’s sport. It’s not as if sports fans themselves aren’t interested – women’s tennis has become increasingly fashionable, and their games are often more entertaining than the men’s. Our girls have had some great victories too: the England women’s cricket team, which

The return of traditional subjects

Today’s A-level results once again see the pass rate continuing to rise, in this instance for the 28th year in a row, with 97.6% of entries gaining an E or above, up from 97.5% in 2009. While not wishing to detract from the efforts of students and teachers, unfortunately such a rise has become all too expected, to the point where there would almost have to be a public inquiry if it were not to happen. Nor should the introduction of the A* at A-Level warrant particular attention, except perhaps to say that it serves as a symbol of how far we have allowed grade inflation to go.    

Alex Massie

The Flowers of the Forest

Back when the Iraq war was new and innocent and still pretty popular I recall a Scotsman headline announcing that, with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards entering the city, there was now the sound of Bagpipes in Basra. There was something thrilling, something tribal too, about this. Regardless of the arguments about the war, the skirl of the pipes summoned and honoured the ghosts (real and imagined) of warriors past.  One of those warriors was Piper Bill Millin and he is dead now. He may be the most famous piper of the Second World War and his obituary merits quoting at length: Bill Millin, who died on August 17 aged

Alex Massie

A Question of Provocation at Ground Zero? Lessons from The Satanic Verses

Despite what some readers and commenters seem to think, I don’t believe that all opponents of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” (which, as one wag put it, is neither at Ground Zero nor any more a mosque than a Vegas casino is a cathedral because it contains a wedding chapel) are bigots or that all opposition to it is necessarily rooted in prejudice. Indeed initially I viewed the proposal with some measure of scepticism. But as the debate has rumbled on and as I’ve thought about it some more I’m increasingly convinced that the arguments against it, however well-meaning, are flawed and flimsy. One of the recurring arguments against the

Cowboy clampers are just the tip of the iceberg

It looks like the wheel-clampers are in retreat after Haroon Zafaryab’s heroics the other day and Lynne Featherstone’s subsequent “ban on clamping and towing on private land“. And as they leave the field, it’s worth returning to a piece that Ross Clark wrote for The Spectator last year in which he tied the cowboy clampers in with a wider malaise: the last government’s “blind spot” for business, such that “it simply cannot distinguish between where business ends and racketeering begins”. Here’s the full article for the benefit of CoffeeHousers: We have become a nation of shysters, Ross Clark, The Spectator, 17 October 2009 Power cuts and uncollected rubbish form most

Fuel Poverty and the Winter Fuel Allowance

The Winter Fuel Allowance was an emotive part of the election campaign, with Labour accusing the Tories of planning to scrap it and David Cameron promising not to. At no point during that debate was it asked whether the WFA was a good way to spend money. Our report earlier this year, Cold Comfort, examined in some detail the demographics of fuel poverty, as well as questioning the logic behind the government’s target. If you take the fuel poverty measure (those spending more than 10% of income on energy) as read, the last government failed utterly to achieve anything on it – as the graph below shows. They introduced the

James Forsyth

Trouble on the horizon | 18 August 2010

100 days in, a danger emerging for the coalition: the idea that it is balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class. The Daily Mail front page today warns in apocalyptic font of a ‘Bonfire of the middle class benefits’ while the Times says ‘Families to lose out in bonfire of the benefits.’   The problem for the coalition is that because it is committed to protecting the poorest and the most vulnerable, the cuts will have to be concentrated further up the income scale. This means that a lot of will what go in the cuts are the middle class bits of the welfare state. To compound

The coalition’s choice over Winter Fuel Allowance

The Winter Fuel Allowance has tapdanced back onto the political landscape today, and it’s all thanks to some insightful work by the FT’s Alex Barker. He had an article in this morning’s pink ‘un which suggested that IDS is lobbying to have it, and and some other “middle-class benefits”, trimmed to help pay for his benefit reforms. And he’s followed that up with a blog-post explaining how even an apparent “cut” in the allowance may not result in savings for the Treasury or the DWP. Strange but true, as they say. This could be a delicate situation for the coalition. In the background to it all is David Cameron’s pre-election

Is Cameron slowly winning the argument on public service reform?

Guido has already highlighted one of the most important graphs from this Ipsos MORI treasure trove, showing that the public have overwhelmingly accepted the need for spending cuts. But this other graph forms a striking companion piece: Sure, the public may be split on whether the coalition will be good for public services. But the main thing to note is that overall optimism is at its highest level since 2001 – and rising. Maybe, contra Brown and Balls, people are realising that you can get more for less.

James Forsyth

Sky News survey has the Lib Dems down to 8 percent

It is just one poll and of the Sky News Panel but a survey to mark the Coalition’s 100 days has the Lib Dems down to 8 percent. (One note of caution, the sample seems to have more Tory voters from the last election than you would expect).   The Lib Dem’s falling poll ratings is rapidly becoming the biggest political problem facing the coalition. Combine it with the fact that The Sun’s You Gov poll today shows a plurality in favour of keeping first past the post and you have a pretty toxic brew for the Liberal Democrats.   If AV is rejected in a referendum next May and

The university funding debate continued

University funding is beginning to dominate op-ed pages. Yesterday, Matthew d’Ancona put the case for a graduate tax from the conservative perspective; and to which Douglas Carswell has responded. Today, Professor Alison Wolf, a specialist in Public Sector Management at KCL, makes the point that any debate about higher education funding is prejudiced because Britain’s politicians and policy makers are predominantly Oxbridge educated, and the structure of Oxbridge undergraduate degrees is radically different from anywhere else. Writing in the Times (£), she asserts: ‘I’ve sat in many meetings, in Whitehall and Westminster, where people have talked up credit systems (a modular system of assessment) without the faintest idea that we

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 16 August – 22 August

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local