Society

Saturday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 14 August 2010

When I asked him whether we needed any waterproofs for our visit to Afghanistan, our leader, Sandy Gall, was firm. No need whatever, he said. But when we reach Bamiyan on a UN plane early in the morning, we look down from the cliff above the town and see our hotel cut off by flood. A lorry has capsized in the torrents, and men with their salwars hoisted high are wading ineffectually about. Sandy’s solution is to book ten donkeys to carry us across later, and meanwhile breakfast in the rather broken-down hotel where, pro tem, we find ourselves. From where we sit, we can survey the niches in which,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 14 August 2010

Mrs Anne Milton, the Health Minister, tried to abolish free milk for children under five in nurseries, as it costs £50 million a year and ‘there is no evidence that it improves the health of very young children’, but Downing Street said that Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister ‘did not like the idea’, so it would not go ahead. Mrs Anne Milton, the Health Minister, tried to abolish free milk for children under five in nurseries, as it costs £50 million a year and ‘there is no evidence that it improves the health of very young children’, but Downing Street said that Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister ‘did

The Spectator

Taleban justice

For anyone still clinging to the idea that we have brought democracy and human rights to Afghanistan, the latest news from the country should come as a shock. The Taleban seem to be growing in confidence and influence. First there was the shooting of aid workers in Badakhshan; now a widow accused of becoming pregnant after the death of her husband has been flogged 200 times, then shot in the head. Rather than mobilising troops to rescue the woman, the local security chief simply condemned the punishment as ‘very severe’. Now that both President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron have signalled their intention to withdraw troops, it is as if

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 14 August 2010

Romans were always sensitive to the controllability of any territory that abutted their empire. What on earth would they have made of Afghanistan? Let alone its army? Rex sociusque et amicus, ‘king, ally and friend’ was the honorific term applied to the ruler of people on the edge of their empire who agreed to come on board. The relationship was a delicate quid pro quo: Rome ensured that their new best friend remained securely in power, as long as he had a grip on his people, remained loyal to Rome and jumped when asked. The push-pull between Rome and the Parthian empire over Armenia offers a good example, both sides

David Blackburn

IDS wins his battle, now the eyes turn to Fox

Iain Martin reports that IDS has secured a £3bn fund to meet the upfront costs of his benefit reform. ‘To help ensure that IDS can make the cuts which unlock his funds for welfare reform, I am informed that Number 10 and the Treasury now accept that some of the commitments made by David Cameron before polling day to protect specific benefits will have to be revisited and potentially watered down. In return, IDS is being urged by colleagues to accept that he cannot behave like a bull in a china shop. Says one: “He has been immersed in welfare reform for years. But he can’t present his solutions as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coalition’s university challenge

The contours of an agreement on how to pay for university education are clearer today after Rachel Sylvester’s interview with David Willetts. Up-front fees look to be on the way out.  Willetts tells Sylvester, ‘It’s very important that it’s signaled very clearly that the money that is paid back comes out of your earnings once you have graduated and are in work.’ It also seems that different courses at different institutions will have different prices. Willetts proclaims that he wants something that ‘links you to your university and the course you did at that university.’   So far, this looks like simply collecting variable fees through the tax system. But the

Martin Gayford

21st-century pilgrims

The tourists who flock to galleries in Paris, Florence and Rome are like medieval shrine-visitors, says Martin Gayford. Most don’t care about art, and are only there out of duty Last month in Rome I was standing in St Peter’s, in front of Michelangelo’s famous early masterpiece the ‘Pietá’. This, I might add, is by no means an easy thing to do in July. At any one time there was a jostling scrum of 50 to 100 visitors around that sculpture. The magnet that draws so many to that side-chapel in St Peter’s is of course the name of Michelangelo, ‘Divine’ even to his contemporaries. But it isn’t just any

Douglas Murray

Why can’t anyone take a joke any more?

Most people reading this will at some point have had the misfortune to meet one of those piggy-faced people who at a certain point in the conversation says, ‘Excuse me, but I find that offensive.’ Often it is someone who isn’t actually offended themselves. They have claimed offence for a group in absentia. ‘Excuse me, but I find that offensive on behalf of an absent third-party.’ Unfortunately this horrible behavioural tick is extending its reach. It is realising its power and getting organised. You often hear the phrase ‘Why does no one ever say “X” in the media?’, or ‘Why do you never hear “Y”?’ The simple answer is that

Matthew Adams

The Hitch comes home

I met up with Christopher Hitchens in the smaller hours of a warm morning in May, at Heathrow airport. (This was Christopher’s idea. ‘See you at Heathrow,’ he had told me.) From Heathrow we were to drive together to Bath, where he had a speaking engagement that evening to promote his new (and great) memoir, Hitch-22. When Christopher trudged into view he looked as I knew he would look: the Hitchens-style suit; that dolphin-like face; that dirty-grey fringe. And as he stood alone in the queasy light of Arrivals he gave the impression of a raffish (and impressively bibulous) don. Christopher? ‘Ah, my dear chap. How good of you to

Max Hastings

The guns of August

Anybody who wants to get on in America must give handsomely to good causes. In our own essentially philistine society, the newly rich get further faster by buying grouse moors. I recently heard a tycoon observe sardonically, in an inimitable gravelly Norwegian accent: ‘Grouse-shooting makes all the English prostitutes.’ He meant that lots of people who otherwise think themselves principled, honourable, choosy about the company they keep, prostrate themselves before hosts who offer them an early entry to paradise, shooting the red grouse amid some of the most glorious landscapes in this island. I became an addict very young, and almost ruined myself renting a little place in Sutherland where

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The purpose of art is not to impress, but to speak to the heart

Joining friends grouped around a piano one evening last week, I sat down to hear another friend play. A man of extraordinary talent, he both composes and performs; and this time he had three new compositions to perform for us. The piano can be a spectacular instrument. An hour sped, for my friend is touched by genius. His style is extravagant, his energy enviable, his mastery of the keyboard stunning. The boom and tinkle, the crashing chords, cascading arpeggios and breathtaking runs impressed me more than I can say. And because my friend refuses to take himself completely seriously it was done in a manner so lavish as to be

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

A lesson from Warren Buffett: giving it away is more fun than sitting on it

Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business ‘If the rich really wish to create a better world, they can sign another pledge: to pay their taxes on time and in full; to give their employees better wages… and working conditions; to use production methods that don’t kill or maim or damage the environment…’ That was Peter Wilby in the Guardian, responding to the news last week that 40 American billionaires have pledged to donate half (or in Warren Buffett’s case, 99 per cent) of their fortunes to good causes. Wilby perfectly encapsulates the British left’s contempt for the notion of charitable giving funded by free-market capitalism — and the prevalence of

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The wiki man

Fifteen years ago, when I lived in W2, I was sent a leaflet from something called (I think) the Bayswater Residents Association. As is common with anything produced by self-appointed volunteers, the leaflet proposed an exclusively geriatric vision for the postal district in which we lived, one completely at odds with its population. The organisation boasted it had ‘successfully campaigned to prevent the area becoming a centre for nightlife second only to the West End’, a claim that incensed the 29-year-old me, who had moved to the area in the hope of that very contingency. Its membership seemed implacably opposed to any human activity which involved being awake after 6

Lucy Vickery

Competition No. 2659: Novel approach

In Competition No. 2659 you were invited to take the title of a well-known novel and write an amusing poem with the same title. There are some long lines this week, which leaves space only to mention unlucky losers Mae Scanlan and Max Ross. The winning six get £25 each; Frank McDonald nabs £30. Anna Karenina used to cause Lenin a few sleepless nights when he took her to bed; and though he saw Tolstoy as big as the Bolshoi he thought it revolting his books weren’t red. Glum Dostoyevsky considered her risqué and called her shenanigans flighty and vain; and he was astonished at how she was punished: a

Richard Ormrod

Dramatic asides

‘I Scribble, therefore I am’: this Cartesian quip is typical of Simon Schama, as is the comprehensive subtitle: ‘Writings on Ice Cream, Obama, Churchill and My Mother,’ among other topics, of course. ‘I Scribble, therefore I am’: this Cartesian quip is typical of Simon Schama, as is the comprehensive subtitle: ‘Writings on Ice Cream, Obama, Churchill and My Mother,’ among other topics, of course. This gives the flavour of the delights on offer: a miscellany of observations, reviews, mini-lectures and reminiscences written between 1979 and 2010. Schama and Starkey, TV’s duo of history gurus, have helped to re-popularise a subject often dismissed as irrelevant; but whereas Starkey can come across

Friday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Lunacy. Plain and simple

Terrific piece by Douglas Murray in the latest edition of the magazine. He explains how he was reported to the Press Complaints Commission for having repeated an Irish joke made by a councillor (who was forced to apologise for it) and called for readers to send in more Irish jokes by way of protest. One of the points which Douglas doesn’t make is that the joke in question doesn’t necessarily confer the intimation of stupidity upon the Irishman in question. It could just as well be the intimation of great wit or knowing perversity. The joke is this: man walks into a Dublin bar and sees his friend sitting with

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Pickles axes the Audit Commission

Eric Pickles’ decision to scrap the Audit Commission is further evidence that Pickles is the minister prepared to move quickest on the cuts agenda. It is a bold decision and one that is going to come under heavy attack. The Audit Commission’s supporters will claim that it is self defeating to scrap the watchdog that checks that public services are delivering value for money. Set against that, though, has to be the culture of excessive pay and waste at its hearts. Until Pickles intervened, it wanted to pay its new chairman £240,000. Notably John Denham in his statement tonight opposing the abolition of the Audit Commission, felt obliged to say,

The Spectator

The week that was | 13 August 2010

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. James Forsyth argues that the government must resist the EU’s latest attempt to raise tax, and says that IDS’ resignation would be a catastrophe. Peter Hoskin welcomes the government’s transparent approach to worklessness, and introduces the questions surrounding Cameron’s benefit crackdown. David Blackburn prepares to be nudged, and says that the Bank of England’s growth revisions needn’t worry Osborne. Susan Hill is opposed to bull-fighting. Rod Liddle hits out at the self-confessed ‘Bag Nazis’. And Alex Massie remembers Jimmy Reid.

Peter Hoskin

Waiting for the autumn

A curious, intermediate kind of speech from Liam Fox this morning. The general emphasis on streamlining the armed forces, and shifting power away from Whitehall and towards the military, was welcome. But we’re going to have to wait for a trio of reviews before we know what that will look like in practice: the Spending Review, the Strategic Defence Review and a review by the new Defence Reform Unit, chaired by Lord Levene. As Douglas Carswell points out, Levene has fought for choice and competition in defence procurement before now – so we have an idea of where his review will head – but, for the time being, it’s still

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Where are the cuts?

John Redwood has entered the debate with a unique argument: spending isn’t being cut. He points to figures in the Budget which show “current” spending rising from around £600 billion now to around £700 billion in 2015. As Alex says, that suggests an increase of 15 percent over five years – hardly what anyone would describe as a cut. And there’s a similar picture for “total” spending, which will rise from around £670 billion to £737.5 billion.   Yet it’s worth pointing out that Redwood isn’t using inflation-adjusted figures (aka, “real terms” figures). If you do that, then there are cuts to be seen in both current and total spending: