Society

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

If We Kill America, We Can Save It

Sensible opponents of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” have been careful to argue that it’s not the idea of the mosque per se that offends them but the sensitivity of it’s location. Not everyone bothers with that distinction: In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting. In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby. In Sheboygan, Wis.,

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Headline of the Day | 8 August 2010

Obviously it’s from Western Nevada County, California: SWAT Team Requested for Violent Midgets Details, alas, remain sketchy but here’s what we have so far: At 12:32 p.m., a caller from West McKnight Way reported steroid-using body-builders from Reno had beaten up the caller’s son and might have killed him. Midgets from Fulton Avenue had been following and trying to poison the caller. The body-builder and the lead female midget, who the caller reported as being “really violent,” allegedly had been driving the caller’s truck. The caller wanted the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office to activate the SWAT team. God bless America. [Hat-tip: Radley Balko]

David Blackburn

Opposing social housing reform looks like a marginal issue

The Sunday Times YouGov poll (£) contains some statistics that will warm Cameron’s cockles. ‘The poll also backs the idea, floated by the prime minister last week, that new tenants in council and social housing should have a limited term of five or 10 years before they have to make way for others if their circumstances have changed. The proposal, criticised by Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, is supported by 62% and opposed by 32%. Even among Liberal Democrat supporters there is strong support for the idea, by 67% to 26%. Tory supporters overwhelmingly back it, by 78% to 18%. Labour voters are only narrowly in favour, by

Saturday

Taki

Art on water

On board S/Y Bushido If a boat can be called a work of art then surely ones designed by William Fife qualify him as the Degas of yacht construction. Fife was a Scot, but unlike fellow Scots such as Blair and Brown, he handed down beauty, not misery, modern maritime Parthenons rather than debt and anarchy. No one has ever got near him as far as art on water is concerned. Cambria, Altair, Mariquita, Moonbeam, Fintra, Viola, Nan of Fife, Mikado, Jap, I could go on. My son sailed on Mariquita as a deckhand while she raced in classic contests, and has been hooked on beauty ever since. The visual

Robin Oakley

Cause for celebration | 7 August 2010

Thanks to jams on the A3 it took me nearly four hours driving from central London for the last day of Glorious Goodwood. It would have been worth it if it had taken 24. It was the day of the good guys with whom we all enjoy sharing success. Critical Moment, his impressive cruising speed complemented by a gutsy finishing kick under son Michael, provided another winner for Barry Hills, who had already saddled his 50th at the famous meeting. Then Midday, both saucy madam and serious racehorse, triumphed again in the Nassau Stakes for Henry Cecil. Conscious of her attraction and a little bit of a professional show-stealer, she

Alan Judd

Shape of things to come

I don’t know about China, but here it’s the Year of the Jaguar — 75 years since baptism, sales up 42.5 per cent, the launch of the new XJ — and for one of their birthday parties, Jaguar took some hacks to try out the current model range on Germany’s notorious Nürburgring. I don’t know about China, but here it’s the Year of the Jaguar — 75 years since baptism, sales up 42.5 per cent, the launch of the new XJ — and for one of their birthday parties, Jaguar took some hacks to try out the current model range on Germany’s notorious Nürburgring. My brother lapped it last year

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 7 August 2010

Q. I am a British MEP which is, you will agree, a heavy social cross to bear. For six years I have tried to set a sartorial example to my fellow MEPs, wearing nothing that did not emanate from Jermyn Street or Savile Row. Now an old rugby injury to the knee necessitates the wearing of orthopaedic shoes. The design of these shoes is so appalling I fear people who do not know me might think I am foreign or, worse, a British Liberal Democrat. Can you help me to find a solution? G.B., by email A. You are right to be anxious. Shoe-ism is an underacknowledged factor in social

The Spectator

Letters | 7 August 2010

Neocon Coughlin Sir: Con Coughlin’s article (‘How we lost the war’, 31 July) criticising David Cameron’s supposed disenchantment with our bogged-down campaign in Afghanistan confirms him as the Henry Newbolt of our day. He does not see this conflict in terms of a cost-benefit analysis in relation to the security and wealth of the United Kingdom, but in terms of moral obligation — ‘a mission’. But why should Cameron, as the Prime Minister of a Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition in 2010, be morally bound by a commitment unwisely entered into in 2001 by Tony Blair in the aftermath of 9/11? Surely Coughlin might at least acknowledge that our present predicament

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 August 2010

Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister, and Mr Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, rather oddly wrote a letter to the rest of the Cabinet. ‘Deficit reduction and continuing to ensure economic recovery is the most urgent issue facing Britain,’ they said. Mr George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that banks had an ‘obligation’ to increase their lending: ‘Every small and medium-sized company that I have visited in recent weeks has had some problem with their bank,’ he said. The profits of HSBC, which took no money from the government during the financial crisis, doubled for the first half of the year to £7 billion. Lloyds, 41 per

The Spectator

Capital stuff

The Spectator on Boris Johnson’s new bicycle-sharing scheme Boris Johnson’s new bicycle-sharing scheme has had its share of ‘teething problems’, as the Mayor himself admits. Some Londoners have had to be refunded, for instance, after they were overcharged by the complicated bike ‘docking’ system. But it’s a tribute to Boris that Londoners have taken the difficulties in their stride as part of the general fun, and with their jolly, chunky design, the London bikes could become icons of the capital — thought of as fondly as red buses or black cabs. Boris’s cycling revolution has begun: bright blue ‘cycle superhighways’ come next, and a new unit of bicycling bobbies. The

The Spectator

Double standards

Some prime ministers settle immediately on the international stage, others take their time to adjust to the nuances required in dealing with the assortment of democratically elected politicians, benign dictators and outright rogues who lead the world. David Cameron, so far, has struggled, achieving within three months something that took Blair six years: having his effigy burnt on the streets of a foreign capital, just weeks before a meeting with the president of that country. At least Mr Cameron and Pakistan’s President Zardari should be able to talk convivially about the cricket — unlike the last one, the current England vs Pakistan Test series has not been sullied by accusations

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 07 August 2010

The 7th century bc Greek farmer-poet Hesiod laid down the marker when he lamented that he lived in the age of iron, when men ‘will never cease from toil and misery by day and night’. The reason is that, in the pre-industrial ancient world, there were, effectively, no such things as ‘jobs’. Virtually everyone, bar the rich, lived off the soil. So ‘work’ was not a matter of choice. If you did not work, you died, though an epitaph highlighted the benefits: sweet repose, no fear of starvation, permanent, rent-free accommodation — so never in debt! Popular morality rammed home the point. Aesop contrasted the ant who worked to prepare

Peter Hoskin

The Treasury’s cutting difficulty

Among the most eyecatching, and potentially important, stories of the day is this one in the Telegraph. It suggests that various departments have “failed” to outline a “worst case scenario” of 40 percent cuts that was demanded by the Treasury. And it even names and shames Caroline Spelman’s Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs as one of the offenders. Mrs Spelman, we’re told, has now “been forced to use the time before her holiday to work up the projections with her officials and permanent secretary.” Nothing like a last minute job, then. To be fair to Whitehall civil servants, there is a general sense that they have set about

Peter Hoskin

Will Hughes succeed in stirring up trouble over Right to Buy?

Simon Hughes led the angry response to David Cameron’s thoughts on social housing, and now he’s stirring it up again. In an interview with the South London Press – picked up by Sunder Katwala over at Next Left – the Lib Dem deputy leader has attacked the Right to Buy, saying that local councils should decide whether to offer it or not. Given the Thatcherite roots of the policy, there’s a firecracker quality to Hughes’s comments: lobbed into the debate, and designed to provoke the Tories. I’m not sure the Tories will be too perturbed by Hughes’s intervention, though. Of course many of them are proud and supportive of Thatcher’s

Doug Saunders

In 100 years we will be an entirely urban species

Chongqing is a dense and smoky inland city, the heavy-industry, high-rise home to over 30 million people. It is to China what Chicago was to 20th-century America, or Manchester to 19th-century England, and it’s growing at an extraordinary rate. Every day a tide of 1,500 new people washes in to Chongqing. Every day an extra 1.5 million square feet of floor space is constructed for new residents. It’s a vast megalopolis, a megacity of the sort that will soon take over the world. I met Mr and Mrs Zhang on the day they first arrived in Chongqing from their rural village. It had taken them almost ten years to raise

Isabel Villiers

What is Zardari doing at Chequers?

Pakistan’s President has provoked outrage by taking a tour of Europe with his son while thousands die in the floods at home. Isabel Villiers reports Pakistan’s worst monsoon rains continue, and thousands are now dead, many more trapped, surrounded by floods. The images on TV over here show vast expanses of putrid water where riverbanks have spilled, chasing families from their homes, swallowing crops, destroying livelihoods. In one of Pakistan’s worst affected flooded areas around Peshawar, people are very angry. They claim their privacy, their culture has been violated as women and children have been forced to sleep in the streets and wash in a contaminated mix of water, mud,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Train à Grande Vexation

The marvels of French rail travel are a myth, says Ross Clark. Travelling by TGV is a rip-off — and the customer service is appalling Which Ryanair passenger, left fuming by lousy service and lashed by Michael O’Leary’s tongue, hasn’t opined that, if only they had more money and a bit of extra time, they could glide to their holiday destination on a French TGV? Why do we insist on subjecting ourselves to the torture of budget airlines when down there, at ground level, we could be travelling on the fastest and most envied railway system in the world and one that is, according to the marketing bumf, ‘high-speed and

Lucy Vickery

Competition No. 2658: Bed hopping

In Competition No. 2658 you were invited to submit a bedroom scene written by a novelist who would not normally venture into such territory. A wise choice, it seems: even literary giants come a cropper when writing about sex. John Updike was shortlisted four times for one of Britain’s least coveted literary prizes, the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award, eventually scooping a lifetime achievement award. You rose to the challenge admirably. The winners earn £25 each and the bonus fiver goes to Chris O’Carroll. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a gentleman in fashionably tailored trousers, the fabric cut tight across the musculature of his thighs, cannot

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Van the man

Well, at least one Rooney did well this summer. That’s Martyn of course, one of the second tier of Britain’s medal winners at the European Athletics Championships who played a blinder to pick up an individual bronze and a relay silver in the 400 metres. The meeting was a simply glorious celebration of multi-ethnic harmony in Barcelona that was more or less enough to lift the nameless sense of dread that assails the soul at the prospect of a new football season.  Interviewed in a pair of mock giant black-rimmed glasses, Rooney explained that the whole team wore them one day as a tribute to their Dutch coach Charles van Commenee, who, said Rooney, found it all

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Banks behaving badly, yet again: what they need are steadier relationships

Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business It’s nonsense to accuse high street banks of failing to lend to businesses because the money they might have lent has been siphoned off for bonuses — that just isn’t how it works — and it’s good news that they have been announcing restored or increased profits this week. It’s also absurd to claim that George Osborne and Vince Cable should or could instruct them how to lend. And in any case, an optimist might say, the indicators are moving in the right direction: what with higher than expected growth in the second quarter, an uptick in manufacturing and a wave of investment in