Society

Saturday

6 Mar 2010

Crash course | 6 March 2010

‘Are you sure it’s got snow tyres?’ That sentence will be burned into my memory for a very long time. I was standing at the Avis desk at Geneva airport French side, and my boyfriend was grilling the girl behind the counter about the exact spec of the vehicle we were about to drive into the mountains. He asked her the snow tyres question seven times before I stopped counting. Then he started forensic interrogation about the make and model. Upon learning it was not a BMW X5 but something called a Peugeot 4007 he demanded pictures. And if he hadn’t asked, I would have. Last year, we got stuck

Jeremy Clarke

Wrong footed

On most days of the year there is a guide-led walk on Dartmoor. These walks, advertised in the Dartmoor Visitor, are ideal for a lazy person like me who enjoys tramping across the high moor from time to time but prefers someone else to do the map-reading and the worrying about not getting lost. Each walk listed in the Visitor is given a title, such as ‘Peaks and Pixies’ or ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, and an Ordinance Survey map reference. The map reference tells you where to meet and usually refers to a car park. Whenever I go on one of these walks, I often get off on the

Taki

Swiss confidence

Gstaad When I spoke to the mayor of Gstaad, as well as some other local stalwarts, they all assured me that they are ready for any invasion by the Libyans, and are confident that they will kick them back into the Mediterranean where they came from. For any of you who might have missed it because of Gordon Brown’s bullying shenanigans, or John Terry’s, or even news that David Cameron is close to blowing it, here is the latest: Col. Muammar Gaddafi, the great leader of Libya, has called for a jihad against Switzerland over the Swiss minaret ban. This may have caused tremors among the hookers in Geneva and

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 6 March 2010

Q. A friend rings every day to talk for hours about her life. While I do not mind acting as a sounding board or counsellor, I feel the whole thing is a bit one-sided, since she almost never asks how my life is going or only in the most perfunctory way. I feel it would be better for both of us if I were able to have some equity in this relationship. How should I gently point out that it would be only polite, to say nothing of humane, for her to show some reciprocal interest in my life? Name and address withheld A. Withhold from her all dramatic developments

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 6 March 2010

I thought my husband was reading a bulb catalogue, and since we have no garden in London I was puzzled when he called out: ‘I’m sending off for this one for you.’ I thought my husband was reading a bulb catalogue, and since we have no garden in London I was puzzled when he called out: ‘I’m sending off for this one for you.’ It turned out that he was reading a catalogue from Seton’s (‘Solutions for a safe, secure workplace’), and he wanted to get a sign for the kitchen door: ‘Danger: Explosive atmosphere’. Very droll. What struck me was the obscurity of the image on the yellow triangle

Toby Young

Parents are offered their first choice among second-rate schools

It’s become an annual tradition, like the first cuckoo of spring. At the beginning of March, when state secondary schools send out acceptance or rejection letters to anxious parents, a New Labour stooge pops up to point out that the majority of parents managed to get their child into their first choice of school. This is proof, apparently, that most parents are happy with the schools their children end up in. A moment’s reflection reveals how spurious this argument is. The fact that a majority of parents manage to secure a place for their child at their first-choice school doesn’t mean they would not have chosen another school had a

The Spectator

Letters | 6 March 2010

The story behind Kidnapped Sir: Not withstanding my gratitude for Andro Linklater’s kind words in his recent review of my book Birthright: The True Story That Inspired ‘Kidnapped’ (Books, 27 February), I must correct his description of the subtitle as ‘simply wrong’. It is inconceivable that Stevenson, a voracious reader of legal history, was unfamiliar with the saga of James Annesley, which by the time of Kidnapped’s publication in 1886 had already influenced four other 19th-century novels, most famously Sir Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering (1815) and Charles Reade’s The Wandering Heir (1873). As I note in Birthright, a review of Kidnapped in the Athenaeum (London) of 14 August 1886 pointedly

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 6 March 2010

Monday This is typical! I go away for some winter sun in the Canaries with Mummy and come back to find Labour on course to form the next government! One week I was out of the office — one week! — and it’s all gone pear-shaped, or tits up, as Jed is saying. It’s obviously Poppy’s fault, and Mr Grayling’s, double obviously. You can’t blame Dave. I would never have allowed that drowned-rat jogging picture ahead of his speech in Brighton. The British people will stand for many things, but a leader with rain dripping off his nose is not one of them. Ah well, it’s too late now. Better

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 6 March 2010

The Conservatives made their election slogan ‘Vote for change’, and Mr David Cameron made their flesh creep in a speech at a conference at Brighton concluding: ‘I want you to think of the incredible dark depression of another five years of Gordon Brown.’ The Conservatives made their election slogan ‘Vote for change’, and Mr David Cameron made their flesh creep in a speech at a conference at Brighton concluding: ‘I want you to think of the incredible dark depression of another five years of Gordon Brown.’ A YouGov poll published in the Sunday Times on 28 February put support for the Tories at 37 per cent with Labour at 35

The Spectator

Michael Foot, R.I.P.

Michael Foot, who died on Wednesday, aged 96, was a wonderful man. A major politician and an accomplished writer, he stood firmly in the great British tradition of literary radicals. There was something defiantly unmodern and unspun about him, but this was the point of Mr Foot: he was a leader who saw politics as a battle of ideas. The idea of spin was utterly alien to him. From his early days in journalism and the New Statesman, to Tribune magazine, which he edited after the war, to his last days, he maintained his intellectual integrity. This was what guided the radical Labour manifesto of 1983. It was, electorally, spectacularly

The Spectator

The Tory lesson

There is something distinctly Orwellian about Ed Balls’s latest wheeze. There is something distinctly Orwellian about Ed Balls’s latest wheeze. As of this week, parents requesting that their child be sent to a particular school are being informed by text message if their application has been successful. It is amazing how technology gives governments so many new ways to show contempt for citizens. This rejection-by-text system could only have been designed by a bureaucracy that has no idea how much of a blow it is for parents to be told that their child will not, after all, escape the local sink school. Just as shoppers in Soviet-era Moscow could not

James Forsyth

Tories back up to forty percent with ICM

An ICM poll for the News of the World has the Tories above the psychologically important forty percent mark. After a week that has been dominated by the controversy over Lord Ashcroft’s tax status, the Tories will be delighted to see a poll showing their lead growing; they are nine points ahead in this poll compared to the seven point lead they had in the last ICM poll. On a uniform national swing, this would leave the Tories six short of a majority, presuming that John Bercow continues as the speaker. But given the Tory advantage in the marginals, one would expect this result on election day to produce a

James Forsyth

Sir John Major accuses Brown of conduct “profoundly unbecoming” of a Prime Minister

In a striking move, John Major will tonight accuse Gordon Brown of “using the Armed Forces as a Party Political prop.” This isn’t the first time that Major has been critical of Brown. He was one of the people who, rightly, criticised Brown’s trip to Iraq during the Tory conference in 2007 and just last month he wrote an article in the Mail on Sunday that accused Labour of mortgaging the country’s future to buy votes. But his remarks tonight are far more personal about Brown than his previous ones. For a former Prime Minister to accuse the sitting Prime Minister of conduct “profoundly unbecoming” of his office is about

James Forsyth

The Lib Dems’ campaign rhetoric will make it that much harder for them to do a deal in the event of a hung parliament

Living in a three-way marginal, I get a bunch of election literature. The latest Lib Dem flyer caught my eye because it is the mirror image of the Tories vote yellow get Brown message: ‘In areas like this, the only way to get real change is to vote Liberal Democrat. Voting Conservative could just help Labour win again’ Leaving aside the fact that the London mayoral elections saw the Tories gain the most votes in the seat, the striking thing about this message is how it difficult it would make it for this Lib Dem, if he wins, to prop up Brown in a hung parliament. Nick Clegg and the

Allister Heath

Britain must be saved from the financial abyss

A few months ago, Alistair Darling was asked how long he thought his government could continue to borrow £600 million a day. Might creditors one day refuse? The Chancellor gave an oblique reply. ‘When you walk over ice, you never know it is too thin — until you fall through.’ He said no more, but his message came across. If the bottom falls out of the British economy, it will do so instantly and dramatically. There will be no warning. For some time now, Gordon Brown’s government has been walking on the thinnest of ice. But it has been helped, ironically, by the widespread expectation of its electoral annihilation. The

Michael Gove

Let’s set schools free

Our dismal education system means that too often poverty is a life sentence, says Michael Gove. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Schools can be freed from stifling state control I owe Peter Bazalgette an apology. A very big apology. Peter is the man who brought Big Brother to our TV screens. His genius in spotting the potential of the original show has brought him riches and helped Channel 4 fund years of genuinely creative TV. But at a price I used to think far too high. I used to write a regular column in the Times and I took advantage of my platform there to denounce Mr

Rachel Wolf

Why not start your own school?

Parents who can’t afford to move into the right catchment area, let alone pay expensive fees, are often desperately worried about the local schools. Teachers are worried about schools too: brilliant teachers who have worked in some of the worst classrooms in the country know they can do better. Charities are longing to work where they’re needed most. That’s why in four months we at the New Schools Network have been contacted by hundreds of parents, teachers and charities who all want to set up new state schools. And their first question is: ‘how do we do it?’ The answer isn’t simple. At the moment it’s very difficult to set

Rod Liddle

The public has every right to fear homicidal nutters

There was a loony on my train the other day. He sat quietly for most of the journey, but when we pulled into a station he began barking like a dog; that’s how I knew he was a loony, the barking bit, not the sitting quietly bit. Every station, his head went back and he began to bark and yowl and you could see little flecks of foam, agitated saliva, at the corners of his mouth. Then, when the train left the station he went back to reading the Daily Mirror in silence, although he would snuffle from time to time. His fellow passengers treated him with wary tolerance, glancing

Peter Oborne

Cricket’s foreign legion

Last week a ferocious new talent made his debut for the England cricket team. Craig Kieswetter, a wicketkeeper/batsman, is only 22 years old and is thought likely to be a regular in the England team for years to come. Normally this would be a matter for national celebration. But with the arrival of Kieswetter there is also unease, though it has yet to be articulated. The problem is easy to state: Kieswetter is not British. He was born in Johannesburg and grew up in South Africa, playing cricket for Western Province from the age of 13 to 18. It is less than four years since he played for South Africa

Brendan O’Neill

In defence of ‘devil dogs’

The proposed competence test for dog owners is designed to stop hoodies owning pit bulls, says Brendan O’Neill. But are the dogs, or their owners, really that dangerous? Some people call them ‘dangerous dogs’. The tabloids prefer ‘devil dogs’. The police refer to them as ‘status dogs’. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals labels them ‘antisocial dogs’ (which is the most bizarre name of all. Since when were dogs expected to obey social etiquette?). Whatever they’re called, these dogs, monsters, beasts are never out of the news. Whether it’s the pit bull terrier, the Japanese tosa, the dogo Argentina or the fila Brasileiro — all fearsome-looking