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Society

Monday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Hugo, Jim and the rest………………….

There is a surfeit of arrogance and certitude on both sides, of course. My own position is that I have little doubt that the climate is changing and most of the evidence suggests that it is, in the medium to long term, heading upwards. I suspect, again from the stats, that it is possible we may have had something to do with this, although I am not convinced. More worrying than the arrogance and certitude, to my mind, is the terror of, or awe at, science – amply demonstrated by Hugo Rifkind’s article in the current edition of the magazine and which is one of the most magnificently stupid and

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Plucky Little Balkans

Many thanks to Christopher Snowden for alerting me to this little piece by Euan Ferguson in the Observer today. It begins with this photograph: Photo: Nikola Solic/Reuters As Euan says, only one small detail gives this photo any glamour at all: A whirl of tutus in a Zagreb cafe-bar during a break in ballet rehearsals: poise, and skin, and fabulous discs of swan-white tuile, and yet what are our eyes drawn towards? Exactly. A little paper tube, being happily smoked. The smell will be of black Balkan tobacco, yes; but it is also the smell of rebellion and the first successful example of people-power since the idea of smoking bans

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Autumn Rugby Round-Up

So, now that the autumn internationals have been completed, we can assess who’s best advanced their preparations for the Six Nations this spring and, longer-term, the next World Cup which, while still distant, is now within sight. In descending order, then, of satisfaction (not quite the same as achievement), the rankings might go something like this: 1. Ireland: The only northern hemisphere side to survive November unbeaten, even if they were mildly fortunate to escape with a draw against Australia. Better than anything on the scoreboard, however, was the emergence of Jonny Sexton as a true international-class fly-half. Next projects: finding a fresh tighthead prop and a genuine open-side flanker.

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Absent friends

As I don’t live in what my friends consider to be ‘town’, I don’t get many visitors. My friends who live in ‘town’ protest that they cannot possibly be presumed upon to come as far as Balham. For a long time, I used to mind about this and made all sorts of silly attempts to force people to enjoy my suburban hospitality. Once, in an attempt to stage a dinner party, I drove to Chelsea and led a convoy of cars back to my house, swerving and flashing in desperation as they ventured south of Albert Bridge. When they got to my front door in one piece you would have

Jeremy Clarke

Untimely ignorance

‘Take a pew,’ said the doctor, scanning my medical notes. ‘Been to Africa and playing the field with the local beauties, have we?’ The tone was brisk, enthusiastic, conspiratorial, perhaps even a bit nostalgic. I nodded dumbly. ‘Right-ho, old man, drop the trousers.’ My underwear was a natty repeated pattern of the international warning symbol for radioactivity on a vivid yellow background (Top Man, £4.99). If he registered my little joke, he gave no sign. Instead, an impatient little wave of his hand ordered these down, too. The instant they were down he lunged forward, and without a word of warning assaulted me in an extraordinarily intimate manner with a

Taki

Humour failure

The fourth and last time I debated at the Oxford Union was three or four years ago, and it was a total disaster. The motion was that Katrina’s aftermath was Bush’s fault, and I was against it. A quarter of a century before that, Auberon Waugh and I had wiped out the opposition under the leadership of a very young — in his twenties — Charles Moore. Another victory followed some years later, though the subject escapes me as if in a dream. A beautiful young student asked me if it was true that I went to Annabel’s every night and whether I would take her there — which I

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 28 November 2009

Q. At a recent event a close friend of mine said something deeply hurtful about my wife’s looks to a mutual friend. This took place in front of me. Instead of hitting him I retreated and have been in a seething funk ever since. I can’t tell my wife because his words would hit her very hard, not least because she has acted as a deeply kind and above all loyal confidante to him during a turbulent decade in his own love life. How can I let the cad know how I feel without undermining or disabusing my beloved wife? Name and address withheld A. This kind of behaviour smacks

Toby Young Toby Young

Public sector employees everywhere treat their clients as barely tolerated irritants

I watched Shadowlands again the other day, Richard Attenborough’s film about C.S. Lewis’s relationship with Joy Gresham, and was struck by one scene in particular. Anthony Hopkins is sitting beside the hospital bed of Debra Winger when suddenly she takes a turn for the worse. He leaps from his chair and runs out into the corridor. ‘Nurse, Nurse!’ he cries and almost instantly a nurse comes running and darts into his wife’s room. Shortly afterwards, a doctor appears and he updates Hopkins on Winger’s condition in a tactful, solicitous manner. For any middle-class person who’s spent time in a hospital recently, this seems laughably out of date. Apparently, there really

The Spectator

Letters | 28 November 2009

Not so special Sir: The only ‘disrespect’ Obama can really be accused of is a degree of indifference to the British delusion of a ‘special relationship’ with the USA (‘A special form of disrespect’, 21 November). One would have thought that after the con-trick of Lend-lease, the wholesale vacuuming-up of British nuclear and aviation technology, Roosevelt’s barely concealed desire to see the British empire dismantled and the Suez fiasco, scales might have dropped from post-Churchillian Britain’s eyes. Despite General McChrystal referring to two British Generals as ‘Jacko’ and ‘Lamby’, there is not and never has been a special relationship unless it suited Washington. Is it ineradicable Francophobia that prevents us

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 28 November 2009

Monday I can’t quite believe what we had a strategy meeting about this morning. My hands are trembling as I type… What if climate change doesn’t exist? It’s too awful to contemplate. But we are being asked to consider: what if the earth is not getting warmer? What if the world is not sleepwalking to ecological disaster?! What if… OMG… what if Lord Lawson is right!?!?!! Gary said we need a fallback position, in case there’s more of this stuff about scientists telling porkies. But Jed said to question our faith in climate change now would be heresy. The lack of proof, he says, is the whole point. ‘If the

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 28 November 2009

Dot’s found a funny thing. Here’s a funny thing. The New Oxford American Dictionary (or Noad, for short) has nominated teabagger as the runner-up for ‘word of the year’. The winning word was unfriend, a piece of jargon used by people who drop so-called friends from popular networking sites such as Facebook. As for teabagger, it is said to refer to someone protesting at ‘President Obama’s tax policies and stimulus package, often through local demonstrations known as “Tea Party” protests (in allusion to the Boston Tea Party of 1773)’. In that case, one might think it would be called tea-partying. Perhaps, one might surmise, teabagging had been influenced by sand-bagging,

Alexander Chancellor

Diary – 28 November 2009

The man who invented the breathalyser more than 50 years ago was called Robert Borkenstein, a former policeman who had risen from the ranks to become head of the Department of Forensic Studies at Indiana University. He was very proud of his achievement. ‘If we can make life better simply by controlling alcohol, that’s a very small price to pay,’ he once said. ‘My whole life’s work has been spent trying to make life better for people.’ Well, he didn’t make it better for me. I lost my driving licence in September last year after failing a breath test in Buckinghamshire. Having a flat tyre on my way home from

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 28 November 2009

Floods swept Cumbria after 12.4 inches of rain fell in 24 hours (at Seathwaite), the most ever recorded in Britain. Main Street in Cockermouth was more than waist deep in water. Some 1,300 houses were affected, and insurance claims were expected to reach £100 million. PC Bill Baker died in the collapse of the Northside bridge at Workington, away from which he was directing traffic. Six bridges were washed away, and all 1,800 in the county were to be checked, with the Calva bridge at Workington being condemned, separating the town by a 20-mile drive. The floods arrived a day after the government announced in the Queen’s Speech that ‘legislation

The Spectator

Think-tank battle

The concept of a ‘Red Tory’ is not an easy one to grasp. T he concept of a ‘Red Tory’ is not an easy one to grasp. Is it someone who believes in huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ for all, or is it an inversion of a champagne socialist: someone who preaches free markets from beneath a flat cap while sipping bitter in a boozer in Bolton? The phrase was invented by Philip Blond, a former lecturer who has attracted a million pounds to set up his own think-tank, ResPublica — launched this week with David Cameron in attendance. His particular beef is with monopolies, and their effect on community spirit.

The Spectator

Troubled waters | 28 November 2009

Amid the wreckage of this week’s floods the most depressing comment came from a government scientist who called for a national register of bridges. If we had a register, he argued, the relevant authorities might in future be better able to predict which bridges are likely to go the same way as Workington’s two went this week. And this — as well as blaming climate change — is how the government machine avoids a glaringly obvious problem. Britain is not short of databases. On the contrary, the taxpayer is groaning under the weight of them. What the country is desperately short of, on the other hand, is decent roads, railways

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 28 November 2009

What do we do about the wealth-producers? Especially foreign ones? Everything in our power to indicate our distaste for them, seems to be the answer. The Greek essayist and soldier Xenophon would wonder what we were playing at. In 355 bc Athens was in desperate financial straits. It was then that Xenophon, whose military career had taken him as far as Persia and who knew a bit about rich foreigners, wrote the pamphlet Poroi (‘Revenues’). It is a programme for economic recovery quite unlike the usual Athenian public spending cuts and taxation schemes. His most bold and original proposal is to establish a state capital fund, with a decent return

David Blackburn

A nation of property owners

An Abu Dhabian official has briefed Reuters that Abu Dhabi will rescue Dubai on a “case-by-case basis”. The official stated: “We will look at Dubai’s commitments and approach them on a case-by-case basis. It does not mean that Abu Dhabi will underwrite all of their debts. “Some of Dubai’s entities are commercial, semi-government ones. Abu Dhabi will pick and choose when and where to assist.” This is potentially bad news for the UK taxpayer, who faces the prospect of provided further cover for British banks, who invested $50bn in the region at the height of the boom. The reason we’re in the firing line? Generous though they are, Abu Dhabi

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Climate change deniers are anti-science and anti-reason — and they terrify me

You know what I don’t believe in? Engineering. Shameless pseudo-science. You want to watch out for those so-called ‘engineers’. See that bridge that fell down in Cumbria the other day? Lordy, they’ll be cashing in on that. Up they’ll pop with their ‘stress points’ and ‘foundations’ and other such insider-ish, clubby mumbo-jumbo. As though any of it actually meant something. As though bridges hadn’t been falling down forever, for no particular reason at all. And medicine? God, that’s even worse. I mean, sure, sometimes you get a fever and somebody gives you some pills and you get better, but is there really a link? I doubt it. Kick up a

James Delingpole James Delingpole

What idiocy it is to regard whiteness as a problem in need of a remedy

‘Oh please let no one call Trevor McDonald a nignog. Oh, please. Oh please!’ It was sometime towards the end of the 1980s (before Britain’s first black newsreader got his knighthood) and my brother, my sister and I were standing on the pavement watching the village carnival go by, each of us offering up the same silent prayer to the heavens. The place was Topsham, a village on the river Exe, a few miles outside Exeter, where our mother had just moved in with a lovely chap named Frank. Trevor was the local celebrity, the carnival guest of honour and also the Only Black Man In The Village. None of

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 28 November 2009

In Competition 2623 you were invited to submit an extract from a novel or a play, of which one letter of the title had been changed, in the style of the original author. It was especially tough this week to whittle a large postbag down to just six. Oh, to have the space to share with readers the delights of The Drapes of Wrath, Finnegans Cake, Wailing for Godot and Lady Chatterley’s Liver. Well done, one and all. D.A. Prince shone with ‘Paradise Post’, but, as I stipulated a novel or a play, she is excluded from the winning line-up. It’s £25 each to the victors, and Alan Millard nabs