Society

Monday

Jonathan Wynne-Evans

Short story: Black box

In March The Spectator Book Club launched its inaugural short story competition in association with Barclays Wealth. The topic was invisibility, and it seemed to appeal. We received over 500 stories, most of an excellent standard. Our judging panel comprised Mark Amory, Clare Asquith, Peter Hoskin, David Blackburn and Ravi Bulchandani from Barclays Wealth. After much heated debate, five finalists were selected: Jonathan Wynne Evans, Matthew Faulkener, K.G. Barrett, Max Dunbar and Henry Kolotas. You can read the panel’s comments on the finalists’ stories at Spectator.co.uk. All our panellists were agreed, though, that Jonathan Wynne Evans’s ‘Black Box’ should be the winner. Black box by Jonathan Wynne Evans Illustrated by

Revd Budge-Firth

Thought for the day | 14 December 2009

What bankers must do to earn customers’ trust Revd ‘Budge’ Firth, preaching more than half a century ago, reminded the City of its moral obligations It is required of stewards, that a man be found faithful. 1 Corinthians iv 2 In preparing this address, I thought at once of the text which I have chosen, and searched no further. For a steward is one who is entrusted with the safety, the good condition and the use of the property of somebody else. He is a highly responsible agent, an expert in his own department; he has to take decisions, often far-reaching, on his own, without the beneficiary being compelled to

Merryn Somerset-Webb

My crystal ball sees disappointment ahead

Merryn Somerset Webb doubts that markets will go on rising — and advises us how not to get poorer in 2010 Back in early 2007, an interviewer challenged my stance on the housing market. She pointed out that I had been bearish on the property market for several years but that the market did not seem much interested in my opinion. It wasn’t crashing. And that, she said, suggested that it never would. This is a pretty dimwitted argument. But it is much used when an asset class is rising for reasons connected to something other than its real value — its very rising is somehow used to justify its

Interconnect

City Life | 14 December 2009

Elliot Wilson in Reykjavik Mike, a commodities trader from Chicago, leans over the table in Reykjavik’s Prikid bar and almost whispers: ‘What’s the deal here? Where are the breadlines?’ Our group looks befuddled. An Icelandic playwright mock-whispers back: ‘What breadlines? Did you expect Reykjavik to be full of bakeries?’ No, retorts Mike, but didn’t Iceland declare bankruptcy a year ago? So why isn’t everyone sleeping on the streets? It’s not an unreasonable question. Iceland’s 300,000 citizens have just struggled through their worst annus horribilis since Ingólfur Arnarson built his homestead in Reykjavik in ad 874. Inflation is running just shy of 10 per cent, while the Icelandic króna has lost

Michael Tanner

Equivocal masterpiece

Der Rosenkavalier Royal Opera House Der Rosenkavalier is the most self-conscious of comedies, as well as being largely concerned with self-consciousness. It has two kinds of joke: one, the broad practical jokes indulged in at enormous length at Baron Ochs’s expense; the other, the sophisticated humour of youthful illusions being dashed, while others rapidly spring up to replace them. Rosenkavalier is subtle enough, just, to have counterpoises to these deflationary devices. So Ochs, though an impoverished randy aristocratic lout, also has genuine dignity, moments of thoughtfulness where the thoughts aren’t about how irresistible he is to young girls. Octavian, though ashamed of the rapidity with which his vows of eternal

Deborah Ross

Dual control | 14 December 2009

Nowhere Boy 15, Nationwide from 26 December Firstly, the year in review — it was good, thanks — and now on to Nowhere Boy, the surprisingly conventional first feature-length film from visual artist Sam Taylor Wood. It is perfectly accomplished, and pleasing enough, but it’s not going to blow your socks off, even though the combination of Ms Taylor Wood and such a compelling story would give you every reason to think it might. That said, having your socks blown off is rather overrated. Or, as one man told me, ‘My socks blew off in 1976 and I’ve yet to find them. They were nice socks, too.’ So there is

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Christmas cracker

Sweet Charity Menier Pajama Men: The Last Stand to Reason Soho Shocking. Absolutely shocking. My state of preparedness for Sweet Charity at the Menier was so poor that we nearly had a critic-doesn’t-know-what-he’s-talking-about scandal on our hands. I’d never seen the show before. I’d missed the film version. I hadn’t the foggiest who the star, Tamzin Outhwaite, might be, although her name, with that funkily off-beat zed nestling provocatively in its midriff, had crossed my consciousness at some point. I arrived with no expectations whatever (though, of course, I’m quietly proud of the fact that musicals and soap actresses lie outside the daily scope of my intellect and its exacting

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Were the Russians behind the Climategate hacking?<br />

So, who was responsible for the illegal hacking of those Climategate emails? I’m a bit out of my depth here; in the cyberville school I’m in the special needs class, possessed of no understanding or ability. But it would be good to find out, wouldn’t it? Or do those ultra-sceptics among you not give a toss either way? Certainly the sceptical bloggers and newspaper columnists do not seem to have given the matter much thought; whilst impugning the motives of the climate-change lobby is not merely de-rigeur but central to the entire sceptical argument (perhaps rightly), there seems to be no intellectual curiosity as to the motives of some of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The signs are that a fourth term Labour government would be even more fiscally irresponsible

Patrick Hennessy has the scoop in The Sunday Telegraph that Gordon Brown plans to make a pledge not to raise VAT a key dividing line with the Tories at the next election. A senior Labour source tells Patrick that the Brownites rebuffed Treasury effort to raise VAT in the PBR because it “was all about dividing lines for the election. We were determined to be able to pledge that we would hold VAT at 17.5 per cent so we could hammer the Tories over putting it up to 20 per cent.” One can see the politics behind this, the Tories won’t commit to ruling out an increase in VAT—indeed, I’d

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Look at who is talking up the prospect of a March election

David Cameron has been on Sky News this morning pushing the idea that the most likely date for the election is March 25th. Cameron’s comments are part of a coordinated Conservative attempt to ramp up speculation about a March poll. The aim is to both gin up Tory activists and to create a narrative where if Brown doesn’t go for an election in March he is again seen as a ‘bottler’, a ditherer who can’t take decisions. The idea is to deal yet another blow to Brown’s reputation for leadership shortly before the general election. The next election may well end up being in March. But I would urge you

Saturday

Jeremy Clarke

Head case

I finally found Trev playing darts in the Volunteer. Usually you can tell which pub Trev’s in because you can hear him whooping and roaring, or even crowing like a cockerel, from halfway down the high street. But tonight he was planting his arrows calmly, modestly and considerately, without all the usual alarums and excursions. I hadn’t seen him for several months and I wondered whether, at 48 years old, he was finally beginning to feel his age. I bought a pint and took it over to the dartboard. Trev saw me coming and bowed low, as though I were a visiting dignitary. With his face to the floor he

Taki

No hero

The hysteria over Tiger Woods is simply wonderful. Compared with Bill Clinton’s tarts, Tiger’s are of slightly better quality, which is not saying much. The prettiest of the lot, Rachel Uchitel, is something else. This is hard for me to admit, but she was at school with my daughter and I had actually noticed her and had said something to my little girl about her. (‘Daddy, stop it.’) Rachel’s best friend was also an operator, a girl by the name of Soshana Lonstein, who managed to land a multimillionaire once she graduated from Nightingale-Bamford, a top girls’ school in the Bagel. While attending school, Soshana was stepping out with a

Melissa Kite

Poles apart | 12 December 2009

So much for ‘make do and mend’. I’ve been desperately trying to patch things up in the spirit of credit-crunch thriftiness but I am getting absolutely nowhere. This is because shops do not stock ‘the bits’ any longer. I have spent the last week trying to do DIY jobs around the house and I can confidently report that there is a highly organised global conspiracy to stop us mending anything. This is why retail parks that used to be full of useful places selling spare parts are now resplendent with emporiums called ‘Kiss Me Hardy’s Wacky Warehouse’. On closer examination, this turned out to be a children’s soft-play centre attached

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 12 December 2009

Q. I have a small flat in a northern seaside town which I use when visiting my son, whose own property is an hour’s drive away. He also stays there when visiting for business meetings, so keeps a set of keys for my flat at his home. His 17-year-old daughter recently asked me the address of the flat, without saying why. Then, when last I arrived there, I found La Senza underwear on the floor, strange shampoo in the bathroom and curtains drawn. No doubt in my mind who had been there. (I can definitely rule out my son.) Mary, my son now denies that my granddaughter would ever do

Toby Young Toby Young

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid, wrote Goethe, but it isn’t true

At the age of 25, the poet and critic William Ernest Henley lay in hospital suffering from an illness that had kept him bedridden for three years. He had been diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bone at the age of 12 and his left foot was amputated just below the knee. He’d just been told that he’d lose his right foot, too. It was in these circumstances that he composed ‘Invictus’, the poem that ends with the following verse: It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. Those are words to

The Spectator

Letters | 12 December 2009

Balls to Gilligan Sir: As Andrew Gilligan well knows, I abhor the anti-semitic and anti-democratic views ascribed to Hizb ut Tahrir and I take any accusations of extremist views being taught in schools very seriously (‘Minister for Hizb ut Tahrir’, 5 December). That is why when allegations about links between Hizb ut Tahrir and the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation were first raised in 2007, I asked Ofsted to investigate both the independent schools run by the foundation. No evidence of anti-semitic or anti-Western values being taught was found — either then or in subsequent investigations. The pamphlet which Mr Gilligan quoted from was written by one of the head teachers six years

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 12 December 2009

Monday Been agonising over it all weekend but I just don’t think I like the sound of Tammy Waters. I know it’s my best chance to get a safe seat, but Daddy is furious. Says it makes me sound like a country and western singer. Dave is adamant and says it really suits me. Am starting to wonder if all this shortening of posh names has gone a bit too far. Just because a candidate is called Richard Grosvenor-House-Plunkett-Ernie-Wise-Earl-Grey-Count-Dracula, or whatever poor Mr Drax’s original name was before we mangled it, doesn’t mean he can’t get down with the kids on sink estates. Take IDS, or Iain Smith, as he

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 12 December 2009

A triply annoying poster at Victoria Station shouts at passengers: ‘Need the toilet?’ A triply annoying poster at Victoria Station shouts at passengers: ‘Need the toilet?’ It then taunts them with the information that without a 20p piece and a 10p piece (an unlikely combination to find in one’s purse) they will not be able to get into the public lavatory. Annoyance number one. The other two annoyances are socio-linguistic in character. Toilet is bad enough. To hear it upon the lips of their children is worse, for many a mother struggling to educate their daughters, than to find nits in the hair. The collocation of need is the killer.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 12 December 2009

Mr Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his pre-Budget statement, made hostile gestures at bonus-earning bankers to distract attention from the borrowings of £178 billion that Britain will have to make this year. Mr Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his pre-Budget statement, made hostile gestures at bonus-earning bankers to distract attention from the borrowings of £178 billion that Britain will have to make this year. ‘Efficiencies’ promised in some departments still left total borrowing at much the same level. In a pre-emptive strike, Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, attacked a ‘culture of excess’ among higher earners in the public sector, and promised to cut

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 12 December 2009

We recently contrasted the Greek soldier Xenophon’s enthusiasm for encouraging more rich foreigners to settle in Athens (to help out the finances) with our own rather mealy-mouthed attitudes. We recently contrasted the Greek soldier Xenophon’s enthusiasm for encouraging more rich foreigners to settle in Athens (to help out the finances) with our own rather mealy-mouthed attitudes. But a work attributed (wrongly) to Aristotle illustrates that the Greeks were not generally short of scams to boost a state’s coffers. Most of these are (legally) played by our government already. Thus, if your house has a patio with a nice view, you can expect to pay more council tax. Hippias of Athens