Society

Saturday

10 Oct 2009

Real Life | 10 October 2009

Hotels frighten me. I can only approach them armed with industrial-strength earplugs, a box of teabags, a jar of Marmite, an orthopaedic pillow, a towelling robe and slippers that fit, a large bag of apples, some bottles of mineral water, a scented candle and a DVD boxset of Columbo. ‘What the hell have you got in this case?’ asked a colleague as he helped me out of the taxi at the hotel where we were staying for the Tory conference in Manchester. ‘Too many outfits,’ I said. Because I really didn’t want to list the sad collection of home comforts I had packed in a bid to get myself through

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 10 October 2009

As I was getting changed, a naked figure emerged from the clouds of steam in the showers. The upper half was the Incredible Hulk, the lower half Charles Haughtry. I recognised the face. It was a lad I always used to see working out in the other gym. Usually, we’d be the only ones in there: him red-faced and grunting, lifting big weights in front of the mirror; me on the warm-up mats, bending myself into shapes. At first I didn’t speak or even acknowledge his existence. But I saw him there so often that eventually it would have been rude to continue ignoring him, so I used to give

Taki

High Life | 10 October 2009

New York They founded this place 400 years ago this year among the Indians in the marshes, and no one’s looked back since. Some of the Dutch descendants are still around but you wouldn’t know it by reading the gossip columns or celebrity blogs. This is immigrant paradise, and the less European one looks and sounds the better. It’s the nominally post-racial New York, no longer the Noo Yawk of my youth, with its mournfully tender streets of kind-hearted Irish cops, Italian small-time hoods, black hipsters and Jewish merchants. Manhattan was George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, the heartache, fear, ambition and joy of the city pulsating in its rhythmic and

Robin Oakley

The Turf | 10 October 2009

For followers of every sport there are trigger words, often in pairs, which immediately bring great moments to life. ‘The Thriller in Manila’, Muhammad Ali’s third fight against Joe Frazier, probably does it for boxing. Any bracketing of ‘Coe and Ovett’ brings back famous finishes for athletics fans. No true cricket supporter can hear mention of ‘Lock and Laker’ without recalling the Old Trafford Test when the last-named spinner took 19 wickets — and went home to his Australian-born wife to meet the puzzled inquiry: ‘Jim, did you do something good today?’ The yellow and russet leaves still on the trees beside the A11 to Newmarket last Saturday reminded me

Ferdinand Mount

Diary – 10 October 2009

Alan Clark will always have a special place in my heart. He remains the only person ever to sue me for libel. I still occasionally have a nightmare in which he is personally cross-examining me in the witness box and the court is erupting in laughter at his sneering sallies and my flustered answers. What happened was that, in the course of a rather turgid article in the TLS about the Tories’ prospects (it was 1996 and they were dismal), I remarked that Mr Alan Clark was ‘colourful certainly, endearing possibly but not exactly a man of bottom’. Alan erupted, claiming that I had accused him of financial dishonesty and

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 10 October 2009

In the early Cameronian period, which now feels prehistoric, the only news was good news. It shows how the recession has turned everything topsy-turvy that this week the Tories have actually been aiming for ‘bad’ headlines. They have succeeded: cut invalidity benefit (weekend press), make people retire later (Tuesday), the ‘new age of austerity’ (Wednesday). This inversion also means that a boring speech is considered a good one. On Tuesday, George Osborne came on to the platform here. ‘Platform’ was the right word, because the set, a photograph of suburban houses from first-storey level, made it look as if George was waving goodbye to his family from an elevated railway

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 10 October 2009

SUNDAY What a triumph! Sam launches conference with an Erdem Moralioglu jacket which is far more Modern and Compassionate than Sarah Brown’s Moralioglu dress. At just £500 off the peg, this truly is affordable fashion for the Age of Austerity and an example to all Britons of how to look good on a budget. Dave had a teensy problem with Europe on Marr but once the press realise Sam’s wearing shoes from Zara no one’s going to think that’s important. Lord A’s people have rung all the candidates and read them The Three Commandments: Thou shalt not speak to Lobbyists; Thou shalt not commune with Hacks in Bars; Thou shalt

The Spectator

Letters | 10 October 2009

Invest in the state Sir: David Cameron will never be a revolutionary if he follows your advice and concentrates only on government spending (‘Is Cameron a revolutionary?’, 3 October). He needs to completely rethink taxation, too. You say that taxes must rise. But putting up taxes now, as conventional wisdom suggests, will increase the government deficit, not reduce it. Cameron should make massive cuts in taxes on personal incomes, savings and capital. Suppose he reduces taxes and at the same time allows individuals wishing to set up new schools to issue ‘education convertible bonds’ underwritten for the first ten years by the government? As long as these are made attractive

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 10 October 2009

I’ve been reading a most interesting book. I’ve been reading a most interesting book. It’s all about the books Gladstone read, the way he read them and what he did with the 30,000 books he collected in his long life. Most of the book is written engagingly enough. ‘Until the late 19th century, most books were published without an index, obliging the assiduous reader [like Gladstone] to complete their own.’ That is a clear sentence, even if its use of the plural pronoun their as a gender-neutral singular might annoy some. But the introduction uses an entirely different kind of language, a baffling thicket of unsignalled conjunctions and disjunctions, of

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 10 October 2009

Don’t be misled by their Bullingdon days: Boris and Dave are masters of re-invention Last night, More4 broadcast a 90-minute drama-doc called When Boris Met Dave that I helped to make. It documents their Eton and Oxford years and I hope they saw it — or, at least, recorded it on Sky Plus — because the impression given in the press is that it was a spiteful hatchet job designed to cause them maximum discomfort. In fact, it was nothing of the kind. On the contrary, when we handed the film in to Channel 4 I was worried they’d think it was a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Conservative party.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 10 October 2009

Q. We are in the habit of entertaining guests from overseas, including a countess, at a bush camp in one of the excellent KwaZulu Natal game reserves. Usually we go, in a group of up to eight, on game walks, which bring us up close to animals including rhinos. From time to time, when a rhino coughs or stomps or advances in our direction we have to scramble up into the branches of nearby (if we are lucky) trees. This is predictably wild and disorganised and less agile guests tend to clog up access to the branches. As a host I would like some advice on protocols please, Mary. Would

James Forsyth

Brown has two minor retinal tears

That Downing Street felt obliged to disclose that Gordon Brown has visited Moorfields eye hospital and has two minor tears in his right retina is revealing of the current demands for transparency from politicians. I suspect we are moving towards a situation in which British Prime Ministers, like US Presidents, will open up their medical records to inspection and make public the details of their medicals while on the job. But my first reaction on hearing the news about Brown was to be reminded of how impressive it is that he has reached the very top of politics despite such problems with his eyes. Whatever one thinks of Brown’s performance

James Forsyth

Brown and the voters

Gordon Brown’s interview with the Telegraph contains this revealing exchange: Is he still missing an emotional link to voters? “Look I’ve talked about the treatment the health service gave me and my family (he means the operations to save his sight and the care of his daughter, Jennifer, who died in infancy). I’ve talked about how I was brought up, in a pretty ordinary town. “People know what happened to me. I don’t try to make any secret of it, but I’m trying to get on with the job.” The answer is almost an admission that he doesn’t have that emotional link despite having talked about his life in personal

David Blackburn

The Italian Right prepares for life without Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi has said that he’s “the most persecuted man in the history of the world and the history of men”, despite having “spent millions on judges”, before checking himself and saying “lawyers”. Now I can think of several other candidates for this unfortunate accolade, but there’s no doubt that the loss of his immunity has left Berlusconi on the rack and facing imminent legal proceedings. Even if Berlusconi starts spending millions on judges it’s unlikely to save his political career. If Patrizia D’Addario’s more sordid disclosures are credible then Berlusconi is used to a little persecution, but the Right in Italy is not used to life without Berlusconi. Berlusconi’s success rested

Rod Liddle

When will the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded to Rod ‘Seacole’ Liddle?

Another year of bitter disappointment – I have once again failed to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. My pitch – that I deserve to win it because I am not George W Bush – had a lot going for it, I thought. But instead the honour went to Barack Obama, whose pitch was identical. Neither of us – Barack or me – have done anything whatsoever to enhance world peace, aside from not being George. I assume they gave it to Barack instead of me because he is black: fair enough, I can see the point of that. Still, I think I came closer than usual in the running

Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 10 October 2009

Every time I am forced to listen to whingefests such as You and Yours, I wonder if it’s time to invent the mirror image of a consumer affairs programme — where Britain’s largest businesses get to expose the behaviour of their worst customers. Every time I am forced to listen to whingefests such as You and Yours, I wonder if it’s time to invent the mirror image of a consumer affairs programme — where Britain’s largest businesses get to expose the behaviour of their worst customers. ‘And, in a packed programme this week, Tesco launches a shocking investigation into the behaviour of Mr M. Jones of Rotherham after he ignores

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 10 October 2009

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2616 you were invited to continue Edward Lear’s self-portrait in verse — ‘How pleasant to know Mr Lear’ — or T.S. Eliot’s response — ‘How unpleasant to meet Mr Eliot’ — for a further 15 lines, substituting the name of the poet of your choice, or sticking to the originals if you preferred. Lear’s poem, and Eliot’s response, proved to be a fruitful starting point, prompting an avalanche of entries in which Larkin, Eliot and Pound made regular appearances and were mostly unpleasant to meet. I stumbled across Lear’s masterclass in the art of self-deprecation on the Edward Lear Home Page

Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 10 October 2009

I will only ‘Think Bike’ if the bikers can be persuaded to ‘Think Motorist’ ‘29 BIKERS KILLED OR INJURED IN THE LAST 5 YEARS’, says the big yellow roadside sign as I drive along the A515 between Ashbourne and Buxton, on my way to this week’s Tory conference in Manchester. The sign is repeated many times along the old Roman road. It is rather shocking. ‘THINK BIKE’, says another sign, presumably directed at motorists. ‘50’ says the speed limit sign, endlessly repeated, both painted onto the road and displayed on steel poles by the side of it. ‘IT’S 50 FOR A REASON’, say yet another series of signs. And then

Venetia Thompson

The market is flooded with single City boys

Venetia Thompson says that if you don’t mind slumming it for a bit, you can snap up an out-of-work banker or trader whose stock is sure to rise soon I’m back behind enemy lines in the Square Mile, thankfully nowhere near the trading floor I used to inhabit, but in a place nearly as terrifying: Coq d’Argent, the City restaurant synonymous with suicide attempts. Perfect backdrop then for a first date who, within five minutes, utters the immortal words: ‘You know, there is an upside to unemployment. Since being made redundant, I have finally been able to get around to focusing on my love life. This is my first date

Interconnect

The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards 2009

All is not lost. While the standing of parliament as a whole is at a low ebb, our readers have jumped at the chance to highlight those politicians who — whisper it — are a credit both to their exulted positions and to the country. All is not lost. While the standing of parliament as a whole is at a low ebb, our readers have jumped at the chance to highlight those politicians who — whisper it — are a credit both to their exulted positions and to the country. Yes, your nominations for The Spectator/Threadneedle Readers’ Representative Award have been pouring in for the past couple of weeks, and