Society

Saturday

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 11 July 2009

As funny as Bruno undoubtedly is, Baron-Cohen’s film is fundamentally dishonest One of the funniest scenes in Bruno is when Sacha Baron-Cohen, playing the gay Austrian television presenter, appears on a talk show in Texas called The Richard Bey Show. The African-American audience is none too impressed when he tells them he’s looking for a black male partner to help him raise his African baby — and is even more outraged when the baby is brought out wearing a ‘Gayby’ T-shirt. ‘He’s a real dick magnet,’ Bruno explains. The audience is then shown a picture of the child in a hot tub with four other men, two of whom are

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 11 July 2009

Q. I was persuaded by my son to attend a lecture on astronomy. I was out of my depth within five minutes. Should I have interrupted the speaker, Mary, and asked for elucidation? I did not want to embarrass my son but through not so doing, the whole rest of the lecture went over my head and, I would imagine, the heads of a large proportion of the audience. Secondly, a question-and-answer session followed in which those in the audience who had understood the talk posed questions. Can you explain why so many apparently able-bodied scientists seem to speak in staccato tones as though they were imitating Stephen Hawking? J.M.,

Peter Hoskin

Darling speaks his mind

You’ve got to hand it to Alistair Darling: he really does seem to be making the most of his post-reshuffle security.  His interview with the Telegraph’s Ben Brogan today is a case in point.  Once again, he goes against the Brown/Mandelson claim that there won’t be a spending review before the next election.  But it’s this passage which jumped out at me: “In another departure from Mr Brown, he even talks about reversing tax increases, including the planned rise in the top rate to 50p on those earning more than £150,000. ‘Looking into the future I would like to be able to reduce tax. Raising the top rate is something

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Not a patch on our scandals

Inspired, perhaps, by The Spectator’s list of the top 50  political scandals, Bloomberg has run a list of the ten best American ones. I have to say, these prudish Americans just don’t do scandal like us. The list has a common theme: moralising politician caught having an affair! Please. Where are the Russian spies, the society whoremongers, the russian oligarchs, the Corfu taverns? Okay, I’ll accept that the boy Clinton did them proud – but the rest of the list makes you think either America is squeaky clean or that its political class get away with far too much. Anyway, here are Bloomberg’s choices, with my comments: 10 ‘Family Values’. Spitzer was

Alan Dershowitz

A reply to Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips is nothing if not prolific and fast. Even before Spectator readers could access my reply to her earlier criticism of me, she had written and posted her own reply, “He Still Doesn’t Get It.” In it, she selectively quotes from my article.  The quotes do not do justice to the thrust of my argument.  Accordingly, my article is being published in full here. American Support For Israel Must Remain Bipartisan: A Reply to Melanie Phillips Melanie Phillips has written a critique of me because I remain a Democrat and continue to support President Barack Obama, despite his recent statements regarding expansion of Israeli settlements and other matters relating

The Spectator

Top 50 Political Scandals: Part One

There is one word that frightens politicians more than any other: scandal. They know that scandal can bring about personal ruin, cut short a promising career and even bring down a government. The power of scandal is that it imprints itself on the public mind. Some are about sex, others about money, drugs or espionage. But they are all about power: the corrupter, the ultimate aphrodisiac. This is your guide to the scandalous world of Westminster. Read on. 50. Sex and the Palace, March 2009 You wait years for a good, old-fashioned Commons sex scandal, and then one comes along and is immediately buried by weightier political controversy. It was

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 11 July 2009

It was when Charlie Starmer-Smith, son of England’s Nigel and no mean scrum half in his own right, pulled himself to his full height of 5ft something, peered a long way up and asked Simon Shaw, the Lions and England oak tree of a second row, whether he’d mind if he, Charlie, tried to lift him up. It was then that I realised quite how special a Lions tour is, and this one in particular. Admittedly it was 4 a.m., some alcohol had been taken, and we were in the middle of the Taboo nightclub in downtown Johannesburg where the triumphant Lions joshed, joked, chatted and posed for photos with

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 11 July 2009

In Competition No. 2603 you were invited to submit a newspaper article on a subject of your choice currently in the news containing as many excruciating puns as possible. I’ve never been a big fan of puns but something of a pundemic broke out in a discussion thread on the web about swine flu — ‘I rang NHS Direct and got crackling on the line’ — and it made me laugh out loud. True to Edgar Allan Poe’s observation ‘The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability’, I chortled and winced my way through the entry. Top seed topic-wise was Wimbledon, which produced various

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any Other Business | 11 July 2009

When the solemn temples are dissolving, why are they still offering giant salaries? I had the pleasure of giving a prize-giving speech on Saturday, at a lovely school called Fyling Hall which looks out over the North Sea near Whitby. I have developed a theme which seems to go down well on these occasions: treasure your long-term friendships, I advise the leavers, because the people with whom you walk life’s path will turn out to be far more reliable than the institutions along the way, which look so permanent but turn out not to be: cue quote from The Tempest about gorgeous palaces and solemn temples dissolving. By way of

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 11 July 2009

The worry is not that the new head of MI6 is on Facebook. It’s that he looked such a berk It’s the Speedos photograph, isn’t it? That’s the real killer on the Facebook page of the wife of Sir John Sawers, ‘C’, the new head of MI6. The one of her and her daughter doing a burlesque act isn’t great, and the one of her brother with the Holocaust-denying historian David Irving raises its own very special questions, but it’s the Speedos that really make you wince. Because they’re not just any old Speedos, are they? No, they’re the same Speedos, almost down to the piping, that Daniel Craig is

James Delingpole James Delingpole

You Know It Makes Sense | 11 July 2009

Quite possibly the greatest moment of my life so far — better perhaps even than pills in the late 1980s or riding to hounds on Exmoor or getting into Oxford or finding that the huge purple mite I’d discovered clinging to my left testicle during a cold bucket shower in the Western Sudan appeared not to have done any lasting damage — was watching Boy play cricket in a school house match the other week. Like me, I’m half-proud to say, Boy is a total spaz at cricket. But I’m only half-proud to say it because obviously there’s another part of me that would love him to be captaining the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Journalists will be the next target of public anger, and rightly so

There is a danger in writing columns that you destroy everything. You begin by gleefully attacking your enemies, then you begin to attack your friends. You end up attacking yourself, like one of those nematode worms which, in a witless sexual frenzy, stabs itself to death with its own penis. This is the fate that awaits all of us scribblers — and fair enough, I suppose. So this week, then, halfway there: friends. In fairness, Andrew Gilligan was never a very close friend of mine — we didn’t, you know, hang out. But I employed him as a reporter at the BBC Today programme and admired him as, I think, the finest

Sarah Standing

Standing Room | 11 July 2009

I’ve been reprimanded three times this week for ‘inappropriate behaviour’ — issued with a trio of verbal ‘warnings’. I’ve been reprimanded three times this week for ‘inappropriate behaviour’ — issued with a trio of verbal ‘warnings’. None were handed out by law-enforcers — all came from members of the public. Random do-gooders. Total strangers have found the time, energy and self-importance to publicly tick me off for micro-misdemeanours. It’s a trend. Social vigilantes are the new police. The first time I got told off I was parking outside my house. As I reversed, I was suddenly aware that I had an audience. A middle-aged couple were silently observing me. They

The Spectator

Profumo, Profumas, Profumat

Our guide to the top 50 political scandals concludes in this issue, and seems already to have brought great pleasure and amusement to readers. As David Selbourne observes on page 18, parliament is presently suffering from a terrible dose of swine flu, symptomatic of a much wider malaise in the polity. Revisiting the great scandals of the past, however, has reminded us that the British tend to deal with outbreaks of political disgrace with laughter and satire. Our instinct is usually to mock and scorn, rather than to roll out the tumbrils: one of many reasons why this is not a revolutionary country. In France, they stormed the Bastille. In

Deborah Ross

Extreme sport

Brüno 18, Nationwide Listen, and there is no easy way of putting this, so I’ll just come straight out with it: I think the joke may be over. I say ‘may’ because Brüno is still very funny, for which we must be intensely grateful, but Brüno is no Borat. I am sorry to be the one to give you this news and take absolutely no pleasure in it beyond the big kick I always get when I imagine I might have taken the shine off someone’s day. In fact, if it weren’t for that, this would hurt me as much as it hurts you. So, Brüno. Brüno is Sasha Baron

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 10 July 2009

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Matthew d’Ancona reports on a poetic evening at 22 Old Queen Street. Fraser Nelson reveals why the Tories’ Californian strategy should be taken seriously, and marks a welcome rejection of assisted suicide. James Forsyth notes the waning authority of the Iranian regime, and says that the Tories must be prepared to launch a reverse march through the institututions. Peter Hoskin tracks the latest in the Andy Coulson story, and wonders whether Nick Clegg is out of love with the Tories. Lloyd Evans cuts through the jargon. Daniel Korski observes that there are no Brits in Europe’s likely

Daniel Korski

National security priorities: your say

Watch out: it’s security review season. The Brown government is about to issue a second version of its National Security Strategy. You can expect Pauline Neville-Jones to put out a revised version of the paper she did for the Tories a while ago. The Obama administration is set to launch a new “Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review,” to be headed up by Deputy Secretary of State Jacob “Jack” Lew and Policy Planning chief Anne-Marie Slaughter. While NATO has just begun work on its Strategic Concept, and Russia recently updated its National Security Strategy. Oh, and the EU disseminated a new Security Strategy under the French EU Presidency, which also saw

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s legacy of inequality, poverty and joblessness

We all know Labour has failed to run an efficient economy or public services, but what’s little discussed is its failure to achieve even its own goals. Had Brown bankrupted the country but, say, made the poorest much better off, then Labour members might not be facing such an existential crisis. As it stands they won three victories, trebled health spending, redistributed some £1.5 trillion – and will end up with a society even more ‘unequal’ than it ever was under Thatcher. I look at this in my column today, and thought I’d share a few of the points with CoffeeHousers. First, equality. This (rather than making the poor better

Peter Hoskin

Lansley takes one step forward and two steps back on spending

Although Andrew Lansley’s “10 percent” gaffe may have worked out alright in the end, I can’t help but think he’s pushing his luck with his latest comments: Andrew Lansley has called on the Government to come clean about their spending plans after it was revealed that the NHS has been asked to plan for efficiency savings of £15-20 billion against its 2010-11 budget. The Department of Health has refused to confirm whether these savings will be available for reinvestment in the NHS – if they are not, it will equate to a real terms annual cut to the NHS budget of 2.3 per cent. Andrew, the Shadow Health Secretary, said,

Peter Hoskin

No change on the Coulson front

After the news that there won’t be a new police investigation last night, the second thing the Tories feared most hasn’t happened either: neither the Guardian nor any other outlet has anything to further implicate Andy Coulson in the phone-hacking scandal this morning.  Indeed, the Guardian’s main story concerns how a private investigator working for the NotW collected phone messages from Sir Alex Ferguson and Alan Shearer, among others.  That deepens the media controversy, but hardly fuels the political controversy which was trying to burst into flames yesterday. I should stress – as I did in a comment yesterday – that I think phone-hacking is a disgraceful practice.  But the