Society

Saturday

Taki

High Life | 17 October 2009

New York When A Moveable Feast was published in 1964 I had been living in Paris for six years. I was 27 and in love with Papa Hemingway’s favourite city, one that he described as ‘a mistress who always has new lovers’. One didn’t speak this way back then, but the book really blew my mind. Totally. Papa had died three years before that, and reading his obituaries I had decided to follow the writing life, despite the fact that I had failed English at school and — according to my father — was incapable of writing a coherent letter asking for money. Obituaries have a tendency to concentrate the

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 17 October 2009

Monday Oh dear. What a sad day. Desperate calls from upset MPs to the Expenses Helpline. Many of them elderly and beside themselves with worry about how they are going to make the repayments. Some are even having to contemplate horrendous sacrifices such as selling paintings that have been in their family for centuries! Of course, we are giving them all the support we can, but Dave is adamant: pay up or stand down. (He’s so sexy when he does ultimatums!) And as Jed movingly pointed out at morning strategy meeting, every cloud has a silver lining. Difficult as this is, on the bright side: lots of new on-message candidates

The Spectator

Letters | 17 October 2009

No Sants-culotte Sir: I was disheartened but, in these days of sloppy journalism, hardly surprised to read Charles Moore’s snide remarks (The Spectator’s Notes, 10 October) about Hector Sants’s apparently palatial house in Oxford. I have no particular opinion as to whether, as chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, Mr Sants should be paid more, the same or less than the Prime Minister. What I do know is that prior to joining the FSA, Sants had spent many years as a very senior, successful and presumably handsomely rewarded executive at Credit Suisse. Before that he held a similar position at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, which was acquired by Credit

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 17 October 2009

Pity the poor undergraduate who falls into the clutches of Professor Bernard Lamb. The youths might be wizards at genetics but if their spelling is shaky Professor Lamb will provide strict correction. It’s for their own good. Some undergraduates can’t even spell Hardy-Weinberg! Either they forget the hyphen, he notes, or they make it Weinburg. When I asked my husband who Hardy-Weinberg was, he laughed, a little unkindly I thought. It isn’t a he it is a they: G.H. Hardy and Wilhelm Weinberg, who noticed something interesting about alleles and genotypes. Anyway, a third of British undergraduates failed the Hardy-Weinberg test, whereas only an eighth of foreign undergraduates did. Professor

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 17 October 2009

For the past three months I have been reviewing films for the Times and it has been quite an eye-opener. Before embarking on the job, I subscribed to the general view that cinema is not what it used to be. With the exception of a brief renaissance in the early 1970s, the art form has been in a state of decline since its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. But I had no idea just how bad things had become. Take The Spell, for instance. This low-budget British horror film, released a couple of weeks ago, was so bad that the critics started pouring out of the preview theatre within

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 17 October 2009

Q. I recently went to a birthday dinner. The tables were very big and round, meaning that conversation was only really possible with the people sitting on either side of you. The man on my right, however — someone I had never met before — had something very large nesting in the hair of his left nostril. With the best will in the world, I thought I might be sick if I were to turn, as I should have done, and so I hardly talked to him at all. I did not want to be rude and feel very guilty. Mary, how would you have tackled this problem? R.J., London

Bryan Forbes

Diary – 17 October 2009

Santa Barbara It was a long way to go for a first night: the 10-hour flight to Los Angeles, then a two-hour drive along the Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Barbara, a place fondly, but somewhat inaccurately, known as the Californian Riviera — fine beaches but, alas, no warm Mediterranean sea. It was worth the expense and effort because this was no ordinary first night; Nanette and I were there for the world premiere of Stephen Schwartz’s first opera, based on my 1963 film Séance on a Wet Afternoon. The occasion proved to be the Full Monty in reverse — a black tie, diamonds and tiaras affair in the Granada Theatre refurbished

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 17 October 2009

Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, is to pay back £12,415.10p that he claimed in expenses between 2004 and 2008 Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, is to pay back £12,415.10p that he claimed in expenses between 2004 and 2008; he had received a letter, along with all other MPs, on the day Parliament returned from its summer recess, from Sir Thomas Legg, aged 74, a retired permanent secretary at the Lord Chancellor’s Department appointed by the Members Estimate Committee as an independent auditor. More than £10,000 of Mr Brown’s repayment relate to cleaning bills. Mr David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, was asked by Sir Thomas to explain

The Spectator

Love works

It seems that marriage and success go together as surely as love and marriage. A new study by the Office for National Statistics suggests that married men are 33 per cent more likely to find another job after being sacked than men who are single or divorced. Given that unemployment is 2.47 million and rising, perhaps it’s time to chivvy the unemployed off to church. Marriage is, according to the study, a more important determinant in getting a job than having A levels, a degree or a mortgage. It is tempting to speculate about the reasons for this. Perhaps the prospect of staying indoors listening to the wife complain about

The Spectator

A new Reform Act

No sooner did parliament return than it was embroiled in the latest instalment of the expenses saga. The scandal is, by now, wearily familiar — but it has lost none of its capacity to shock. It is understandable that MPs feel aggrieved by the retrospective rules applied by Sir Thomas Legg on how much can be claimed for cleaners and gardeners. But arbitrary justice is better than none. The House of Commons has squandered its moral authority, and having honourable members forced to repay a little taxpayers’ money is the least of it. This week, we learned that Damian Green’s now notorious arrest was at the behest of a Cabinet

Matthew Lynn

The quiet agony of the recession generation

It’s easy to spot a member of the recession generation. They’re the sober, thoughtful young people. They’re our sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and friends aged between about 18 and 23 and beginning their adult lives at a time when six million are on benefits. Like the generation above, they love iPods and TopShop. But they’re not as brash or confident as their older siblings. And this is because they have just taken an almighty knock at an early stage in their young lives. They feel that someone has stolen their future. Generation Recession are confused and cross because they’ve been sold a pup by the government, their teachers and even

Emma Beaumont

What does it feel like to be young, gifted and grounded?

David Beaumont, 21 ‘I’d thought that a final year economics student at the LSE would get a job easily. But I’ve found it impossible to get even an unpaid internship. My plan after graduation is to get out: to travel, funded by a low-paid job. Getting on the career ladder at this stage seems a lost cause. It feels like I have had to delay my life.’ Jessica Dickinson, 24 ‘I’m stuck in an unhappy relationship because I simply cannot afford to move out of the flat I share with my boyfriend. There doesn’t seem to be a market for degrees in government studies. The outlook is incredibly depressing and

Matthew Lynn

Investment: stock markets

We’re all Shanghai gamblers now You might think yourself a fairly cautious investor. Maybe you dabble in a few shares and unit trusts, probably in major, well-established markets such as the US, Japan or Germany, as well as London. Emerging markets, and in particular the wild frontier that is China, you might reckon best left to professionals. And if you do occasionally take a few exotic punts, you’re very likely to restrict them to 10 per cent or so of your portfolio. But if you believe your exposure to the great Eastern dragon is modest or negligible, you’re wrong. It turns out that we’re all playing the Shanghai market now.

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 17 October 2009

How long will it be before the word ‘voting’ is no longer associated with ‘governing’? How long will it be, do you reckon, before the connotations of the word ‘voting’ are all about reality television, and hardly about government at all? Not long, I’d say. With President Blair, with goats and General Dannatt, I worry that voting and government are drifting apart. You’d think more of us would mind. I don’t think you can blame reality television. Back when it was new — a decade ago, or thereabouts — there was a vogue among satirists for pointing out how hilarious British politics would be if it followed the same rules.

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 17 October 2009

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2617 you were invited, in the wake of Big Brother’s demise, to submit a proposal for a new TV reality show guaranteed to pull in the punters. This assignment was an invitation to plumb the depths of bad taste. And plumb them you did. I winced as I waded through a postbag that incorporated all the hallmarks of reality TV: cruelty, banality, inanity, exploitation, voyeurism and abject humiliation. W.J. Webster’s entry, the epitome of awfulness, was couched in language that managed to combine cliché, political correctness and bogus compassion in a truly toxic brew. He was spot-on, too, in his observation,

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 17 October 2009

Africa’s time has come You couldn’t ask for a more devoted fan of Fabio Capello than me, but thank the Lord for that over-excitable defeat in the Ukraine last weekend. While the brow-furrowed Italian has turned an underachieving bunch of good players into a remarkably high-performance Roller of an outfit, something of a Lehman-style bubble had started to grow around England. It was that much-loved canyon between expectation and achievement: England only had to set foot in the land of the khaki shorts next year and the World Cup was coming home right where it belonged. But here are some of the teams which, though you might not have noticed

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

No one knows what happens if retiring MPs refuse to make their repayments

The MPs who are most likely to defy Legg are those who are standing down. They have little to lose in saying that they won’t abide by the retrospectively imposed caps on various things. The question of whether they could be compelled to pay this money back looks like it could turn into a major row. In an interview with Andrew Neil to be broadcast tomorrow Harriet Harman seems to have no concrete idea of how this process might actually work: Andrew Neil:  What would happen to an MP of any party, what would happen to an MP who decides that he or she is standing down at the next

David Blackburn

Evidence relating to the incarceration of Binyam Mohamed will be published

The High Court has ruled that a summary of US intelligence, relating to Binyam Mohamed’s allegations that he was tortured, will be made public. David Miliband expressed his “deep disappointment” at the ruling and issued the following statement: ‘The Government is deeply disappointed by the judgment handed down today by the High Court which concludes that a summary of US intelligence material should be put into the public domain against their wishes. We will be appealing in the strongest possible terms. The issues at stake are simple, but profound. They go to the heart of the efforts made to defend the security of the citizens of this country. At a

David Blackburn

Bercow defends the Legg letters

The BBC reports that John Bercow will defend Sir Thomas Legg’s commission in an interview to be broadcast tomorrow. The Speaker makes two points. First, it is vital that the public are satisfied that MPs have “got the message” on expenses. And second he defended Sir Thomas’ retrospective charges on the grounds that there must be “consequences for past claims if they are shown to be wrong or extravagant.” Of course, the Speaker could hardly say anything else, lest he provoke a public march on Westminster, but the difference between the Speaker’s stance and that of Harriet Harman indicates that Bercow will not lie down and allow overbearing government or

David Blackburn

The government’s greatest failing is ignoring advice

On matters of mechanics, I take my mechanic’s advice; there would be little point in paying him if I turned around and thought: ‘Who needs brake pads, what does he know’. The government labours under the misapprehension that it is omniscient: the final extension of ‘nanny knows best’. But 12 years of Labour government has increased the gulf between rich and poor and educational standards have regressed. Advice that suggests an alternative path from that which was pre-ordained is dismissed, as if it were an unwanted cappuccino. Today sees the publication of a report into primary school education. 28 research surveys, 1,052 written submissions, 250 focus groups, written by 14