Society

Saturday

22 Aug 2009

Letters | 22 August 2009

Conservative progress Sir: So the notion of ‘progressive’ conservatism is roiling British politics these days (Politics, 15 August). Well, come on over to the colonies, mate, and get educated! We in Canada have had ‘progressive conservative’ political parties, at both the provincial and federal levels of government, for decades — they’re even officially named Progressive Conservatives. Sadly, though, our ‘progressive’ conservatives tend, over time, to become indistinguishable from big-government nanny-state lefties. That’s why we in Canada have a derogatory term for ‘progressive conservatives’: we call them Red Tories, and we were doing so long before anyone in your Labour party imagined that they had coined a new slur. Larry Hamelin

The Spectator

Cappuccino Culture

The Spectator on Culture — and our new team blog This week’s issue concludes our guide to 40 poems you should know, hot on the heels of The Spectator’s (controversial) choice of the best 50 films of all time. The response to both lists has been passionate and powerful: it comes as no surprise that the readers of this magazine care as deeply as they do about culture and excellence in the arts. Roger Ebert, one of the world’s greatest film critics, saluted our selection of movies on his blog — which in turn generated even more interest in the choices we had made and what we had left out.

Reihan Salam

Diary – 22 August 2009

I spent last weekend in Edinburgh taking part in a small celebration of a friend’s eventful life. Fred was dazzlingly intelligent and witty and kind, and though I hadn’t seen him in years, the news of his death came as an awful shock. Poignantly, I first heard the news from Cary, one of my best friends. After getting off the phone, I was mugged by a young man I’m guessing couldn’t appreciate the grim irony: I was already feeling so bereft that I couldn’t care less. Oddly, I spent a good deal of time thinking about my assailant. What led him to become a crook, and would he wind up

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of Notting Hill Nobody | 22 August 2009

Monday Mrs Hannan on the phone again, wanting to know when she can have her husband back. Told her to hold the line while I asked Nigel who stopped Twittering just long enough to shake his head in a v grim way and make a sign with his finger across his throat. Not sure what this means but I’m guessing it doesn’t mean Mr H is going home any time soon. Reassured her we would have him back when he’s finished his ‘advanced media training’ with Gary. But from the noises I hear coming from Training Room A I wouldn’t hold my breath. If you ask me, he got off

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 22 August 2009

Forming part of my husband’s baggage-train en route for another medical ‘conference’, I read a novel by an American. It contained this sentence: ‘It requires that a very real dynamic and active union exists.’ It could have been worse: it might have employed the subjunctive. I have nothing but affection for the subjunctive. I sing ‘God Save the Queen’ with the best of them. Yet it is odd that the subjunctive has not only undergone a revival over the past 100 years, particularly in the United States, but is pushing out perfectly respectable items of English syntax. It is most commonly found as the so-called mandative subjunctive, in a subordinate

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 22 August 2009

One of the most remarkable things in Quentin Tarantino’s remarkable career is that he doesn’t appear to realise just how bad his most recent films are. ‘I have sibling rivalry with Orson Welles,’ he said recently on CBS Sunday Morning. ‘I don’t think he’s that good… all right? I have sibling rivalry with him and Stanley Kubrick.’ I can understand him saying this after picking up the Palme d’Or for Pulp Fiction in 1994, but does he really think that Inglourious Basterds, his latest offering about a group of irregulars operating behind enemy lines during World War Two, is up there with Citizen Kane? As someone who has sat through

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 22 August 2009

Q. I am in the middle of a second gap year some 33 years after the first (which was marred by menial work). The ‘Dear Mary’ item (8 August) about Justgiving charity requests prompted some thoughts since I have just been on the soliciting rather than receiving end of a fundraising drive. I fully share the exasperation of your correspondent who wants to know how to deal with a stream of sponsorship requests, but he should learn to distinguish between requests for funds which go directly to the nominated charity and those cheekily diverted to finance the cash-strapped adolescent gap year. My own was linked to a six-week Pyrenean walk

David Blackburn

MI6, insider dealing and robbery: it’s another Harold Wilson conspiracy theory

The timing of Harold Wilson’s resignation on March 16 1976 is an enduring mystery and conspiracy theories abound. Had the onset of Alzheimer’s unnerved him? Was he about to be denounced as a Soviet spy? There’s even a preposterous suggestion that Lord Mountbatten gave up his regular lunches with Barbara Cartland to plan a military coup against Wilson. The eminent lawyer, Sir Desmond de Silva, adds a further theory in today’s Times: stolen documents proving that Wilson was involved in insider trading were for sale to continental magazines, and that might have forced Wilson out. Sir Desmond, who later defended one of the alleged thieves, said: “I had known nothing about this burglary. Apparently it

David Blackburn

The ‘Dear Leader’s Children’

A major political headache is how to ensure the recession doesn’t claim another lost generation. Official figures suggest that nearly 1 million people under the age of 25 are already on the dole, with a further 1.5 million being economically inactive. These figures will only get worse. Polly Toynbee thinks that Germany is pulling out of recession because they have the answer: ‘Labour’s efforts are directed towards getting people into work. But Germany focuses on stopping people falling out of work, by contributing to wages. A study this week says a ¤6bn scheme prevented a major rise in unemployment, and helps explain why Germany is already pulling out of recession.

Martin Bright

The Great Libya Folly

The Guardian has arranged a group of “leading thinkers” to give their views on the release of Abdelbasset al-Megrahi from prison on compassionate grounds. There is a quite a split in the liberal establishment over this issue. I find myself completely in agreement with Geoffrey Roberston QC. Unfortunately this doesn’t appear to be online, which is a real shame. But his first paragraph sums up my feelings exactly: “It seems to me an utter perversion of the maning of compassion, both in law and morality, to suggest that an unrepentant, mass murderer of entirely innocent human beings should not be required to end his life in prison.” He also makes an important point about the

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 22 August 2009

Well, that wasn’t too bad then. The nameless sense of dread that seizes you at the start of each football season — you know, too many overtattooed men chanting En-ger-land, too many managers bitching at refs and each other, too many twerps earning too much money — all dissipated in a few minutes of sublime passing by Arsenal. And Wayne Rooney’s start promised so much for the rest of the season, as he sets out his stall as a true World Cup winner for England. This helped to make up for Rafa Benitez’s return to form, moaning as usual, and seemingly stuck in denial of the real problem — that

Martin Vander Weyer

Any Other Business | 22 August 2009

Deep in the Dordogne, I can’t find a damned thing to be miserable about Sometimes in this job you feel you’re right in the thick of it, setting agendas, kicking butt, lobbing firecrackers into the national debate. Other times you might as well be some no-mates blogger in the middle of the night. Here I was at the start of August, listing positive economic signals that justified a mood of mild optimism as we set off for our holidays, and declaring that worries about an extended recession should be left for September. And what happens? Did postal disruptions prevent that issue reaching Threadneedle Street? Why else would the Governor of

James Delingpole

You Know It Makes Sense | 22 August 2009

If the NHS is ‘fair’, give me unfairness any day Did I ever tell you about the time the National Health Service relieved me of my piles? It’s a painful story — and for many of you, no doubt, already far, far more information than you want. But I do think it goes a long way towards explaining our ongoing Eloi-like subservience to the great, slobbering, brutish NHS Morlock which we so rose-tintedly delude ourselves is still the ‘Envy of the World’. Look, if you don’t want to read about piles (‘’roids’ if you’re American), I should skip on a few pars. The key thing to recognise is that from

Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 22 August 2009

Rudeness at someone else’s wedding is worse than segregated seating Is it possible for Jim Fitzpatrick, the Labour MP for Poplar and Canning Town, who so recently stormed out of a segregated wedding, to wear underpants? I don’t see that it is. I can’t see how he’d get hold of them. Imagine going with him to a shop. He and his wife Sheila seem pretty inseparable, so she’d probably have to come too. Look Jim, you’d say. Voluminous stripy boxers, just the sort you like. Shall we get you some? ‘Never!’ he’d have to declare. ‘I shall only buy pants where my wife can also buy pants!’ Principles, eh? So

Sarah Standing

Standing Room | 22 August 2009

The Borat-ish ‘burkini’ edict that’s currently causing ripples of concern in a handful of council-run leisure centres is undoubtedly going to provide a lot of challenging design opportunities for fashionistas. Officials are attempting to bar both Muslim and non-Muslim swimmers from entering pools in normal swimming attire during certain sessions unless they comply with strict ‘modest’ Islamic dress codes. Modest dress code dictates that women be covered from neck to ankle (with headscarf) and men from navel to knee. ‘What Not To Wear’ on the beach seems to have unwittingly overtaken global warming as the contentious topic of conversation this summer. Across the Channel, France is also in sartorial turmoil.

Aidan Hartley

Wild Life | 22 August 2009

Indian Ocean As a child I wandered Kenya’s north shore beaches. On coral reefs I hunted rare cowries. The Bajunis in their outrigger canoes taught me how to fish. I knew my nudibranchs from my trepangs. Inland it was still mostly wild forest, teeming with birds and elephants that amazingly came down to swim in the ocean. I remember windswept blue ocean and white sands scattered with nautilus shells, whale bones and ambergris. I often say how, in 1977, my father took us to the island of Lamu up near Somalia. He wanted to make a home away from the development of the coast farther south. The flying doctor Anne

Friday

21 Aug 2009

The Spectator

The week that was | 21 August 2009

There are less than three weeks to go until the Spectator Inaugural Conference, on 15th September 2009 at Church House, Westminster. Click here to book tickets. And, just in case you missed them, here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk this week. Fraser Nelson laments what was a bleak day for Scottish justice, and responds to the opponents of Swedish schools. Peter Hoskin argues that Sir Patrick Cormack’s proposal makes the case for greater public involvement in politics, and says that the Gordon Brown is the loser from the Kevan Jones storm. David Blackburn believes corruption, not force, is the midwife of change in Afghanistan, and wonders who

David Blackburn

A man of few words

The Evening Standard reports that General Sir Richard Dannatt is “absolutely unrepentant” about demanding better equipment for British forces serving in Afghanistan. Attending a Help for Heroes charity event, he said: “We have got some very good equipment but with an increase in the forces overseas, we have got to get more out there.” He doesn’t say much, but every time Dannatt opens his mouth the contrast between his no-nonsense honesty and the connivances of defence ministers becomes starker. And, because the government’s response is so infantile, Dannatt’s few words are doing Gordon Brown potentially irreparable damage. Sir Richard is yet to elaborate on what it is that blocks the

Alex Massie

Lockerbie and the Special Relationship

One of the most tedious aspects of the UK-US relationship is the fretting that happens in Britain each and every time something happens that could possibly be construed as “damaging” the “special relationship”. The tone of the commentary that follows or accompanies any such event always makes it clear that the sanctity of the Anglo-American relationship should have trumped all other considerations. Naturally, the decision to let Abdebaset Ali al-Megrahi go home to die in Libya is one such example of this phenomenon. Iain Dale, for instance, has a post headlined “How will the Al-Megrahi Decision Affect US/UK Relations?” Like that’s the most important issue here! One can disagree with

Peter Hoskin

An essential entry in the NHS debate

There will be few more moving entries in the NHS debate than Ian Birrell’s article in the Independent today, and I’d urge all CoffeeHousers to read it. Birrell recounts his attempts to get his disabled daughter treated in the system, and the result is a catalogue of ineptitude, frustration and – even – deception. One story Birrell tells is of how a doctor assured him a crucial blood-test had been sent for analysis to Germany, when actually it had been “dumped in storage and forgotten”. What makes this all the more powerful is that it comes from someone who doesn’t hate the NHS, but who can see the need for