Society

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Your Sunday morning fisk

Watch him run! Gordon Brown is desperately trying to play catch-up with Cameron this morning, with an article on expenses in the News of the World.  Is it disingenuous?  You betcha.  So I’ve done a little fisk: I will do all that’s needed to fix mess By PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN, 17/05/2009 I AM appalled and angered by this week’s revelations. PH: Shocked and appalled; when one emotion just won’t cut it. Appalled because at all times people should expect the highest standards from people in public life. Angered because I was brought up to believe you did the right thing – and that trust, integrity and honesty are the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg calls for the Speaker to go

The future of the Speaker dominates the Sunday papers. The Mail on Sunday reports that Michael Martin will announce that he will quit at the next election in an attempt to save his position. The Sunday Times has an interview with a former staff member, admittedly one who left under a cloud, who alleges that Martin personally edited the Green Book on MPs’ expenses and angrily resisted all attempts at reform. But these stories have been trumped by Nick Clegg’s decisive intervention this morning calling for the Speaker to do the “decent thing” and quit Clegg’s intervention further weakens Martin. It is hard to see how the Speaker can stay

Saturday

Alex James

Slow Life | 16 May 2009

If there’s one thing that’s nicer than going on holiday, it’s getting home again. Particularly this time: the whole week we spent away, I was excited about coming home. It was a great holiday, soft splashing waves, sunshine and unfamiliar cheeses: the whole Bounty bar paradise package. I couldn’t have asked for more, but I’d arranged for the tent to go up in the garden at home while we were away, a surprise for the children. For nights I lay awake in my air-conditioned, five-star, fully serviced, grace-and-favour villa longing for that lovely old tent, turning it over and over in my mind as I dropped off. I got quite

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 16 May 2009

Journey’s end After visiting Digger in Kalgoorlie, I drove his old ute across Australia. In Australia, ute is short for utility vehicle — or what we Poms call a pick-up truck. Digger had recently bought himself a secondhand Toyota Landcruiser, with double fuel tanks and an extended cab to accommodate a massive fridge behind the seat to keep his beers cold. So he had no further use for his faithful old workhorse. I was to drive it across the continent to his home in Wandiligong, Victoria, an old gold miner’s cottage that he abandoned after his marriage failed, and leave it there. The ute was a 3.8 litre diesel Toyota

Taki

High Life | 16 May 2009

New York Not that I had any doubts about how pig-headed, stubborn and ungrateful George W. Bush is, but confirmation of it never hurts. A friend of long standing revealed to me how Brian Mulroney, the ex-prime minister of Canada, and Tony Blair both went to see W in order to plead Conrad Black’s case during the closing days of the Bush presidency. The two men went separately, and neither asked for a Black pardon. They were after a commutation of Lord Black’s outrageous and unfair sentence of six years in a tough prison. ‘I don’t pardon well-connected folk,’ was the answer, which sounds good, just like weapons of mass

The Spectator

Letters | 16 May 2009

A charted course Sir: Charles Moore has lost his bearings and entered ‘terra incognita’ in his recent exploration of the Royal Geographical Society’s remit and work in the 21st century (The Spectator’s Notes, 9 May). To be clear, the society stays true, today as over its 170-year history, to its founding charter to ‘advance geographical science’. The suggestion that the society is not fulfilling its charter is a misinterpretation and makes a travesty of the society’s work with schools and universities, with the public and policy-makers — and not least to the hundreds of professional researchers that the society currently supports to advance new understanding of all aspects of our world.

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 16 May 2009

‘This is a great metaphor for the death of Vegas,’ I said, indicating the room I was in. The journalist I was with had billed it as an exclusive club where illusionists tried out their latest tricks, but it was more like a support group for unemployed magicians. Most of them were standing behind trestle tables, trying to sell homemade instructional videos of how to perform their ‘patented’ magic tricks. No one was buying. ‘Shshshsh,’ said the journalist. ‘We’re not allowed to use the “d” word. Vegas is supposed to be this fun, exciting place. Everyone’s terrified that if people get wind of the fact that the city’s in trouble

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 16 May 2009

Q. We have been trying to invite a very particular couple to supper for over a year and have finally broken down their resistance. Would it be better to have them alone, we asked ourselves, or should we play it safe and invite another couple? We decided on the latter, but late in the day, our foils have cancelled. Compatible people are thin on the ground around here, especially at such short notice, but would it be better to dilute the company with second-raters rather than to subject this distinguished duo to an intense à quatre with a couple they hardly know? We have no servants. Name and address withheld

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 16 May 2009

In the great row about MPs’ expenses, which big party looks worse so far? It is a difficult question to answer. With the Tories, words like ‘portico’, ‘swimming pool’, ‘moat’, ‘gravel’, ‘Farrow and Ball’, ‘chandelier’ and ‘helipad’ are, as officials put it, ‘unhelpful’. One sees a constant attempt to uphold a certain style of living at the expense of people who cannot afford such living themselves. It looks terrible. On the other hand, Labour seems to be even more stuffed with out-and-out serious cheats. They build illicit property empires, filling dismal flats with unusable barbecues and patio heaters paid for by the Fees Office. Their lives seem irredeemably dreary, without

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 16 May 2009

Monday I couldn’t say this out loud in the office, but our people certainly do a better class of expenses fiddle. There was something awfully depressing about all those Labour claims for dry rot, porn, bath plugs, nappies and Kit-Kats from the vending machine at B&Q. Fancy selling your soul for that?! The fact that Conservatives claim for swimming pools, tennis courts, chandeliers and moats is still terrible, don’t get me wrong. But it is at least a bit more ambitious, a good deal more cheerful, and possibly gives the taxpayer better value for money in terms of what they are investing in. But I know I’m not allowed to

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 16 May 2009

To an ancient Greek, nothing was more precious than honour (tîmê). To an ancient Greek, nothing was more precious than honour (tîmê). The root of this word was financial — what you were worth. And what you were worth was judged not by your own values (note ‘value’), as by other people’s assessment of you. By that token, ‘honourable’ Members of Parliament should by now be quietly slinking shamefacedly down the back alleys (as the poet Pindar said of a wrestler humiliated in Games held at Delphi). Officials in Athens who had so transparently exploited the people would not be so lucky. Most officials in Athens were appointed by lot

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Polls show Labour dropping to new lows, but the Tories are down as well

There are two new polls out tonight and both show that the two main parties are suffering as the expenses scandal drags on. ComRes for the Independent on Sunday has both Labour and the Tories down five, putting Labour on 21 and the Tories on 40. BPIX for the Mail on Sunday has the two parties down three, with Labour on a mere 20 percent—a record low for them—and the Tories on 42. Conservative Home notes that if this result was replicated at a general election it would, assuming a uniform national swing etc, result in a Tory majority of 220. If this happened, we would be in a bizarre

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is self control more important in life than intelligence?

The New Yorker has a fascinating essay this week on self-control in children and the role it plays in their life chances. The story starts with a Stanford academic who experimented on whether children when left alone with a sweet of their choice would delay eating it in exchange for being allowed to eat two later. The study found that when these children grew up “the child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.” Another study in a school found that “the ability to delay gratification—eighth graders

Peter Hoskin

Brown looks to overtake Cameron on expenses

So the race to go further, faster, harder on expenses continues, with news in the Guardian this morning that any Labour MP who has “made improper expenses claims” will be “automatically deselected” and prevented from standing in the next election.  They also report that Brown has given his ministers until Monday to have their expenses claims for the past five years “lodged with the parliamentary authorities and ready for publication”. Despite the obvious political positioning cum catch-up effort (as the Guardian warns us, Brown’s expected to give a “major TV interview” on Monday), I guess we should welcome these measures in principle.  On paper, at least, they’re slightly stricter that

Peter Hoskin

Gripped by fear

Alongside the latest, damning revelations – another, ahem, “error” in claiming for interest on an non-existent mortgage – there’s a fascinating article in today’s Times on the current mood inside Parliament.  It sounds very much like a mix of fear and self-loathing – although I suspect the former emotion outweighs the latter, especially as there are seats and votes on the line: “Until the week-long torrent of revelations, most voters agreed with the statement ‘they’re all as bad as each other’, according to Andrew Cooper, director of Populus. All three main parties are suffering equally, he says, but a new trend is beginning to emerge as voters feel that their

The Spectator

Parliament of spivs…

This week, the nation beholds Parliament with a collective contempt unrivalled in living memory. We need a modern-day Trollope to do justice to this wave of revulsion, triggered by the remarkable revelations in the Telegraph. Gilbert Burnet, the great ecclesiastical and political historian of his time, wrote of the corrupt MPs elected in 1710 that ‘this is the worst Parliament I ever saw’. And so it seems in 2009: the Palace of Westminster is home not to an ancient institution but to a disgraced rabble of second-rate spivs who have dishonoured the public trust as flagrantly as they have raided the public purse. It is hard to know whether to

The Spectator

…and a Prince of good sense

At a moment of such alarming disconnection between the political class and the electorate, it is cheering to be reminded that not every part of our constitution is faltering, or at odds with the grain of public opinion. On Tuesday, the Prince of Wales addressed the Royal Institute of British Architects, 25 years after his famous attack on the proposed National Gallery extension as a ‘monstrous carbuncle’. At the time, he was mocked as a fogey and a reactionary. But his cry from the heart against the vandalism wrought by modern architecture proved to be the act of a popular tribune — not least because it reflected common sense as opposed

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 16 May 2009

In Competition No. 2595 you were invited to submit a poem incorporating the titles of at least six Alfred Hitchcock films. On one of my aimless ambles along the information highways and byways, I stumbled upon a quote by Fellini describing The Birds as a ‘filmic poem’, which got me thinking about a Hitchcock-related comp. The master of stylish suspense made more than 50 films, so there were plenty of titles to choose from. Most of you used more than six, and although I wasn’t awarding points on that score, hats off to Jim Hayes, who managed to cram in a stonking 45. W.J. Webster, George Simmers, Michael Brereton and

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 16 May 2009

There’s an awful lot of ghastliness in sport: from Didier Drogba, John Terry and Michael Ballack raving at the referee (that’s the captains of Germany and England behaving like a couple of hysterical schoolgirls), to a sozzled Ledley King shouting the odds at a nightclub doorman. Or Chris Gayle coming over to lead a totally demoralised West Indies cricket team and giving every impression he would rather be anywhere else in the world; though ideally, of course, over in South Africa picking up the readies in the IPL. Oh, and wasn’t it just a tad thoughtless of Andrew Strauss to enforce the follow-on in the first Test knowing it would effectively finish the

David Young

The business of politics

As London’s mayor, Sir Alan, you’d be a mere apprentice A recent poll placed Sir Alan Sugar as the leading independent candidate to be the next mayor of London. His statement that ‘…observing the past mayor, Livingstone, and Boris, the current one, I’m confident that it would be a walk in the park for me’, tempted me, just for a moment, to wish him success — until I realised the likely effect on London. Why is it that so many successful businessmen think government is a part-time job and something they can handle with ease? Is that why so few have succeeded? It is for others to say whether or