Society

Saturday

24 Jan 2009

Low Life | 24 January 2009

Over the Christmas holiday I read a collection of essays edited by Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, which Jung kicks off with an essay entitled ‘The Importance of Dreams’. Dreams ought to be taken seriously, says Jung. They are a specific expression of the unconscious and as such ought to be treated as facts. He concedes that a fact expressed by the unconscious, primitive, symbol-encrusted part of the mind is never going to be easy for the contemporary, rational, conscious part of the mind to interpret with any certainty. But Jung contends that anyone equipped with an understanding of primitive symbolism can learn to interpret correctly at least some

Taki

High Life | 24 January 2009

Gstaad If someone bet that The Spectator issue of 10 January outsold or was read by more people than any other weekly — and that includes best selling popular crap like Hello! and OK! — they’d be collecting their winnings as I write. This, of course, in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland, where Gstaad lies. I suppose it had to do with something concerning the Madoff gang, most of whom live around these parts, and as of this moment are pretty pissed off with a certain poor little Greek boy. As I had predicted, the gang does not fight but screams and whines a lot. Their women, rather. If

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 24 January 2009

Sunday Strange call from Gary. Wanted to know if I knew anything about meatloaf. I said no, not my taste in music but that wasn’t what he was after. Said he’d rung every single girl in the press office and no one knew how to cook it, or what was in it, apart from meat. So I was to go and get Mummy. They were chatting for ages. She said: ‘Oh yes, it’s definitely the sort of thing one might cook for that occasion… beef … yes, organic beef if you prefer… yes of course you can have my mobile number and ring me if you get any awkward questions…

The Spectator

Letters | 24 January 2009

Islam and the Nazis Sir: Charles Moore touches on an important point when he ascribes a Nazi–Hamas continuum of interests (The Spectator’s Notes, 17 January). While helping Europe Minister Denis MacShane write his recently published book, Globalising Hatred — The New Anti-Semitism, I was numbed by the depths of the relationship between radical Islam and the Nazis, an association that, inexplicably, has been hugely under-reported. Arguably the most important source material I came across was a slim volume entitled Icon of Evil which, complete with official documents and photos, charts the mutual regard, indeed affection, between the two creeds, never so clearly underscored as in the correspondence between Hitler and

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 24 January 2009

I am not going to go on about the word Paki, though it has an interesting enough history. But when I used the word Spaniard recently, my husband asked: ‘Are you allowed to say that these days?’ I wondered, until I heard a Spaniard use it himself on Radio 4. So it must be all right. A cause for unease at this designation of Spanish people is the connotation of the suffix -ard. Consider these examples: bastard, coward, drunkard, laggard, sluggard, braggard, stinkard. Neither mallard nor wizard are very strong counter-examples, the first coming from the word male (though female ducks of this kind exist too), and the second being

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 24 January 2009

My heart goes out to the compilers of the 2009 Michelin Guide to Great Britain and Ireland which was published earlier this week. Not since 1929, the first year of the Great Depression, can an edition of the famous red handbook have been looked forward to less. In the current climate, the prospect of going out for an expensive meal is about as appealing as buying a new house. I spent five years working as a food critic and some of my most miserable evenings were spent in Michelin-starred restaurants. A typical experience would begin with being put on hold when I called to make a reservation and end with

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 24 January 2009

Q. Several chums have contacted me ‘as friends’ to alert me to the latest rumour about my extracurricular activities — to wit, according to the local Notting Hill bush telegraph, I am having an affair with a banker worth several hundred million in our social circle. As ever, I am last to know. This is annoying on several levels: I am married, so is he; though I enjoy the company of the chap in question, we’ve yet to exchange Christmas cards, let alone anything more intimate. I also resent the implication that I would commit adultery with someone just because he is rich, handsome and kind, and the disrespect to

Alex Massie

Still the Dismal Science

Preach it, Brother Wilkinson: When I see Delong more or less indiscriminately trashing everyone at Chicago, or Krugman trashing Barro, etc., what doesn’t arise in my mind is a sense that some of these guys really know what they’re talking about while some of them are idiots. What arises in my mind is the strong suspicion that economic theory, as it is practiced and taught at the world’s leading institutions, is so far from consensus on certain fundamental questions that it is basically useless for adjudicating many profoundly important debates about economic policy. One implication of this is that it is wrong to extend to economists who advise policymakers, or become

Alex Massie

The Era of Regulation Never Ended

For reasons I don’t entirely understand the impression that the present regrettable economic circumstances have been caused by a hands-off, laissez-faire approach to regulation seems to be widely held. This is curious since, as Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason.com, puts it in today’s Wall Street Journal, we have not been living in an age of regulatory roll-back. On the contrary, there has been a marvellous, winning combination of more and useless regulation. If spending under Mr. Bush was a disaster, regulation was even worse. The number of pages in the Federal Registry is a rough proxy for the swollen expanse of the regulatory state. In 2001, some 64,438 pages of

James Forsyth

A Tory landslide looks increasingly likely

It has been rather obscured by the torrent of bad economic news and Obama’s inauguration but the Tories appear increasingly set for a decisive victory. It now appears almost impossible that the British economy will start to grow again in the third quarter of this year as Brown and Darling predicted in the PBR. Instead, an optimistic scenario now would have growth resuming in 2010—a pessimistic one would push the recovery as far back as 2012. This means that voters will have not felt the effects of the recovery when they go to the polls. In these circumstances it is unsurprising that the odds on a Tory victory are the

James Forsyth

Nationalising the banks would just create new problems

Charles Moore’s column today on the similarities between Gordon Brown and Sir Fred Goodwin, formerly of RBS, is well worth reading. As Charles writes, “What is the difference between Sir Fred and Mr Brown? Mr Brown is still in his job.” Charles also points out how difficult, pace Kevin Maguire, nationalising the banks would be: “Even with his abiding faith in the beneficence of government and of himself, Mr Brown must know that nationalisation of the banks would be a nightmare. Either it would require compensation (£125 billion on the latest book value of the banks concerned), which would cause taxpayer outrage, or expropriation, which might make markets lose all

James Forsyth

Alternative bus slogans

As an agnostic, I find the atheist advertising campaign on the buses most odd. First of all, it seems unlikely that an advert on the side of bus is going to change minds about something as fundamental as whether or not there is a God. Second, the slogan, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” seems to rely on the idea that most people who believe do so purely out of fear of fire and brimstone. Yet, most of those who are blessed with faith find comfort and solace in it. The idea that there is no God does not necessarily remove worry as Alan Jacobs

Daniel Yates

A British soldier’s view of Operation Cast Lead

Many thanks to Daniel Yates for contributing this article to Coffee House. Daniel was a British soldier with the Intelligence Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is writing under a pseudonym. – Pete Hoskin Having completed numerous combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, I watched the television footage of Israeli soldiers deploying on Operation Cast Lead with a jolt of familiarity. I saw the emotions that I have felt in the past. I was eager to do my job properly, I had confidence in my abilities and those of my comrades, but I was also apprehensive. That apprehension was not just the fear of what harm may have come to

James Forsyth

How bad will this get?

One of the most alarming things at the moment is that no one appears to know what is going to happen next in this financial crisis. When in today’s Times interview Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester asked the City Minister Lord Myners whether there will have to be more bank bailouts, he replied: “There may well be. Who knows? It depends how we negotiate these things.” Hardly an answer that fills one with confidence. The doomsday scenarios also no long seem as far-fetched as they once did. Just yesterday at lunch in the City, I was told in a matter of fact fashion that Britain would have to call in

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 24 January 2009

The wonder horse Every so often a sportsman comes along of such supreme brilliance you can only watch and admire. Ian Botham was one — he could shut down offices when he went out to bat; so was George Best for a few wondrous years; Pele too; Roger Federer in his golden years when no one could come near him; Borg as well, cold and mysterious; Usain Bolt, who can destroy the best sprinters in the world in a few metres. Bradman by all accounts. They are sportsmen who can’t be explained in any normal way. Now we have one more great athlete, though this time with four legs. If

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 24 January 2009

In Competition No. 2579 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of or denouncing the world wide web. In his book The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen, thorn in the side of Web 2.0, rails against the calamitous effects of user-generated web content on our culture, bemoaning the emergence of ‘digital narcissism’ and the resulting proliferation of inane and banal content in cyberspace. On the whole, you agree with him, although there are a few fans out there. Brian Murdoch begins: ‘I think I should like to perform a celebratory pirouette/ to honour the w.w.w. aka the internet…’. It was a strong field this week. Mary Holtby

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 24 January 2009

It is a sobering thought that a year ago the nominal wealth of the world, as registered in bank holdings, stock and bond prices, real estate and company valuations, was twice what it is today. Where has all the money gone? Was it there in the first place? The $50 billion ‘invested’ with Bernard Madoff seems to have simply disappeared into a celestial, or infernal, black hole, leaving ‘not a rack behind’. I heard the other day of a man supposedly worth $6 billion a few months ago, now down to $500 million, so technically he is not even a billionaire any more. He did not actually do anything to

Theodore Dalrymple

Global Warning | 24 January 2009

We should always try to see ourselves as others see us, but not when the others are French. They are so biased against us that they can see nothing clearly: their animus obscures their view and makes it worthless. This was proved to me yet again when I arrived in Paris recently. I always stay in the same hotel in that city, where I have developed my little habits. In the morning, I go out and buy Le Monde, which I read at breakfast in the same cafe. This particular morning, Le Monde carried a short commentary on the economic situation of Britain. The satirical rogue who wrote it claimed

Aidan Hartley

Wild Life | 24 January 2009

Port-au-Prince Haiti seems almost beautiful from the air. Hillsides eroding into the Caribbean like a rained-on sandcastle. Up close I struggle to find redemption. There are cheap rum tots and poor citizens warming up for carnival, but no hope. I want to find black pride in this, once the richest nation in the Antilles. Here slaves defeated Napoleon’s armies and had Wordsworth poems written about them. But today, with Obamarama on the TV, Haiti is a theme park for the Apocalypse. The population is lounging about in hot pants and slippers as if they’d just got out of bed. Pigs gorge on mountains of rubbish. The roads are bone-jarringly awful

Friday

23 Jan 2009

Alex Massie

Blagojevich: Entertainer of the Year

Can we agree that Rod Blagojevich is making a great run at the title Entertainer of the Year. Here’s the disgraced governor of Illinois protesting his innocence (again!) today: I like old cowboy movies, and I want to explain how these rules work in a more understandable way. There was an old saying in the old West. There was a cowboy who was charged with stealing a horse in town. Some of the other cowboys, especially the guy whose horse was stolen, were very unhappy with that guy. One of the cowboys said, “Let’s hang him.” One of the other cowboys said, “Hold on, let’s give him a fair trial.