Society

Saturday

14 Mar 2009

The Wiki Man | 14 March 2009

When Professor Susan Greenfield warned last month of the damaging effects of new technologies on childhood, my first instinct was to dismiss it as another hand-wringing exercise. On one point, though, where she complains of the dangers of instant gratification, she might be right. I’m not even sure the problem is confined to children. One trait I notice in myself as a result of using computers is a growing impatience with the real world. The millions of us who spend hours each day working or playing with technology have become dangerously at home in an environment where everything happens at a pace we choose. Like the Roman centurion in Luke’s

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 14 March 2009

In Competition No. 2586 you were invited to submit a convincing apology, on behalf of the banking industry, for the financial meltdown. Overall, the standard was high. Basil Ransome-Davies went into contrition overdrive, managing to cram no fewer than 16 impressively insincere-sounding instances of the word ‘sorry’ into his entry. By ‘sorry’ number seven I was ready to forgive anything. But while Basil seemed to go on and on, William Danes-Volkov kept it brief, making the point that, as a banker’s apology is bound to be short, if not non-existent, the haiku is the most appropriate form: Money fell like leaves Yours was swept, piled and burned My bonus is

Matthew Vincent

Is McDonald’s now a safer bet than HMG?

‘What do you say to a former Treasury economist? Big Mac and fries, please!’ This updated version of the old 1980s joke (the original butts were sociology graduates, and any scouser in uniform) has yet to make it into wider circulation, but it can only be a matter of time. If faced with such a career opportunity, though, a civil servant would arguably be well advised to take it, for the sake of financial security. Because, if global bond markets are to be believed, McDonald’s is now a more reliable institution than Her Majesty’s Government — a fact that has implications for anyone with less appetite for risk than for

Scott Payton

Value under the microscope

Inspired by Darwin’s bicentenary, Scott Payton explores the collectors’ market for historic scientific instruments As the world celebrates the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, and as awareness of climate change continues to rise, interest in the natural sciences is soaring. This is rubbing off on the collectors’ market in scientific instruments, with globes, sundials and microscopes proving particularly popular. The appeal of globes is especially broad — because they are scientific instruments, decorative objects and comprehensive cartographical histories wrapped into a single package, says George Glazer, a former attorney who now runs a globe dealership on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (www.georgeglazer.com). ‘You could argue that a globe

Neil Collins

Why own a car when you can borrow one?

I do hope you enjoyed that new Ferrari 612 you bought a year ago. After all, it’s cost you more than £1,000 a week. That’s not what it cost to run, it’s what it cost in depreciation before you filled up, taxed and insured the beast. Still, it could have been worse — had you plumped for the Maybach 62, you would have lost £128,899 before you switched on the ignition. We moan like mad about the cost of petrol, because we can see it. In fact, thanks to the collapse in the oil price, a litre costs much the same today as it did three years ago, despite rises

Laura Whitcombe

A century for Mr Selfridge and his spirit lives on

Laura Staples recalls the American-born retailer whose great Oxford Street emporium revolutionised British shopping habits — and is holding out against recession today Laura Staples recalls the American-born retailer whose great Oxford Street emporium revolutionised British shopping habits — and is holding out against recession today One hundred years ago this week, Harry Gordon Selfridge threw open the doors of his famous Oxford Street store. After an early career with what became the Marshall Field department store company in Chicago, he was keen to build an emporium of his own. In doing so, he revolutionised British shopping and helped create the modern consumer society. Selfridge wanted more than just a

Richard Northedge

Investment: Equities

Dividends — the directors’ cut At least the savers whose interest rates have been squeezed still have their money in the bank. Shareholders, by contrast, are seeing their dividends slashed after also suffering substantial share price falls — and there is no compensation scheme to cover their lost capital. That is a risk of equity investment but there was a time when cutting the dividend was the last thing a company did; now it’s top of the agenda as soon as business gets tough. When ICI reduced its payment to shareholders during the 1980 recession, its directors were pilloried and its share price plunged; now, freezing the dividend, cutting it

Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 14 March 2009

At this rate, the throne might as well be replaced by a diamanté wheelchair Why do most parents who leave an inheritance leave it to their children? Why, when most people are well past middle age when their parents die, is this still considered the norm? Now that we live about a generation longer than people did when these rules evolved — in harsher times, many centuries ago — shouldn’t it be grandchildren who inherit? The question occurred to me while I was reflecting on the misfortune of Prince Charles, who is my age. It has always been said that the Queen regards her job as being for life, and

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 14 March 2009

With one of those tremendous jolts to memory, I was taken back 60 years by the death of Conchita Cintron. She was the greatest of all women bullfighters and I was incredibly lucky to see her, in 1950, for that was the last year she was in the ring. Where did this take place? Was it in La L

Olivia Cole

How to put the nation’s pupils off great art for ever

‘Bathers at Asnières’ is a dreamily double-edged impressionist painting: an idyll as tricksy as the tiny dots, instead of brushstrokes, that Seurat used to paint. Young Parisian workers are stretched out like cats in the sun, or swimming in water so cool that you can almost feel it, and yet in the background the chimneys puff away, calling them back to work. At the National Gallery the other day, I overheard an official gallery guide addressing a heap of near-comatose teenagers: ‘This is a very large painting,’ she said, ‘and it was painted about 100 years ago.’ In an escape from the shackles of the classroom, as opposed to the

Sarah Standing

Standing Room | 14 March 2009

‘Mum, have you ever been cock-blocked?’ asked my 19-year-old daughter on a recent visit home from university. ‘Mum, have you ever been cock-blocked?’ asked my 19-year-old daughter on a recent visit home from university. ‘Because it’s driving me crazy and I just don’t know how to deal with it. I thought you might have some good tips.’ I instinctively felt that this was probably one of those defining mother and daughter bonding moments that required a confident yes or no answer. ‘No, I haven’t,’ I replied. ‘Or if I have, I think I probably didn’t enjoy it that much and have forgotten all about it.’ Tilly was looking at me

Rod Liddle

Julie and Jonathan Myerson personify the worst generation in history

This family’s very public angst is all about making cash, says Rod Liddle. And the parents were not showing ‘tough love’ when they kicked out their son, but washing their hands of a problem Not my vegetarian dinner, not my lime juice minus gin, Quite can drown a faint conviction that we may be born in Sin. — John Betjeman, ‘Huxley Hall’ It’s the perpetual adolescent in me, I suppose, but I’ve always rather had a thing for public enemies — people whom the entire British public wish to see flayed alive, hanged or deported. I enjoyed a fairly lengthy correspondence with the pop singer and entrepreneur Jonathan King when

The Spectator

They haven’t gone away

For Sinn Fein, the terrorist atrocity on Saturday night that left two British soldiers dead came at the worst possible time and involved the worst possible category of victim. Up until 2007, it seemed possible that the party would soon be in government on both sides of the border. This would have allowed it to claim that its goal of a united Ireland was within reach. But Sinn Fein failed in the 2007 Irish election; voters south of the border were repelled by the gangsterism of the Northern Bank robbery in 2004, in which £26.5 million was seized. In the North, the Democratic Unionist Party has out-manoeuvred Sinn Fein on

The Spectator

Heir of the dog

If Prince Charles is guilty of anything in selling the ‘Duchy Herbals Detox Tincture’, now the subject of a hysterical scientific controversy, it is the sin of euphemism. The food supplement is marketed as a way to ‘eliminate toxins and aid digestion’. What this means, in the Queen’s English, is that it aspires to be a hangover cure. According to the perfectly named Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University, the Prince is relying on ‘make-believe and superstition’, is peddling ‘outright quackery’ and even ‘contributes to the ill-health of the nation by pretending we can all over-indulge and then take this tincture and be fine again’. Professor Ernst

Giannandrea Poesio

Stunted growth

Eonnagata Sadler’s Wells Theatre Twelfth Floor Queen Elizabeth Hall Has dance-theatre given up the ghost? Judging by the two performances I saw last week, Eonnagata and The Twelfth Floor, it would appear so. Not surprisingly, one may add, given that, after more than two decades, the provocative, elusive, multilayered, postmodern genre has exhausted any chance to renew itself. Yet I am not sure whether Eonnagata would have made a different impact 15 or so years ago. Its flimsy narrative, which draws upon the mysterious life and the ever more mysterious gender of the Chevalier d’Eon, is as lame today as it would have been in the Eighties. At least in

Friday

13 Mar 2009

Martin Bright

Comic Relief At Its Best

I very much enjoyed Comic Relief tonight, especially the double act of Anjem Choudhary and Patrick Cordingly on Newsnight. That was comic genius. Why do serious programmes like Newsnight give clowns like Choudhary the time of day?

Peter Hoskin

Spinning an atrocity

Paul Waugh’s got it spot on. The Muslim Association of Britain’s statement on Sudan and Darfur today is utterly disgraceful. Rather than supporting the ICC’s decision to charge the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahamd al-Bashir – who has encouraged the rape and murder of thousands of civilians, many of them Muslim – with war crimes, they describe it as “reprehensible”. Their thinking? That similar prosecutions haven’t been launched against war crimes in “Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya”, as if that somehow mitigates the atrocities that al-Bashir has instigated. It’s reminiscent of the Muslim Council of Britain’s disgusting decision to boycott Holocaust earlier this year. Organisations such as the MCB

James Forsyth

Transparency in public spending

Steve Richards argues with his typical eloquence for higher public spending today. Unsurprisingly, I disagree with him. But, intriguingly, he endorses an idea that in the medium term would, I think, be incredibly effective in cutting down the size of the state. Steve writes: “The shadow Chancellor, George Osborne has proposed the equivalent of America’s Federal Spending Transparency Act that enables US taxpayers to scrutinise online every item of federal government spending of more than $50,000. He has promised that anyone in the UK will be able to find out online, ‘where their taxes are being spent and use this information to hold the government to account’. This is a

James Forsyth

The urgent need for school reform

Every day seems to bring forward new statistics which illustrate the urgent need for radical education reform. Take this from Camilla Cavendish’s column: “150,000 pupils start secondary school innumerate every year” The state of state education in this country is a national scandal. Its failings are destroying both social mobility in Britain and this country’s chances of competing economically on the world stage. Then, there’s this from today’s Times: “Half of children moving to secondary school failed to get into the one they wanted in some areas, according to official figures … One in eight of families in some areas were turned down by all of their selected schools.” Gove’s

James Forsyth

Preventing further tragedy

Camilla Cavendish, who writes with such passion and authority on this issue, sets out why the Serious Case Review into Baby P’s death should be published in The Times today: “I had hoped that he might challenge the refusal of Ed Balls to publish serious case reviews (SCR) in instances where children have died. The refusal to publish the SCR into Baby P meant that the reasons for catastrophic failure were known only to the authority that failed, and the local MP was impotent. I think that secrecy assists incompetence. But Lord Laming does not agree. Sadly, it looks as though he has been captured by the very bureaucracy he