Society

Saturday

10 Jan 2009

Alan Judd

Motoring | 10 January 2009

Eos is a word I struggled with, presuming it to derive from the Greek prefix, eo-, meaning dawn or beginning, particularly in relation to plant or animal life. Then I discovered Eos was goddess of the dawn, beloved by (rather too) many Titans, though it could also refer to a bankrupt airline or the European Orthodontic Society. None of these is an obvious name for a car, but it works. Its Greek origins suggest sunlight, appropriately for a convertible, there’s the ever-helpful misreading for Eros, it’s easy, memorable and effortlessly crosses linguistic boundaries. In fact, the VW Eos is technically not a convertible, as the company points out. They call

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 10 January 2009

When Veronica came to stay, over the New Year, we watched one of those late-night television programmes designed for drunk young people. It was a compilation of popular virals. (Viral has not yet made it into the Oxford English Dictionary as a noun, but was added in 2006 as a adjective that describes marketing by word of mouth or email.) One viral which appealed to me was an entry in February 2008 in a Bulgarian television pop music talent competition. Valentina Hasan sang, in the manner of Mariah Carey, a song that she called Ken Lee. The judges suggested it might be Without You. Miss Hasan, knowing little English, had

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 10 January 2009

The recession is not a ‘much-needed reality check’ — it’s a source of great suffering Puritans love disasters. No sooner has some calamity befallen mankind than some hair-shirted scold emerges from his priest hole and starts wagging his finger. The message is always the same: ‘You are being punished for your immoral lifestyle.’ The latest grist to the puritan mill is, of course, the credit crunch. George Monbiot, the Guardian’s very own Oliver Cromwell, has been looking forward to this moment for years. ‘I hope that the recession now being forecast by some economists materialises,’ he wrote in 2007. Now that it is upon us, he and his colleagues can

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 10 January 2009

Q. A friend from university invited my boyfriend and me to stay with her parents in a very grand house over New Year. We were made very welcome, but my boyfriend felt out of his depth in at least one instance and wonders what you would have advised. On New Year’s Day there was a large number of people for lunch. The butler went round the table with a tray of roast beef, offering it to each person in turn to help themselves. The piece my boyfriend tried to take was attached by gristle to a sort of concertina of other slices and when he tried to cut through the

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 10 January 2009

Although television coverage of the Israeli attacks on Gaza is extensive, it is uninformative. The BBC, in particular its reporter Jeremy Bowen, seems to be in thrall to the images it can project. But, by its Charter, the BBC has a duty to educate, and what is missing in so much of the coverage is context. What is Hamas? What does it believe? Why is it not reported that the Arab press carries numerous attacks on Hamas for exposing the Palestinian people to suffering? Why is Hamas, despite being a Sunni organisation, close to Shi’ite Iran? What are the politics of the situation on both sides? Why, in short, is

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 10 January 2009

Monday Mr Clarke on the phone again, v crabby. He says it’s taking a lot of hours out of his day having to answer questions about the economy and can’t we stop people calling him so he can get on with counting sparrows. ‘At this rate the only way I’ll get my RSPB garden-watch sheet filled in is by taking that blasted job Dave’s banging on about. At least then I won’t be allowed to say anything.’ Told Jed and he said this meant the strategy was working. Am under strict orders to tell everyone who rings for Gids that they’re to phone Mr Clarke. ‘We’ll smoke him back into

James Forsyth

America is changing and so must the Republicans

There is a deep divide in Republican circles about how to think about the 2008 election result. Some argue that the results show just how close to becoming a rump party of the Deep South the GOP is. Others say that considering the economic crisis, the drag on the ticket that was the Bush presidency, the failings of the McCain campaign and Obama’s skills as a candidate to lose 53-46 in the popular vote was not that bad a result. I think the former group have the more convincing argument because of the ways in which America is changing. Just consider this from Ron Brownstein: “To grasp how powerfully demographic

James Forsyth

Why Derek Draper’s web offering will be no match for Conservative Home

Iain Dale points us towards Gaby Hinsliff’s scoop in The Observer that Derek Draper’s Labour List website will launch next week. Comparisons are being made to Conservative Home but looking at the contributors list which includes Peter Mandelson, Charlie Whelan, Philip Gould and Douglas Alexander it seems more like the Conservative Party’s Blue Blog. It is hard to imagine that these people are going to want to say things that could cause the Labour Party political problems. (To be fair, part of the problem is that the media and the blogs will jump on anything on the site that can be spun as an attack on Gordon Brown). The genius

James Forsyth

What worries voters most

The unemployment numbers are expected to be grim by the end of this year. But Bagehot notes in this column this week that the Brown circle believes that rising unemployment might not be as big a political deal as it has been in past recessions: “But, in private, some of his associates argue that redundancies may prove less politically toxic for the government than was the case in past recessions—because they will not be concentrated, as they previously were, among low-skilled industrial workers ill-equipped to find alternative employment. These days, the argument runs, few workers expect to spend their careers in a single job, and the labour market is flexible

James Forsyth

The West Bank model

At the beginning of Israel’s action in Gaza many claimed that it would bring down the more moderate Fatah-run Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. But it has not. Walter Isaacson of the US Palestinian partnership tells Jeffrey Goldberg that it is because the Palestinians on the West Bank can see what peace would bring that things have remained relatively quiet: “There has been double-digit growth in the economy, and people have a stake in the future because of what Salam Fayyad and others have done to improve conditions there,” Walter said. “And Israelis have responded by encouraging economic development. I think that people in the West Bank have a

James Forsyth

Cable: We’ll only work with Labour after the next election if it is the largest party

We are at the point in the electoral cycle where the political class begins to speculate about a hung parliament. Personally, I’m sceptical that there will be one-the signs point to the polls breaking decisively for the Tories in 2009. But Vince Cable’s comments in The Times are noteworthy as they rule out the Lib Dems propping up a Labour government if Labour is not the largest party in the Commons. Cable tells Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester that: “It would be arrogant for us to choose one or other. Whoever gets the largest number of seats . . . whether it is Conservative or Labour, we will work with either.”

The Spectator

Heading for another fall

Even with the sharp political mind of Peter Mandelson on his team, it is possible that Gordon Brown failed to foresee one political consequence of his scheme to borrow and spend his way out of the recession. How can the government complain about tax cuts proposed by the opposition when the government has itself abandoned all pretence to fiscal rectitude? A few months ago, ministers would have responded swiftly and savagely to David Cameron’s promise to free all basic-rate taxpayers from paying tax on their savings income. The words ‘reckless’ and ‘irresponsible’ would have tripped off their tongues like sparks from a fire. Thanks to this handout to the rich,

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 10 January 2009

Cricket’s ‘golden age’ You have to hand it to Kevin Pietersen. He’s certainly got chutzpah — or should that be a death wish? Just when you might think he’d be happy, having finally won the battle to take part in the Indian Premier League, he’s gone and started another fight, but this time it was one he was going to lose. There are two ways of viewing his bloody and shambolic feud with Peter Moores, the England coach (sorry, make that the former England coach), that’s ended with all the main players lying dead, centre stage. One is that Pietersen’s a natural born winner, a man who will stop at

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 10 January 2009

In Competition No. 2577 you were invited to supply definitions of five types of anything you chose. As the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted, Jaspistos set an almost identical assignment a few years ago, inspired by Sydney Smith’s six types of handshake. On that occasion, Noel Petty scooped the bonus fiver for his definition of six ways of sitting down. Here is a snippet: ‘the “block-and-tackle”, when the full weight is taken by the arms and the body very slowly lowered into position, accompanied by the somewhat otiose information that the subject is not as young as he used to be’. This time round, Adrian Fry nets the extra

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 10 January 2009

Are you sophisticated? Here’s how to find out The word ‘sophisticated’, though commonly used, especially by persons who turn out on close investigation to be unsophisticated, is tricky, and truly sophisticated people avoid it altogether. Now, having got that off my chest, let us try to define it. One difficulty is that the root of the word can mean opposite things. Thus, a sophist can be either ‘a wise or learned man’ (OED), or ‘one who makes use of fallacious arguments’. Macaulay, in his History, ferociously calls Catholic theologians, especially casuists, ‘this odious school of sophists’. ‘Sophistry’ nearly always means ‘deceptiveness’. To sophisticate, used as a verb, is to mix

Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 10 January 2009

What are we to make of the disquieting information that Ehud Barak’s favoured pastime, when not waging war, politicking or dressing as a woman, is the dismantling and reassembling of clocks? ‘That’s really creepy,’ I said to the wife, when somebody on Newsnight mentioned it while we were watching it in bed. ‘It makes him sound like Sylar.’ Sylar, of course, is the super-powered serial killer from the hit US series Heroes. Prior to discovering his powers, he was a watch repairman. These days, he can fling you across a room with a twitch of his hand, shoot flames from his palms, and use a finger to open your skull

Theodore Dalrymple

Withdrawal from heroin is a trivial matter

We live in Keynesian times: the answer to the economic problems created by a mountain of debt frittered away on trifles is clearly a whole mountain range of debt frittered away on trifles. In the circumstances it is good to know that a judge has done his bit to stimulate the general improvidence — sorry, the British economy. He has awarded £11,000 each to three prisoners in Winchester Prison who underwent withdrawal from heroin without benefit of further doses of heroin or of methadone and other heroin substitutes. It was against their human rights, he said. This is indeed odd. It is doubtful whether anyone ever dies from withdrawal of

Robert Gorelangton

Sellotape and string pants

More than ever in the UK, fuel bills now resemble school fees and so, despite the bitter cold, few of us can afford full-on 24-hour heating. But, driven by desperation, I’ve been researching the matter and have discovered several ways of surviving this miserable weather. Forget about replacement double glazing: it looks nasty and it doesn’t pay for itself until you are over 100. But if you don’t mind living in a house that shrieks ‘credit crunch’ to visitors, there are ways of keeping the cold out and the bills down. First attend to your windows: attach cling film with double-sided tape (try your local DIY shop) to your window

Friday

9 Jan 2009

Alex Massie

The Way We Were

Mickey Kaus digs up an NYT article ($ needed for full access) from 1981 comparing the manufacturing of Ford Escorts at plants in Germany and at Halewood on Merseyside. It is, as you might expect, exceedingly grisly stuff: This [German] plant produces some 1,200 cars a day, more than the 1,015 that Ford planners had anticipated, and requires 7,762 workers. Its counterpart at Halewood, with virtually identical equipment and production targets, has averaged only about 800 cars a day this year, and 10,040 workers have been needed to achieve even that production level. ”Our standards say it should take something like 20 man-hours of labor in both the body and

The Spectator

The week that was…

Here are some of the posts made over the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson highlights the topicality of Atlas Shrugged, and asks what options remain after rate cuts. James Forsyth remarks on the idiocy of the ECB, and outlines the politics of printing money. Peter Hoskin wonders how low we can go, and reports on what Peter Mandelson thinks of Ken Clarke’s possible return. Lisa Hilton ushers in a fat-fighting New Year. Garvan Walshe says that Gazprom’s actions reveal Russia’s weakness, and Daniel Korski spells out how to put the freeze on Russia’s energetic aggression. Melanie Phillips picks up on depravity and double standards. Clive Davis writes on the