Society

Saturday

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 15 November 2008

Monday I can’t believe people are saying that tax cutting is Gordon’s idea! This is an unbelievable cheek!! Dave has been banging on about cutting taxes for three years now. Every time he makes a speech it’s tax cuts this, tax cuts that. Tax, tax, tax — it’s all we ever talk about. You know what I think has gone wrong? We’ve been calling for tax cuts for so long now people just don’t hear us any more. It’s like white noise. This is probably why a lot of our tax cutting talk just hasn’t been reported. People are bored of it. I mean, there’s only so long you can

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 15 November 2008

My husband’s remarks are sounding more and more like those of Jack Woolley in The Archers, but this week one of his questions proved quite useful. My husband’s remarks are sounding more and more like those of Jack Woolley in The Archers, but this week one of his questions proved quite useful. I’d been reading the very good new biography of the young G.K. Chesterton by William Oddie. My husband, having found my book more interesting than his, looked up from it and said: ‘What does he mean by pessimism?’ Certainly, a revolt against pessimism was the central event of Chesterton’s life. In 1894, when he was 20, he went

The Spectator

Letters | 15 November 2008

The licence fee is good value Sir: Charles Moore has really talked himself into a corner this time with regard to his pathological dislike of the BBC (The Spectator’s Notes, 8 November). Like many other ‘BBC bashers’ on the Right he seems to gleefully welcome the Ross and Brand affair as a vindication of his views. If we accept his logic, and his analogy of being made to pay for something you dislike and did not order in a café, one would conclude that unless people like absolutely everything the BBC broadcasts on the TV and radio then they are justified in withholding the licence fee. Of course this would

Alex James

Slow life | 15 November 2008

It was a rainy morning on Friday when I woke up warm as toast in a small castle in Northumberland, surrounded on all sides as far as the eye could see by the immaculate, formal gardens still dancing under the weight of the winter sky and beyond them racing-green moorland stretching to infinity and eternity in all directions. I’d brought my gun and my guitar and we’d all been up singing until the small hours, singing all the songs I could remember. Well, there were a few sore heads at the breakfast table but the atmosphere was jocular, festive. Most of the guests had known each other for many years

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 15 November 2008

Last Thursday I was volunteer driver for the day for a Heartbeaters’ outing. Heartbeaters is a local exercise and social club for people recovering from heart attacks that meets weekly (and perhaps weakly) in the Baptist church hall for an hour of gentle physical jerks. We went to Greenway, Agatha Christie’s house on the east bank of the river Dart in Devon. She bought Greenway and its 33 acres in 1939 for £6,000, and the National Trust has just spent £5.4 million doing it up, in the words of its website, ‘to retain the spirit of the place, its almost wayward character, its atmospheric beauty and its timeless qualities’. Solar

Taki

High life | 15 November 2008

New York Election nights in the Bagel were always spent at 73 East 73rd Street, in Bill and Pat Buckley’s house, more often than not described as palatial by eager-to-please gossip columnists. In reality it was a fine New York maisonette, better suited for entertainment rather than cosy living, the latter reserved for their tiny and warm Connecticut house. Alas, both Bill and Pat are now gone, so I had to fend for myself, liberal and politically minded New Yorkers not eager to entertain someone who found Palin sexy and appreciated McCain’s service to his country. Actually, it felt strange on election night not to be rubbing elbows with the

Robin Oakley

The turf | 15 November 2008

‘Look here, Sunshine,’ I remember Eric Morecambe responding to a raised eyebrow from André Previn about the comedian’s musical efforts. ‘I am playing the right notes, just maybe not in the right order.’ My tipping goes like that too. For the previous Flat season I suggested that William Haggas’s Conquest might ‘pop up at a nice price later in the season’. So he did. Unfortunately, Conquest’s 40–1 victory in the Stewards’ Cup and his 16–1 handicap victory happened not in the 2007 season but in the one just ended. After our healthy profit over jumps the Flat Twelve sadly proved more a case of appreciating quality than counting profits. But

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 15 November 2008

‘Wow, that’s brave,’ said John Kampfner, the former editor of the New Statesman. ‘I’d never do that.’ I had just told him I’d agreed to be on Have I Got News for You and, as soon as he said this, I began to have second thoughts. ‘Oh Christ. D’you think I’ve made a terrible mistake?’ ‘It depends how quick-witted you are,’ he said. He was right — and the truth is I’m not that quick on my feet. For instance, when I appeared on Question Time in 2005 I had to field one of those dreadful ‘funny’ questions at the end and completely fluffed it. The exchange went like this:

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 15 November 2008

Q. I am 44 and, for various reasons, have been single for about five years, but I now have a girlfriend. When people ring to invite me to dinner, I would like to say, ‘I have a girlfriend now. Can I bring her?’, but I do not want to embarrass anyone since I am well aware that one of the reasons I receive so many invitations is because people like to have a spare man at the table. On the other hand, I wonder whether maybe some of my hosts would like to meet my wonderful girlfriend and might be quite happy to invite her too. How should I sound

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 15 November 2008

It is a relief that there is one magazine in which one will not be hauled up on a charge of libel or sexual harassment for writing that Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States, is a novus homo. So too was the 1st-century bc Roman orator, philosopher and politician Cicero, and he never stopped boasting about it, as well he might — there were only 12 novi homines in the last 300 years of republican Rome. In strong contrast to our system, Romans sensibly designed their ‘constitution’ to make it impossible for anyone with no background in or experience of politics to reach a position of power. From

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The State is failing the most vulnerable

The Guardian reports today on the horrific state of child protection. The evidence it has uncovered suggests that the failings that led to no one intervening to protect Baby P are hideously common.  “More than 80% of children who are killed or seriously injured as a result of abuse or neglect are missed by the national child protection register, the Guardian can reveal. … The figures, obtained from unpublished government-commissioned research, show a widespread pattern of missed opportunities where police, social workers and health professionals fail to communicate or act on evidence of potential abuse. Postmortem case reviews included in the research where children died in the care of their

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown’s patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel

Labour has, predictably, accused George Osborne of “talking down” the pound for his comment that Brown’s reckless borrowing risks a run on sterling. Gordon Brown, doing his best father of the nation impersonation, says that he regrets the “partisan talk from the opposition”. But the truth is that Osborne’s warning is right; what Brown is doing at the moment is incredibly irresponsible and he deserves to be called out on it. Brown has long tried to rule huge chunks of criticism of him out of bounds. Anyone who questioned his economic management was talking down the economy, and now anyone who points out the dangers in his approach is talking

Peter Hoskin

Is Osborne right to warn about sterling now?

So, George Osborne’s unveiled his new line of attack on the Government – warning that, in light of sterling’s recent plunge, Brown’s addiction to debt could trigger a run on the pound.  It’s a prognosis not entirely without basis, but is now the right time to make it, politically?  After all, the trends aren’t currently heading in the direction of the Shadow Chancellor’s worst-case scenario, and the devaluation of sterling could even result in a few benefits.  Gary Duncan puts it best in today’s Times: “How much does any of this really matter? There are two main dangers. First, as Mr Osborne argues, a weak pound that makes it even

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 15 November 2008

The most powerful storyline of the US election, which the fawning media did nothing to challenge, was the idea that Barack Obama was an underdog who had miraculously triumphed against a hostile establishment to make a presidential bid. In this he was rather helped by the simplistic American belief that race somehow trumps all other claims to adversity. To me this seems, well, slightly racist. If asked to choose between a) being a black editor of the Harvard Law Review or b) spending five years of my life in a small bamboo cage being tortured by some really angry North Vietnamese, I wouldn’t think long before ticking box a). But

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 15 November 2008

In Competition No. 2570 you were invited to take any song by the Beatles or by Elvis Presley and rewrite it in the style of the poet of your choice. It’s a long way from Scotty Moore to Middle Scots but that didn’t stop Penelope Mackie, who submitted a fine rendition of ‘All Shook Up’ in the style of William Dunbar. I was also impressed by Chris O’Carroll’s ‘Yellow Submarine’ by Walt Whitman: ‘We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine./ Do I repeat myself? Very well then I repeat myself./ We all live…’ etc. etc.  Well done, too, to Ray Kelley, Michael Cregan, Gerard

Kate Chisholm

Communication breakdown

There’s been a lot of huffing and puffing about the BBC’s World Service in the past week as cuts were announced in the Russian service. Isn’t it a bad time to reduce the BBC’s output in the Russian language when relations between London and Moscow are so frosty? Surely it should be broadcasting more of its impartial, informative news and current affairs to the peoples ruled by President Medvedev’s increasingly authoritarian government, not less? But the World Service has had to face up to a bit of real-economick. The service is funded not by the licence fee but by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (a hangover from the days when

Linsey Mcgoey

Doing good and doing well

Philanthrocapitalism, by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green Some say there’s no such thing as pure charity. All altruistic gifts are rooted in the self-interest of the giver, whether the goal is to increase your social status or your tax portfolio. If that’s true, the only thing new about philanthrocapitalism is that people such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are being more upfront about the need to make money out of charity. And they are confident that combining business acumen with philanthropy will improve the world that made them rich in the first place. Worth an estimated $30 billion, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had long been the largest

Eric Ellis

City Life | 15 November 2008

It was Kylie Minogue who made me think Turkey and Europe might just about be ready for each other. There was the pop poppet — well, life-size images of her — flaunting her curvaceous clunes at shoppers in the Agent Provocateur lingerie outlet at Istanbul’s Kanyon Mall. It was a shocking exhibition in a country that is 98 per cent Islamic. But the thing was, it was me who was shocked. I’d been reading press accounts of Turkey’s gathering fundamentalism: how its women had embraced the hijab, while those who were disinclined to do so were having it forcibly pulled over them by Islamist vigilantes. Once a secular standard-bearer, Turkey

Richard Northedge

Boom and bust

So many ways to say we’re in trouble Without an Inuit thesaurus I have no way of checking how many words the Eskimos really have for snow, but each day’s newspapers reveal just how large a lexicon we have for an economy going into reverse. Recession, depression, downturn, decline, disinflation, slump, slowdown, squeeze, freeze, meltdown, bust, crash, crunch, collapse, for starters. But when the economy was booming the only word we heard was, well, boom. I could add in all those euphemisms beloved by ministers such as ‘testing times’ and ‘difficult conditions’, but why are there so many terms for a shrinking economy but such little choice when it grows?

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 15 November 2008

Not long before he died, Simon Gray and I discussed the extraordinary paradox: why was it that New Labour does everything in its power to discourage smoking and everything in its power (notably longer licensing hours) to encourage drinking? After all, we agreed, drink caused infinitely more human misery, both to drinkers themselves and to their families, than cigarettes. Smoking does not produce suicides, whereas drinking does, every day. Any doctor or hospital consultant will tell you that booze kills many more people than lung cancer, and that’s not even counting road deaths caused by drunken drivers. Above all, smoking does not lead to crime, whereas over 50 per cent