Society

Saturday

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 29 November 2008

I am a great fan of Richard Dawkins — the brilliant geneticist Richard Dawkins, that is, not the amateur theologian of the same name. The Selfish Gene and Climbing Mount Improbable are among the most mind-changing books I have read. I can’t say the same of the atheist stuff. Dawkins seems a much better evangelist than polemicist; more persuasive when exalting Darwin than attacking God. If you want to be a polemicist, it helps to be funny, which Dawkins isn’t (for convincing and witty attacks on non-science nobody beats the late John Diamond). But I also find it annoying that Dawkins picks on such clunking, unoriginal targets. If you want

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 29 November 2008

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2572 you were invited to provide a rugby- or football-style song for another sport. After I’d set the assignment, it occurred to me that it runs counter to the spirit of football chants and rugby songs, which seem to arise spontaneously on the terraces and in the pub rather than being laboriously composed at home by dedicated chant-writers. The best are almost always lewd and often downright offensive — as W.J. Webster commented, they make Jonathan Ross sound prim — and while they are undoubtedly funny when heard in context, they look crass on the page. So congratulations to those of

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your Language

‘What?’ said my husband, coherently, thrashing with his stick at a blackboard on the pavement. It said: ‘Quarter chicken with two regular sides, £5.90.’ This was no geometrical chicken. ‘What?’ said my husband, coherently, thrashing with his stick at a blackboard on the pavement. It said: ‘Quarter chicken with two regular sides, £5.90.’ This was no geometrical chicken. Here sides simply meant ‘vegetables’, a usage grabbed from America by restaurateurs, because it often enables them to charge separately for meat and two veg.   Side is a word that leads a double life, at once fashionable and subterranean. When I was a girl I pondered what could be meant by:

Elisabeth Jeffries

Carbon footprints

There’s a modern myth that food miles are bad. But measuring the carbon footprints of food items produces surprising results. We discover, for example, that bringing New Zealand lamb to our table — according to information collated by Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute — can generate fewer emissions than if the Sunday joint originated in Wales, due to higher emissions from UK feed and rearing methods. And it’s not cool to buy roses from Dutch hothouses. We should fly them in from Kenya, where they grow in the sun. Now Defra, the Carbon Trust and the (independent) British Standards Institute have jointly published a ‘fast-track product carbon footprint standard’ called PAS

Paul Johnson

And another thing | 29 November 2008

There are all kinds of reasons for objecting to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Selfish and often indifferent to the feelings of others (especially young women), while hypersensitive to his own, he was one of those intellectual monsters who think ideas matter more than people. But he was a great poet nonetheless. His ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is one of my favourite poems and I often think of it at this time of year when the trees are being stripped of their last leaves. ‘O wild West Wind,’ he writes, Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale,

The Spectator

Brown bets the farm

The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Pre-Budget Report (PBR) was one of the most arresting political events of modern times. The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Pre-Budget Report (PBR) was one of the most arresting political events of modern times. Alistair Darling’s delivery was as flat as ever, but what he had to say was truly dramatic: it amounted to a bonfire of the government’s own principles of fiscal management, and a colossal bet on the Treasury’s ability to issue undreamt-of volumes of government debt. His package of measures was predicated on a bafflingly confident forecast that the recession will be over by the third quarter of 2009, and growth will return

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 29 November 2008

The Kenyan Highlands The Great Depression hit Kenya hard. European settlers were often as poor as the ordinary Africans they were supposed to lord it over. When commodity prices collapsed there was no money at all. My late father remembered how white farmers survived on a diet of zebra biltong and maize meal. They wore rags and lived in mud huts with old petrol tins and tea-packing cases for furniture. Blackwater fever was rife. Cars were rare and people got around on mules or ox-carts. In 1936 the Kakamega gold rush attracted bankrupt settlers from all over Kenya. I recently visited the old Kakamega goldfields and the land was honeycombed

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 29 November 2008

If there really is a secret Zionist brotherhood running the world, why aren’t I a member? I know that the Iranian regime is famously confused about quite a lot of things, but if they are right about David Miliband being a member of a shadowy Zionist conspiracy, I’ll be absolutely livid. That bloody man has all the luck, doesn’t he? I’ve been waiting to be invited into the secret brotherhood of Jews who rule the world for years now. Nothing. Not a kosher sausage. Not a big-nosed sniff. Although I did once have a very weird conversation with Vanessa Feltz. It was at the party after a premiere of some

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The police are in a pickle of their own making

If it wasn’t for how stupid their actions were, you could almost feel sorry for the police over the furore that has followed the arrest of Damian Green. If you asked any spin doctor what the police should do in these circumstances, they’d tell you that the plod should leak some details of the investigation that cast it in a better light. But, obviously, leaking isn’t an option for them in this case. As it is, we go into the weekend wondering why nine counter-terrorism officers were involved in this investigation when it appears that British citizens might, once more, have been the perpetrators of terrorist attacks abroad. This raises,

The Spectator

The week that was | 28 November 2008

Here are some of the posts made over the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Coffee House has edited a video to highlight Brown’s borrowing binge. Matthew d’Ancona responds to the Mumbai Atrocities, and says that the Pre-Budget report was a thin offering. Lisa Hilton delivers the latest society news, and commemorates another Johnson triumph. Fraser Nelson reports that the Tories have been angered by the arrest of Damian Green, and outlines Brown’s worst nightmare. James Forsyth insists that today’s MPs should stand up for the rights won by their predecessors, and says that the England cricket tour of South Africa must go on. Peter Hoskin asks whether David Cameron is going

Peter Hoskin

Your questions for Grant Shapps

It’s been a few days now since we asked CoffeeHousers to put forward their questions for Grant Shapps.  We’ve since picked out the best, which have now been put to the shadow housing minister.  He’ll get back to us at the start of next week. Colin “What advice do you have for the individuals who are now deep in debt, after a decade long credit bubble; especially now that the safety net of massive house price rises is not there to save them?” David Preiser “The people who are losing their homes due to mortgage problems can no longer afford to be home owners in the current climate, so would

Lisa Hilton

Kiss me tonight, for tomorrow I may be bankrupt

And still the band plays on, though the chairs are beginning to tilt imperceptibly down the deck. Perhaps there’s only so much wretchedness people can take. Aside from the fact that the jewellery dealers of Hatton Garden now feature boxes of tissues on their counters, like divorce lawyers (turns out diamonds were a girl’s best friend after all), London seems frenetically intent on squeezing out a few last drops of debauchery. Hatchard’s Christmas signing last night was packed with readers swigging wine and lugging green bags of hardbacks, while the usual quota of deranged Gissing characters clustered with their autograph books. Signatures are apparently still sound and one could hardly grab

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Today’s MPs must stand up for the rights won by their predecessors

It is rare for people in the Westminster Village to actually be outraged, as opposed to be claiming to be. But everyone I’ve spoken to this morning about the Damian Green affair is genuinely angry. As Iain Martin — who has been waging a noble struggle to make Parliament take itself more seriously — writes over at Three Line Whip: “…the implications of his arrest in connection with information he gathered from a whistleblower (information which was true) are horrendous for parliamentary authority.” I suspect that most MPs feel this way. Jacqui Smith should be summoned to the Commons to tell the House just what, if anything, ministers knew and

Peter Hoskin

A cameo from the Speaker in the Green arrest?

I think it’s fair to say that Michael Martin is not a particularly popular figure among Tories.  He’s probably even less popular now, if Ben Brogan’s latest blog post is anything to go by: “An MP has been spitting with rage at the suggestion that Michael Martin knew about this and authorised detectives to search Damian Green’s Commons offices. When was the last time heavies came looking for MPs? Expect to hear a lot today about Speaker Lenthall and the Five Members…”

Peter Hoskin

Either insidious or incompetent

Phil Woollas, the Immigration Minister, spoke on Today earlier about the Damian Green arrest.  Here’s what he had to say: “I can assure you that ministers had no knowledge whatsoever of this. The wise thing for everyone to do is wait to see what happens… …The police are independent from the Home Office. I can only say that I have no knowledge. As far as I’m aware no Ministers had any knowledge. This was a matter instigated by Home Office officials, and the Police were called.” Now, part of me hopes he’s right that no ministers were aware of this.  If they were somehow involved in this heavy-handed arrest of

Peter Hoskin

What the borrowing numbers mean

A great article by Martin Wolf in today’s FT, analysing what the upwards-revised borrowing figures in the PBR mean for the public finances.  Here are his key observations: “First, the Treasury’s view that the last cycle ended in 2006 seems quite ridiculous. The correct view is that the UK has been caught in an unsustainable supercycle, with a once-in-a-lifetime bubble in global finance and domestic housing. It is only now in the downswing. The cyclically adjusted fiscal deficit, properly measured, was far larger than believed for at least a decade. So fiscal policy should have been much tighter. If it had been, the UK would be in far better shape

James Forsyth James Forsyth

This bird should never have been caged

As Fraser says, one hopes that there is more to this Damian Green case than we currently know about. If not, it is a disgrace. It does make one wonder what kind of country we now live in. Maybe I’ve been watching too much The Devil’s Whore, but Green’s arrest—and the search of his Commons Office—seems to be an affront to Parliamentary democracy. Green appears to have been exposing things that the public are entitled to know. After this one wonders if a new offence will be introduced of trying to hold the executive to account.  Also given the stories that were apparently involved, I’m struggling to see what possible

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and readers. In celebration, I offer this Culture11 piece on why Thanksgiving is comfortably the most civilised holiday of them all. Then again, the competition ain’t stiff, is it?