Society

Saturday

20 Dec 2008

The Spectator’s Notes | 20 December 2008

John Milton is 400 years old this month, and there is justified lamentation that nobody reads him for pleasure. Although Milton is renowned for his learning and complexity, he was also the master of simplicity. Almost my earliest memory of poetry of any kind is singing Milton’s version of Psalm 136 at my kindergarten. ‘Let us with a gladsome mind/ Praise the Lord, for he is kind’, it begins. I liked it, aged four or five, because of its depiction of nature — the ‘golden-tressèd sun’, ‘the hornèd moon that shines by night,/Mid her spangled sisters bright’. (I only wish the hymnal version had included some of the exciting other

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 20 December 2008

What new word has dominated 2008? Nonebrity, perhaps? No, I have never used it either. It is a portmanteau term for a ‘celebrity nonentity’ and is one suggestion for words of the year proposed by Susie Dent, who appears on Countdown, a programme that anyone claiming incapacity benefit is obliged to watch on pain of disqualification. Miss Dent popularises philology for the Oxford University Press and, in her recent book Words of the Year, she plays with neologisms such as moofer (‘mobile out-of-office worker’), scuppie (‘socially conscious, upwardly-mobile person’) and funt (‘financially untouchable’). I do not think they are anything but vogue terms. Even if some people understand them today,

Elizabeth Hurley

Country Notebook

I moved to the country at Easter and have been planning Christmas ever since. Our house is groaning with home-cooked food, beautifully wrapped presents and table decorations that I’ve made with a hot glue gun. I love hot glue and want to glue everything to anything — apples, ribbons, small animals; nothing is safe. I may have to start sniffing the stuff, such is my excitement at discovering how uncannily similar to Martha Stewart I have become since becoming a Country Mouse. My half-Indian husband only pretends to get it; I know he’d much rather eat lobster on a beach than one of the 200 mince pies that are nestling

James Forsyth

Free trade and free the schools

I said the other day that Obama’s national security appointments were as good as a hawk could hope for. Well his pick for US Trade Representative is much better than what free traders expected. The former Mayor of Dallas Ron Kirk (pictured with Obama) is on the right side of the issue which considering Obama’s protectionist demagoguery during the primaries and the general is a pleasant and most welcome surprise. Given the protectionist nature of the Democratic Congress it is unlikely that much progress will be made on liberalising trade over the next few years. But the nomination of Kirk suggests that Obama is, thankfully, not prepared to give the

James Forsyth

Give the voters hope

Bagehot has some sensible advice for David Cameron in The Economist: smile more. He writes that: “Labour’s caricature of [Cameron’s] astringent economic approach as “do nothing” is unfair but evocative; it has awakened an almost olfactory memory of Tory responses to past downturns. Meanwhile, Mr Cameron pursues his theme of the “broken society”, his catch-all, exaggerated label for a range of ills such as drug abuse and chaotic families. The “broken society” slogan was invented in a recent but distant era when, so Mr Cameron breezily argued, the economy was essentially sound. Combined with his glumly parsimonious economic message, this social pessimism now makes him seem unappealingly bitter and recriminatory.

Henry Rymill

Mistletoe and wine

We recently asked the Spectator Wine Club’s six merchant partners for their festive wine picks. Here are the 12 bottles they selected, along with links to purchase them: Esme Johnstone, fromvineyardsdirect.com — Le Reserve de Leoville Barton, St Julien, Bordeaux, 2004 – £18.95 per bottle Wonderfully rich claret that is drinking really well now. — Mas Belles Eaux ‘Les Coteau’, Languedoc, 2005 – £12.95 per bottle The best red wine to come out of the Languedoc for the last 5 years – rated 91 by Parker, which is an understatement. Perfect with beef, game, venison. Jason Yapp, Yapp Brothers — The Crémant de Limoux – £8.95 per bottle This is

James Forsyth

Pounded down

Peter Oborne has an important column this morning on just how seriously the option of printing more money is being taken by the Bank of England and the government. But what caught my eye is the fall in sterling that Oborne details: “This systematic debauchery of the country’s finances has caused sterling to collapse. In just three days this week — Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — the pound fell by 4 per cent. It has now collapsed by an average of 23 per cent against rival currencies over the past 12 months. This fall is worse than the devaluation which followed Britain’s eviction from the Exchange Rate Mechanism under John

James Forsyth

Brown should go early for Labour’s sake but he won’t

Nearly everyone in Westminster says the same thing when you ask them if there will be an election early in 2009: Brown should call one but he won’t. The thinking goes that the worst probable result for Labour early next year is a narrow Tory majority and the best one is Labour as the largest party in the Commons. By contrast in 2010, Labour could get absolutely shell-shacked. The new YouGov poll today has Labour no longer rising in the polls, it is steady on 35 while the Tories are up one to 42—Jonathan Isaby thinks that this trend is enough to see off the prospect of an early election.

James Forsyth

The faith of Obama: a secular messiah

This Christmas is the last occasion when Barack Obama will have time to reflect and think at his own pace for the next four, and probably eight, years. It offers him a brief gap between the crazed schedule of the campaign — last year he was campaigning on Boxing Day — and the pressures of the presidency. As Obama relaxes in his native Hawaii, he will be preparing for a job that will make the challenges of the campaign insignificant in comparison. After he takes the Oath of Office he will find himself in the unique position of being both the most powerful man on earth and at the mercy

Theodore Dalrymple

Global Warning | 20 December 2008

To a hammer everything is a nail, and to a doctor everything is a symptom. I was recently in a supermarket in a handsome and as yet unspoilt town in the west of England where, as my wife observed (being French and therefore a close observer of the English in all their guises), every woman over the age of 50 looked and spoke as if she had stepped from the pages of a novel by Barbara Pym. I looked at the purchases of the man in front of me. The man himself, clearly not of the lowest social echelon, dressed in green country tweedery, was only in his late thirties,

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 20 December 2008

Judging the Threadneedle/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards is far from an onerous task. There are two splendid lunches, plenty of wine, first-rate gossip and more than a little argument. The deliberations are secret, but I can perhaps share with you an unexpected debate that took place when we were deciding who to name as Politician of the Year. Boris Johnson emerged a clear and deserving winner. But en route, as we pondered our options, another candidate, nominated for serious consideration, was Gordon Brown. There were a few objections around the table, to put it mildly, mainly along the lines that Mr Brown is a deplorable villain. It is safe

Tamzin Lightwater

Tamzin Lightwater looks back on 2008

January 2008 Jacqui Smith nips out for a kebab in a bid to look Modern, but stupidly reveals that she’s scared of being stabbed. This gives us an idea and we begin arranging similar outings for Dave on the mean streets of North Kensington where he is snapped in a variety of Ordinary places including the late night Spar (the food shop, not the Thai massage place on the corner, obviously). As Northern Rock goes wrong I predict recession — not bad for a girl! February Fly-on-the-wall documentary revealing how Dave eats breakfast only gets mixed reviews. Undaunted, we begin the now legendary process of finessing our historic commitment to

The Spectator

Humbug

‘What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will… every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!’ Scrooge’s memorable outburst to his nephew will strike a deeper chord than usual this year. As the recession bites, and its depth and probable duration become

Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 20 December 2008

A splendid Spectator 180th anniversary issue was published this year. Along with many readers, I fell upon a treasury of previously published columns: a selection of examples through the magazine’s history of the wit, erudition and style of contributors since 1828. We found pieces by Graham Greene, John Buchan and Bernard Levin; letters from George Orwell, Winston Churchill and Nancy Mitford; and reviews from Kingsley Amis and Lord David Cecil. Hand poised above the tub, the reader could plunge into this lucky dip for a miscellany of prizes. But there was a fair measure of sawdust awaiting him too. Not every column was as sparkling as the next. Not every

Martin Vander Weyer

Any Other Business | 20 December 2008

A hot new brand, a better train service and a kinder role model for harsh times Here in Old Queen Street, we have (in our editor’s eloquent phrase) said pants to recession by launching a fistful of ‘brand extensions’ this year: our Australian edition, our online Book Club, and the soaraway monthly Spectator Business. Even in the teeth of recession, there are other potent brands out there waiting to be exploited, and the next one I’ve got my eye on is the Bullingdon Club. This Oxford University bad-boys elite, boasting David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson among its former members, has emerged this year as the new nexus of

David Wilbourne

Thought for the day

‘Behold, I bring good news for all the people,’ the Christmas angel reassures the shepherds. Given that ‘all the people’ includes capitalists, has the Church a gospel for them, other than ‘Don’t be’? Christianity’s down on capitalism surely stems from Christ. His impoverished birth in a stable sets the stamp on a life where market stalls are overturned, outcasts befriended, the poor championed, the powerful humbled. In dying a death reserved for the lowest of the low, Christ ends as he began: consistently setting his face against wealth and privilege. Yet restricting Christ to a Che Guevara role fails to do justice to his sheer breadth. His parables invariably feature

Richard Northedge

Investment

Next year will be a good one for anniversaries. A century since Lloyd George’s People’s Budget, 60 years since Attlee’s devaluation, 25 since inflation swept away the ha’penny coin and £1 note. And it’s the golden jubilee of the reverse yield gap. Yet the reverse yield gap will not be present at its own celebrations. This pillar that has supported the basis of equity investment for the past half-century has suddenly disappeared. Since 1959, shares have consistently yielded less than gilt-edged stocks. But now it is government bonds that are again paying the higher return. The reverse yield gap has reversed. Until that day 50 years ago, when Cliff Richard

Roger Alton

Spectator sport | 20 December 2008

Without the hysteria-inducing presence of a World Cup, 2008 has been a year in which countless other major and minor sports have flourished. It has been a year of immense sporting achievement — thrills, excitements and real courage, with a series of ‘That Was the Best Ever…’ moments hurtling by, one after the other, like dominoes. I can’t think of a year like it. And the key to it all, the glory of great sport, is that you just didn’t have a clue what was going to happen from one minute to the next. When Sean Connery was asked if anything made him cry, he replied ‘Athletics’. And you can

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 20 December 2008

In Competition No. 2575 you were invited to submit a carol entitled ‘The Last Noel’. Noel for me generally goes like this: I make a brief, half-hearted stand against the evils of what now passes for Christmas and then succumb, with abandon, to avarice, gluttony and sloth. By the time I’d finished reading the entry, which ranged from the grim to the apocalyptic, any feelings of bah, humbuggery that I may have been nursing had been swept aside and I found myself overwhelmed by appreciation for Christmases past. Commendations to Alan Millard, Mae Scanlan, Alanna Blake and John Samson. The winners, printed below, get £25 each and the bonus fiver

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 20 December 2008

Africa I found the former President of Sierra Leone sitting beneath a mango tree outside Freetown. Valentine Strasser wore ragged shorts and nothing else, not even shoes. Sweat streamed down his face like tears. He sipped palm wine from a dirty plastic mug and since it was still morning he was not yet very drunk. He growled, ‘Do you have an appointment?’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘but I do have a bottle of Jack Daniels.’ I wished to meet Strasser because his story was different. Only in 1990 did the first president in Africa’s independent history concede defeat in an election. Today most of Africa is supposedly democratic. Many people still