Society

Saturday

Taki

High Life | 23 August 2008

On board S/Y Bushido Finally a gold medal for Greece, for cheating. Fifteen of our men and women have joined the pantheon of cheaters, the latest our 400-metres hurdles gold medal winner in Athens, Fani Halkia. It’s a disgrace but the athletes are not solely to blame. Ever since the Soviet Union began using the stuff that makes women grow moustaches for their shot putters, early in the Sixties, the athletes have been pawns of governments. What’s a dumb young person supposed to do when their trainer tells him or her to inject a substance which will turn them into winners? Report them to higher-ups who have given the order

Alan Judd

Motoring | 23 August 2008

Some at least of the 71 vehicles I’ve owned (68 if tractors don’t count) are probably best excused by a weakness for romantic impracticality. It was never inherent impracticality that attracted me but something else about them — rarity, unusual histories or locations, coincidence, the appeal of rescue. Hence the Daimler Conquest Century convertible, the Austin Gypsy fire engine, the Majestic Major mayoral limousine and the clump of stinging nettles in Oxfordshire marketed as a Series One Land-Rover. Recently there have been signs that the condition afflicts me still. The week began with a tour of the Rolls Royce factory at Goodwood, West Sussex. Nicholas Grimshaw’s design is an inspiration,

Robin Oakley

The Turf | 23 August 2008

Who would ever have thought that two wheels could prove as exciting as four legs? Watching the triumphs of Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, Ross Edgar and Rebecca Romero in the Olympic Velodrome I cheered myself hoarse. Frankie Dettori might have difficulty managing a flying dismount from the mechanical steeds on which they scored their successes, and could end up with some anatomically inconvenient splinters if he did. We are, I suspect, some time off the day when Sir Michael Stoute will employ a full-time psychiatrist on the Freemason Lodge staff as Team GB did in the cycling equivalent of the pit lane in Beijing. But what a spectacle they provided,

Rachel Johnson

Diary – 23 August 2008

The fifth week of continuous downpour. Mouldiest summer ever. The children stay abed until lunchtime. I yell upstairs, Who wants to go for a massive walk? Who wants to come to Tesco in Minehead? Who wants to go to the Exmoor pony centre? There are never any takers. Exmoor pony centre was the scene of one of our many recent unsuccessful family outings, rivalling the lack of success of our visit to the Big Sheep ‘all-weather attraction’ outside Bideford. At the Big Sheep, we drove for two hours to watch a sheepdog herd three ewes. So the children basically get up for lunch, when we all crouch in the dingly-dell

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 23 August 2008

Monday Hooray! It’s official — Dave is no longer the Heir to Blair, he’s the Heir to Thatcher!! This makes all our hard rebranding work worthwhile. As Nigel says, it’s a measure of how far we have come that we are now able to wage war on benefit cheats, binge drinkers and Russia. None of us would have thought this possible a year ago. When you think of the ground we have covered, relentlessly forging ahead with different strategies at every available opportunity, it really does seem incredible. For those of you who may need reminding: We are now the party of: the environment; the NHS; the North; the arts;

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 23 August 2008

‘What are all these letters?’ asked my husband, unhelpfully stirring the pile on the doormat with his foot, looking without success for any addressed to him. They were about the BBC recommendations to announcers, published in 1928, that I wrote about last week. To entertain you further, I’ve been rummaging in a successor booklet, from 1930, on the pronunciation of English place-names. By then, George Bernard Shaw had taken over from Robert Bridges as chairman of the BBC’s Advisory Committee on Spoken English (in existence from 1926 to 1940). I’m not sure how that trimmed the vessel. Daniel Jones, the phonetician who worked with him, praised Arthur Lloyd James, the

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 23 August 2008

The debate between creationists and anti-creationists is nothing new. As David Sedley shows in his extraordinarily interesting Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity (Cambridge), it raged as strongly in the ancient world as it does in the modern. The ancients were, for the most part, creationists. The big debate for them was what happened next, i.e. how the physical world came to be. The natural science, therefore, was just as important as the ‘theology’. On this issue the spanner in the ointment [sic] was Socrates. He tells us that, as a young man, he was thrilled by speculation about the natural world: ‘whether it was blood that makes us conscious

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 23 August 2008

New York’s Eurotrash exude a preening self- regard that makes me sick to my stomach In New York, the big story of the summer is that the Eurotrash are back. Thanks to the weak dollar, rich Europeans have been descending on the city by the jet-load, irritating the locals by referring to ludicrously overpriced luxury goods as ‘bargains’. To add insult to injury, some shops have even put up signs saying, ‘We accept euros.’ The rapper Jay-Z seems to have caught the new mood. In his latest video, he is filmed cruising the streets of New York clutching a fistful of the European banknotes. Among the expat community, the resurgence

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 23 August 2008

Q. I have just moved into a sizeable townhouse which also comprises a separately owned basement flat (occupied by a young family). The entrance to the flat is set half-below street/garden level round the side of our property and down some steps at the back. The house has not been occupied for several months and it would appear that the family in the basement flat had taken to using the garden during this period. The garden is unoccupied during the day as we are at work and belongs solely to the house. (The family below know this.) However, the family’s two young children continue to use the garden when we

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Roots

I meant to blog about this earlier, but Toby Harnden’s Telegraph magazine piece on Obama in Hawaii is well worth reading. There is, for example, this: In late January, on his campaign plane as we flew from Kansas after the El Dorado visit, I asked the senator about the wanderlust in his family that he had chosen to reject. ‘Part of me settling in Chicago and marrying Michelle was a conscious decision to root myself,’ he told me. ‘There’s a glamour, there’s a romance to that kind of life and there’s a part of that still in me. But there’s a curse to it as well. You need a frame

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Another huge Tory poll lead

John Rentoul reveals that The Independent on Sunday’s latest poll, conducted by ComRes, shows another 21 point Tory lead. The Tories are on 46, Labour on 25 and the Lib Dems 16. Interestingly, among likely voters 38 percent think of themselves as generally speaking Conservatives, 30 percent Labour and 14 percent Lib Dems implying that Brown is acting as at least something of a drag on Labour’s numbers.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama has picked a Cheney when he needed a Gore

In a peacetime election, Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden would make perfect sense. Biden is a national security heavyweight and his presence on the ticket would reassure voters than an Obama administration would be up to speed on foreign policy rather as Cheney did for Bush in 2000. But with America still engaged in two wars, the pick is risky. The Republicans are already pushing the message that America can’t have a president at time of war who needs his hand holding during a crisis. Selecting Biden also denies Obama one of his strongest possible lines in the debates. When McCain raises the question of Obama’s readiness to lead,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

It is getting harder–not easier–for first time buyers

I’d like to quickly scotch this myth that softening in average fixed-rate mortgage rates means it’s now easier for first-time buyers to buy houses, which I hear the Treasury is now punting in the hope that journalists start to repeat it. Moneyfacts has joined the number of dotcom setups getting great publicity by saying the average fixed rate is 6.59%, only just above 6.56% it was in August 2007. This has allowed headlines such as “Mortgage rates back at 2007 levels”. But one must treat these figures with care. First, consider the deposit now required. The Council of Mortgage Lenders says the average laid down by first-time buyers soared to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama-Biden ’08–just the ticket? 

Has Obama just blinked? His selection of Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as a running mate appears to be a recognition that he needs someone with national security experience on the ticket. This provides an opening for the McCain campaign. It also complicates Obama’s argument that national security is all about judgement. Just to compound thing, Obama and Biden made different judgement calls on Iraq back in 2002. The smart sides to the pick are more on the domestic and personal side. Domestically, Biden is a champion of the kind of downscale voters that Obama desperately needs to woo to his side. Also by picking

James Young

Competition | 23 August 2008

James Young presents the latest competition In Competition No 2558 you were invited to submit entries to Dr Johnson for inclusion in a 21st-century supplement to his dictionary. At first the Doctor feared that too many of you were confining your definitions to the five examples he gave of the sort of thing he wanted. In the event he awarded first prize of £30 to the entrant who best defined these five examples — Brian Murdoch, albeit a Scotchman. The runners-up are Bill Greenwell and Basil Ransome-Davies, who win £20 each, while the other contributors get £5 for each definition used. asbo a certification, notarised by a Justice, confirmatory of

Simon Hoggart

September Spectator Mini-Bar Offer

Next month we launch the new all-singing, all-dancing, bells and whistles super-duper Spectator wine club, which will be much the same as the old Spectator wine club, but bigger. And even better. Meanwhile, as you wait with bated breath (not ‘baited’ breath; you do not have a piece of cheese or a worm on your tongue), I heartily recommend these wines from Swig, one of our popular and successful merchants. They buy up smallish parcels of superb wines that you simply will not find elsewhere. There is a degree of risk for Swig, because most people haven’t heard of these wines. Sometimes they fail to sell briskly enough from the

Barbara Day

Flaunting corruption

Leaving Archa Theatre, Prague With the theatre playing such a large role in the social and political history of the Czechs, it is no wonder that former president Václav Havel’s new play has a political theme. Nor is the subject surprising: a leading politician comes to the end of his term of office. The surprise is that Havel began work on Leaving in the 1980s, when he was still a dissident with the time to be a philosopher. In his 13 years as president he had no time for creative writing, and took the play out of the drawer comparatively recently. The join however is seamless, and one wonders how

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 23 August 2008

It is an indictment of our society that, despite huge scientific advances in the last century, particularly in the production of food, millions of people, perhaps hundreds of millions, do not get enough to eat. The principal culprit is the Green movement, in its many species or fanaticisms. The Prince of Wales, who might be described as the most prominent Green man, has recently drawn attention to the destructive power of his ideology by attacking the growing of genetically modified crops, perhaps the largest step forward ever taken by mankind to reduce the cost of basic foodstuffs, and to increase their production and worldwide availability. I imagine if the Greens

Richard Northedge

Credit Crunch: First Anniversary

When Britain had a secondary banking crisis in the 1970s the big banks launched a lifeboat to rescue the sinking smaller lenders. Today we have a primary banking crisis. It is the big banks that are in trouble — but this time there are no bigger brethren, at home or abroad, to launch the lifeboats. Barclays, HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland have had to raise £20 billion of new capital to fill the holes left by bad lending. That is enough cash to buy one of their high-street rivals — though expansion is the last thing on their minds. Northern Rock, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley are

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 23 August 2008

It didn’t occur to Cameron that White Van Man might be trying to pat him on the back Ah, the chaos there must have been on Planet Cameron every time that Dylan Jones was due for another chat. The editor of GQ writing a book about their man. Which anecdotes to tell? Which to leave out? The tension! The half-drunk Innocent smoothies! The half-smoked Marlboro Lights! He’s not Piers Morgan, but nobody wants to drop a Clegg. Flunkies in panic. ‘Samantha being a Goth! That’s got to go in! It’s edgy, it’s funny, it suggests you might have pulled a wild one. Grrr! And that teenage stuff about meeting Mick