Society

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 7 June 2008

Q. During a lavish lunch party last month, our host was insulting about my new boyfriend, whom I had brought along with his permission. His actual words were, ‘He’s not my particular cup of tea, darling.’ He said this privately to me, not to the whole table. At the time I laughed it off and changed the subject because I did not want to create a bad atmosphere and he, our host, was slightly drunk (but only slightly). I am a stickler for writing to thank and have picked up pen and paper many times since that day but have been unable to bring myself to present the usual fulsome

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Annals of Punditry | 7 June 2008

Euro 2008 starts today and happily we’re spared the agony of watching Scotland play. The BBC are doing their best to persuade us that even a tournament “without England” might be worth watching even though most sentient people appreciate that England’s failure to qualify actually enhances the tournament, especially for the TV viewer who might have an increased chance of intelligent, astute, imaginative, perceptive TV coverage. Not so fast my friends! Here’s the BBC’s Gary Lineker explaining why he thinks Spain can win the tournament: It is open, but I am going for those perennial underachievers in Spain…the feeling is that [the] team chokes, but they have done well in

James Young

Words and weapons

In Competition No 2547 you were invited to write a poem or some prose ending with ‘The pen [or pun] is mightier than the sword’. The tag comes from a play, Richelieu, by Lord Lytton, the 19th-century politician and writer remembered today, if at all, for The Last Days of Pompeii. The idea for the pun bit came when I read of a proposal to remove a statue in central London of General Charles Napier, the Victorian conqueror of Sind, who is remembered today, if at all, not for his feats of arms but for the one-word telegram ‘Peccavi’ (I have sinned) that he allegedly sent to his London masters.

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 7 June 2008

As hard luck stories go, it might not be up there with Oliver Twist, but dammit last weekend my Sky went down. In that pathetic, fat-arsed nerdy way I had been planning the ideal weekend: bouncing happily from the climax to the 20/20 Indian Premier League, to Wasps and Leicester in the Rugby Premiership final, then the mid-point of the French Open on Eurosport, and thrumming along nicely in the background the second Test between Australia and West Indies. So what I was left with last weekend was a rugby league quarter-final, and even my life’s not that sad, and some halfway decent racing with the effortlessly brilliant Ryan Moore

Reihan Salam

McCain is in for a terrible shock if he wins

Reihan Salam says that most Republicans have no idea how much the American social landscape has changed. They should learn from Obama’s Google-like appeal Britain’s Conservatives might be plotting a triumphant return to power but America’s Republicans are in a state of utter collapse. And it’s not just because the tide is turning after two terms of George W. Bush. For better or for worse, the Cameron Conservatives have adapted to a more culturally liberal, urban, diverse society. They have reconciled themselves to the welfare state in a way that Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher never did. Republicans, in contrast, are labouring under the illusion that America remains the yeoman

The Spectator

Hail to the not-yet-Chief

The man who four short years ago addressed the Democratic party convention as a little-known state senator from Illinois will do so this August as his party’s nominee for president. It is the most rapid rise in the history of the Republic: not bad for the son of a Kenyan goat herder. Barack Obama’s ascent is all the more remarkable for whom he has passed on the way up. Bill Clinton is the only Democratic president to have won two terms in the post-war era. Hillary Clinton has been marked out for greatness ever since her 1969 Wellesley commencement address; a speech that, in its time, received as much laudatory

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

An official no-go area for Christians? Excuse me: I need a drink

A week or so back, my two-year-old daughter said to me, apropos of nothing: ‘You have been sad since you lost Jesus.’ I didn’t really know what to do, so I looked at her open-mouthed for a bit and then fixed myself a stiff drink. Best not to get involved, I reckon. Later — again, out of the blue — she told me with great happiness that she was ‘covered with the blood of Jesus’, at which point I wondered if I should have a quiet word with her Sunday school teacher, or maybe her Gran, who is a fairly muscular born-again evangelical monkey and from whom this whacko stuff

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 7 June 2008

There are no ‘good’ teachers: the teacher who is good for you may wreck another’s prospects The funny thing is that I’m not sure I ever knew her Christian name. No doubt she had one, and for no reason at all I think it might have been Jean, but to us she was so much, and so completely, Mrs McLeod that as a boy I probably imagined her husband called her Mrs McLeod at breakfast. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I even knew about a husband — but her title was ‘Mrs’ and there was a daughter, so I suppose she must have had one. And this

Henry Sands

I don’t think my mum has much to fear from ‘Emos’

Henry Sands meets a group of ‘Emos’ — ‘emotional’, black-clad teenagers — who claim to hate his mother for what she wrote about them in the Daily Mail. But they’re not very scary I was walking through Hyde Park with a friend on Saturday when I noticed some people dressed in black gathering on the other side of Round Pond. At first I thought it might be a school trip having a picnic, but the eclectic mix of young teenagers — many of them with their parents — and peculiarly dressed older people suggested otherwise. A few of these gothic-looking creatures were holding banners and signs. The first I saw

Theodore Dalrymple

Global Warning | 7 June 2008

Staying recently in a handsome French provincial city, I could not help thinking, as I walked down its silent cobbled streets at night, what it would have been like if it had been in England. How restful is that deep, urban silence, which the young English so hate for fear of having to attend to their own thoughts! The same streets in England would have been alive with the sound of screaming: down them would have staggered shivering, drunken, scantily clad sluts with bared pudgy midriffs of pasty flesh and bejewelled navels, tattoos on one of their fat shoulders or above the beginning of the cleft in their buttocks. As

Claire Fox

I have a basic human right to look at fag packets

Claire Fox says that plans to ‘denormalise’ smoking by removing cigarettes from display infantilises adults and imposes upon us a dubious official version of what is ‘normal’ Has your personal life been ‘denormalised’ yet? Mine is about to be, and believe me it’s not pleasant. The health ministries in Scotland and Westminster have just announced plans to make a perfectly legal habit seem as abnormal as possible. The SNP’s Public Health Minister Shona Robinson, quickly followed by England’s own health secretary Alan Johnson, tells us that public displays of cigarettes are hindering official ‘efforts to denormalise smoking’. Apparently, being able to see the rows of cigarette packets that are a

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Parochialism

Headline of the Day: The Bronx is More Than Just Yankee Stadium Who knew? No surprise there. Except that the newspaper running this story in its travel section is… The New York Times. Or, rather, the Manhattan and Parts of Brooklyn Times. Not a new phenomenon, of course, as the famous New Yorker cartoon, The View from 9th Avenue established more than 30 years ago.

Mark Daniell

Picking sides for Euro 2008

In the absence of any Home Nations presence in the upcoming Euro 2008 football championships, there’s been plenty of talk about which teams we Brits should support. I suspect many will have been scouring family trees or revamping tired old prejudices in a desperate attempt to give a hoot about what will happen. Personally, I find it difficult to forget past footballing harm inflicted on England, and could never bring myself to support the perpetrators. As such, this condition rules out Portugal, Germany, France, Romania and, well, if you go back far enough, pretty much anyone (except maybe Spain). Which doesn’t leave a whole load of choice. Perhaps, then, there’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will South Africa act over Zimbabwe?

Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is as dependent on South Africa as Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, and The LA Times editorial board has a good example of how South Africa could force Mugabe to back down if it wanted to: Mugabe is beyond hope, but it’s worth attempting an international pressure campaign against his chief enabler, South African President Thabo Mbeki. “Zimbabwe is not a province of South Africa,” Mbeki famously answered those who have urged him to curb Mugabe’s excesses. That’s true. It’s more like a protectorate of South Africa. South Africa supplies food, fuel, money, remittances and electricity to its neighbor. The electricity runs Zimbabwe’s vital platinum mines, in which South

The Spectator

How to get hold of the Spectator 180th Anniversary issue

We’ve had quite a few people asking how to get hold of the special Spectator 180th Anniversary issue, other than from off newsstands (priced £4.95).  You can do so by either phone or e-mail.  Here’s the info from our subscriptions team: Subscriber?  Call the order hotline now to receive the special subscriber price of only £3. Simply call 0800 031 90 19. Living overseas? Order your copy today for only £4.95 plus p&p. Simply call +44 141 22 66 703. Otherwise, e-mail 180th@spectator-business.co.uk to get your hands on a copy.

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Blair’s Appealling Modesty…

I’d have more respect for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation if it had a different, less egotistical, name. (And, if truth be told, if it were led by a different, less sanctimonious, person). To wit, as he told Time last week: He can, no question, come across as a bit cocksure in the rightness of his judgments. But he swims in deep waters. He is convinced, he told me, that in the rich world, “without spiritual values, there is an emptiness that cannot be filled by material goods and wealth.” He understands that faith is what gives meaning to the lives of billions, and he passionately believes that the world

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Madness of Crowds

Recalling the weirdness of the Ron Paul Revolution, Julian Sanchez risks a peek at Hillary’s equally delusional supporters and sagely concludes that all this: should be at least a little unsettling to people who want to view politics as this kind of wonderful deliberative process by which we all reason together, harnessing our collective wisdom to choose wise policies. There seems to be a stronger case for thinking that politics us makes us crazier together than we are seperately: E pluribus, unhinged. Indeed so. But them’s the breaks, ain’t they?

Alex Massie Alex Massie

What do they know of cricket who only play it well?

It is not, right now, saying much to observe that Kevin Pietersen is England’s best batsman. His century against New Zealand today has not been the stuff of legends but it has at least rescued England from the perilous position they had put themselves into at 86/5. But if Pietersen is England’s best batsman, we must hope that he is also be their most ignorant. How else to explain his prediction that Monty Panesar “will be the best finger-spinner the world has ever seen”? Of course there’s no reason to suppose that test cricketers might also have some appreciation for the the game’s history. But it would be nice to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A classic underclass problem?

What’s the cause of knife crime? The government has today focused on tightening laws etc. But if Charles Murray were here today, he’d see this as a classic underclass problem. He has three tests for an underclass: births outside marriage, jobless young men and violent crime. In 1997, 37% of children were born outside marriage – this is now projected to be 44.2% (strip out immigrants and it would be 50.1%). In 1997, 15% men were economically inactive (ie, not in work or seeking it). Now in spite of those 3m new jobs it is 16.5% – the highest in the history of these islands. Finally, violent crime was 650,330

James Forsyth James Forsyth

It might not be right for Dannatt to go public, but he is right

One can question the propriety of General Sir Richard Dannatt speaking out about serviceman’s pay in The Sun but it is hard to disagree with him. “You look to see how much a traffic warden is paid and compare that against what a private soldier gets paid. “If you compare a police constable on overtime, I think you will find that an individual serviceman gets quite a lot less.” A soldier’s starting salary is £12,572 a year, rising to £15,677 as a Level 1 private. A traffic warden’s basic pay is £17,000. Dannatt is also right that Britain urgently needs to spend more on the military. If we wish to