Society

Saturday

Taki

High life | 3 May 2008

New York So there I was, at the Waverly Inn, Graydon Carter’s little toy, which has been the hottest ticket in the Big Bagel for two years, when the booth next to mine filled up with young people, all of them scruffy and dressed like the homeless, their girls rather plain and some of them even ugly. Par for the course, I thought to myself, then I noticed everyone looking at them. My son and daughter, with whom I was celebrating Greek Easter, set me straight. The boys were Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey Jr, the last two unknown to me, Leo baby hiding under a 19th-century working-man’s

Robin Oakley

The Turf | 3 May 2008

Experiments don’t always come off. Like the train company trying out new safety glass for drivers’ cabins. It adapted technology from an aviation manufacturer which had developed new cockpit protection against bird strikes. But when the bird projectiles were launched the mocked-up train windows shattered and the dummy driver was decapitated. In dismay, it messaged the results to the aviation specialists. Only to receive in reply the terse message: ‘Try defrosting the chickens first.’ So no experiments, then, in selecting this year’s Twelve to Follow for the Flat. It is the usual mix of racecourse observation, the gleam in a few trainers’ eyes, and a long flight with the invaluable

Ursula Buchan

Garden shorts

So a little light housework or gardening cuts your stress levels, does it? Well, I never. I long ago developed a ‘ten-minute gardening’ scheme for stress-busting, and I could not recommend it more highly. I keep a bucket near to hand, containing hand fork, kneeling pad and Atlas Nitrile gardening gloves. (These are like surgeon’s gloves, and ideal for weeding, since they are as sensitive as rubber gloves, but breathable, and easier to get on and off.) Then, whenever I have a spare ten minutes – waiting for the rice to cook, or a telephone call, or a programme to start – I go outside to weed. In a week

Nikki Bedi

Diary – 3 May 2008

Vanity thy name is Nikki Bedi. I’ve just been for one of my biannual visits to my ‘derm’ Dr Nick Lowe. The Times recently called him Dr Botox. I’ve been his patient for 13 years; the first seven in Santa Monica, where my skin had begun to resemble a chamois leather. Years of sun worship in India and overactive facial muscles had left me prematurely lined. Rather than spend money on expensive promises in pots, or facials, I treat myself to Botox. This visit, however, Dr Lowe felt I didn’t really need much of the injectable elixir of youth. It’s this restraint I admire. You won’t see his patients with

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 3 May 2008

‘Twenty-five years ago,’ writes Mr Peter Gasson from Aylesbury, ‘policies were implemented; services were provided; changes were made or brought about; promises were fulfilled. Now they are uniformly delivered. I suppose the word has become so popular because it sounds emphatic.’ I know just what you mean, Mr Gasson, and so must we all, which suggests that politicians and managers who use the word deliver should think again. To give the cliché its full deficit of originality it is coupled with solutions: business solutions, catering solutions, heating solutions, bovine health solutions. All will be delivered, at a price. By delivered they do not mean brought to your door in a

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 3 May 2008

Monday Dear me! Why does everyone take what we say so literally? When Dave declared that he wanted to end Punch and Judy Politics he was speaking metaphorically. He didn’t mean he was literally going to stop shouting abuse at Gordon. That would be silly. We need to hold the government to account. The British people would never forgive us if we didn’t tell the truth about Gordon — for example that he is useless and weird! Not to mention overweight, miserable and — yes — a loser. What’s more, these insults aren’t random. They have been scientifically worked out. I personally sit on the working group that comes up

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 3 May 2008

Boris has played me like a violin twice in my life — even appealing to my conscience At the time of writing, the outcome of the London Mayoral election is still unknown, but I am rooting for Boris, obviously. Doubts have been raised about his ability to run a city like London, but he possesses at least one essential attribute of a great leader: he is a fine judge of men. I discovered this in 1985 when we were both undergraduates at Oxford. I was in my second year and, by some miracle, I had managed to secure the editorship of a magazine called Tributary that was modelled on Private

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 3 May 2008

Q. Since I now live alone and have spare bedrooms my house in London has become something of a destination for old friends who want to stay overnight. I love seeing them. I love making them welcome and giving them drinks and food if they want it but the one thing I have to admit I do resent is the domestic drudgery aspect. I cannot bring myself to pay the going rate for a cleaner and it seems to take four hours or more to bring the house up to scratch. Even if people left tips — for some reason those who do in the country never seem to do

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 03 May 2008

Boris Johnson has vowed as mayor to emulate his hero Pericles, turning London into ‘an education to Britain’ as Athens was (Pericles claimed) to Greece. In one sense this will be difficult since the mayor has limited responsibilities, mainly transport and police, none of which feature in any known Periclean policy document. But if Mr Johnson is referring to a generally Periclean tenor to his period in office, there is much he could usefully achieve. First, Pericles (like every other Athenian citizen) wielded power over the decision-making Assembly (all Athenian males over 18) only by his ability to persuade it that his policies were best. He was, in other words,

Lucy Vickery

Giving up the ghost

In Competition No. 2542 you were invited to submit a ghost story entitled ‘The Face of the Horse’. I read the entries by flickering candlelight in a bid to recreate the atmosphere of the dean’s rooms at King’s College, Cambridge, where M.R. James gave Christmas Eve readings of his stories to a group of friends. By all accounts these were jocular, camp occasions punctuated by laughter, pranks and abstruse jokes, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by the comedy — intentional or not — in your entries; G.M. Davis’s speaking horse was a stroke of comic genius. James’s interest in ghosts was awakened in childhood by the sight of

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 3 May 2008

If the climate-change debate has accomplished anything, it has proved people never say sorry. When I was about 12 the families of the people who now wince at every gramme of carbon we burn carried on their cars a yellow sticker reading ‘Nuclear Power — No Thanks’ (on 2CVs the sticker was rumoured to be factory-fitted). More linguistically gifted environmentalists preferred the German version ‘Atomkraft? Nein danke’, hinting at sexy Baader-Meinhof connections, or in my part of the world ‘Ynni Niwclear? Dim diolch’ (Back in the 1970s, I am fairly sure it read ‘Pwr Niwclear’, but modern versions all seem to prefer ‘Ynni’ to ‘Pwr’. Maybe any Welsh-speaking Spectator readers

The Spectator

An inconvenient truth

In its 6 October 2007 edition, The Spectator reported on Israel’s air-strike on Syria exactly a month before. We noted that the 6 September raid ‘may have saved the world from a devastating threat’ and revealed that a senior British ministerial source had told us that: ‘If people had known how close we came to world war three that day there’d have been mass panic.’ The article provoked scepticism in certain quarters. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, the veteran American journalist, sneered that our coverage was ‘overheated’. But information declassified by the Bush administration last week — under pressure from Congress, it should be stressed — suggests that it

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life

Cass Pennant and his wife and son and son’s girlfriend came round the other day for a cream tea. Cass used to be — still is — a top ‘face’ in the world of football hooliganism. When I was a kid I used to travel all over the country to watch West Ham and would sometimes see Cass in action at the front — always at the front — of the notorious Inter City Firm. It was a great comfort to know that this extremely violent individual (as he was then) was on our side. The ICF were often outnumbered, especially in the northern industrial cities. But they were stylish,

Alex James

Slow Life

‘I’m going to look at the dandelions,’ I said. ‘There’s loads of them.’ ‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘Come on. Hurry up, then. It’s happy hour.’ It was the end of the day and suddenly still and sunny. The star was taking a curtain call. Earlier there had been hail so heavy you had to raise your voice against it, wind hard from all quarters and rolling thunder with skies so grey all might have seemed hopeless to anyone who hadn’t spotted the pink flowers by the pond. It takes a groaning grey sky to really set off a pink flower. But now, gold light was flying in sideways, and green

Leo McKinstry

Sorry, but family history really is bunk

When I visited the National Archives at Kew last week the place was full of them, scurrying about with their plastic wallets in hand, a look of eager concentration on their faces. It was impossible to escape their busy presence as they whispered noisily to relatives or whooped over the discovery of some new piece of information. These were the followers of one of Britain’s fastest-growing craze, the mania for researching family history. Studying bloodlines and tracing ancestral roots was once the preserve of the aristocracy. Today, as I saw at the National Archives, it has become a favourite activity of the British public. We are becoming a nation of

Michael Tanner

Feeble Fidelio

Fidelio Teatro Real, Madrid For all its glories, Madrid is not a city that one associates with great opera performances, as one does Barcelona. Perhaps it’s not surprising: it’s only 11 years since the new Teatro Real opened, after delays on a British scale. The previous house had sunk in 1925, and the new one encountered every kind of problem before it opened in 1997. The wait was worthwhile. I was shown over it by the extremely helpful press lady, and was stunned by its sophistication, size, the number and quality of its facilities, and the attractiveness both of the exterior and the interior — not to mention being impressed

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 3 May 2008

When the corridors of power echo to the strains of ‘Nil nisi bunkum’ When did the newfangled service for a dead nob first come in — the one that says it is a ‘celebration’ of the life, rather than a lament for the death? I would like to read a learned survey of the subject. When I was a boy in the Thirties, all centred on the funeral, which was a solemn, often grand affair. People counted the number of cars, or carriages, which followed the hearse, and spoke of ‘a forty-carriage do’. Everyone wore mourning black suits, black ankle-length dresses, hats and veils. Sometimes as many as a thousand

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 3 May 2008

Gordon can barely speak English either, so why don’t we swap him for Sarkozy? Say what you like about Nicolas Sarkozy, but he’s a feisty little tyke, isn’t he? Apparently, he put himself through an hour-long grilling on French TV last week. We’ve got our issues with the strange angry man in Downing Street, but the French, they loathe Sarkozy. According to the blogs, he bore up pretty well. At one point, he responded to calls for a new dialogue with the Taleban. ‘Open a dialogue?’ he said. ‘With people who amputate the hand of a woman because she had varnish on her nails? Who have stopped millions of little

John Patten

Not even science fiction foresaw the end of fathers

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill seeks to end the child’s right to a father figure, writes John Patten, ignoring all sound research in its obsession with ‘discrimination’ ‘Down with Clause 14(2)(b)’ is hardly a snappy slogan. It is not even as succinct as ‘Abolish Clause 28 now!’, the phrase that so resonated back in the days of the furore over the teaching of alternative lifestyles. But this dense little bit of the parliamentary counsel’s art, buried deep away in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill soon to go to the House of Commons, contains the only attempt anywhere in the world by a government to abolish fatherhood. A first

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Presidential Polling!

There’s been an encouraging start to polling in our quest to determine the most over-rated and under-rated Presidents in American history. Turn-out is healthy. Many thanks to those of you who have already voted. However the work is not complete. Not by any means. So there’s no need to be coy or bashful: it is a simple task, really, that will not detain you long. Simply let me know who you consider the three most over-rated and the three most under-rated US presidents. You can submit votes by emailing me here or in the comments section below. Voting closes on or around May 11th. Full details here.