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Society

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of self-promotion

You want to know more about the state of the sports memorabilia market? Of course you do. From my piece in this week’s Spectator: As was so often the case, P.G. Wodehouse reached deep into the heart of the matter: collecting sporting memorabilia requires dedication, a willingness to speculate, a tolerance of risk and, too often, a certain amount of the ‘iron in the soul’ that equips a man to survive uxorial disapproval. Readers will recall the sorry tale, related in ‘High Stakes’, of how the American millionaires Bradbury Fisher and Gladstone Bott risked butlers, railroads and their wives’ wrath to secure ownership of ‘the authentic baffy used by Bobby

Peter Hoskin

An issue for debate

A quick post to recommend ConservativeHome’s list of which political debates the left and right are winning in the UK.  Among the right’s triumphs are crime, welfare and schools reform.  And among the left’s are tax & spend, the NHS and climate change.  Do CoffeeHousers agree?

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 29 March 2008

Not black and white Sir: Marian L. Tupy deserves thanks for his excellent article (‘Mugabe is the Mobutu of our time’, 22 March), despite one seeming inaccuracy and an omission. Tupy says, ‘It was 1980 and Zimbabwe had just gained independence from Britain… the first ever multiracial election gave Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union a majority.’ To the contrary, a universal franchise election in 1978 brought a coalition of Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front and Bishop Muzorewa’s Democrats into office. Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo had been invited to take part but refused. Some 70 per cent plus of the electorate participated, with a significant majority voting for a dual system of

Melissa Kite

Costly charges

While J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons, I prefer to chart mine with the daily passing of one hundred pounds. Hence, and though there must be many ways to evaluate one’s existence, I feel my days are best quantified as follows: Monday: Scented candle, £16; bottle of moisturiser, £30; horse physiotherapy, £50. Tuesday: Train ticket, £3.80; food shopping, £40; petrol, £55. Wednesday: Congestion charge, £8; lunch with a friend, £35; dinner with a friend, £60. Thursday: Car MOT and service, £119. Friday: Horse x-rays, £110. And so on. I grow old …I grow old …I shall go into overdraft and then fold. But I know what

Jeremy Clarke

Rental block

Dartmoor, said the box ad. One-bedroom cottage. Five hundred pounds a month. I called the number and an elderly woman answered.  I’m interested in renting the cottage, I said. Is it still available? Are you single? she said. I am, I said. You don’t have a girlfriend? Sadly not, I said. This was good, she said, because the house is suitable for one person only. She didn’t want partners living there as well. If I found myself a partner during my tenancy, they could stay overnight, but only occasionally. Are you certain you don’t have a girlfriend? she said. You’re not gay, are you? No, I’m not gay, I said. I’m

Taki

Of vice and men

Gstaad There’s fear and loathing around here, and it has nothing to do with lousy snow conditions. Fear that UBS, the biggest Swiss bank, is in trouble, loathing for those whose greed brought this about. ‘Reckless’ is now a synonym for ‘banker’ as the financial system teeters on the brink. UBS has denied it is in trouble, but then so did Bear Stearns just before it collapsed. In other words, there is a credibility problem, one that dwarfs Fayed and the Mills woman put together. Asset write-downs and credit losses will continue, according to the greatest financial expert of our times, Professor Taki, OBE, MBE, UBS, JPM, and job cuts

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 29 March 2008

For some weeks, I was thinking of writing against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, but despair crept over me. What is the point, I asked myself, when opinion seems to have moved so decisively against the idea that a human being is an inviolable entity? Nothing will stop this Bill, I thought. Now it turns out that I may be wrong. In the funny way British opinion has of noticing something only when it is almost too late, people are suddenly worried that the human and animal could be commingled, created and then destroyed by scientists. And their worry has coincided with the political weakness of the government. Hence

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 29 March 2008

Six months ago I wrote an article in this magazine in which I complained that rising property prices in Shepherd’s Bush had forced me and my wife to move to Acton. I pointed out that the only decent café within walking distance of our new house had closed down, citing this as evidence that there weren’t enough middle-class people in the area to sustain a single decent coffee shop. Acton, I concluded, was the cesspool of west London. This turned out to be a colossal error of judgment — and not just because the editor of the local newsletter reprinted the article in full and sent it to all our

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 29 March 2008

Dot Wordsworth on why locust may sometimes not mean ‘locust’. When the Bible says that John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey, what does it mean by locusts? The question may be a chestnut, but I’ve found some jolly new material in seeking the answer. Jews are forbidden to eat winged insects that walk around, but locusts are excepted. Leviticus (xi 22) says: ‘Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.’ Beetle seems a bad translation. So why think that locust does not mean ‘locust’? The OED

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 29 March 2008

Q. While on holiday in the Middle East I contracted amoebic dysentery. Although it is an unpleasant condition, I am a bit overweight and the pounds have been dropping off. Do I go to the doctor or should I let the illness run its course and take advantage of the benefits that have arisen from my misfortune? V.L., London E8 A. Serial dysenterics have not had satisfactory outcomes from allowing their condition to run unchecked. They report that although the weight loss can be gratifying, indeed it can be inspirational to see a ten-pound-lighter version of oneself, even if only for a few days, the internal disruption is not worth

Michael Winner

Diary – 29 March 2008

It’s not easy working out what to give Lord Lloyd-Webber for his 60th birthday. I mean he’s got a few bob, hasn’t he? Three ties and a shoehorn seem a bit inadequate. Particularly as his lordship flew 46 friends to Deià, a spectacularly beautiful village in Mallorca, for a weekend celebration. I decided on something really useful. A gold bus pass. So I telephoned Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Transport, and spoke to her principal private secretary, Anne Snelgrove. The dialogue went like this. MW: Tell me darling, do you think we could ask Ruth if I could have a gold bus pass for Andrew Lloyd Webber? Anne: Why

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator sport | 29 March 2008

Ashley Cole is a difficult man to warm to. The friends of Ashley, like the friends of Heather Mills, are small isolated groups emerging only after dark. But it’s just possible that this tiresome berk may have sparked a revolution that will improve football. The man who nearly crashed his car in fury when told by his agent that Arsenal were offering him the risible sum of £55,000 a week, made himself even less likable, if that were possible, when he childishly turned his back last week on referee Mike Riley who was booking him for a life-threatening challenge on Spurs’ Alan Hutton. Reaction afterwards started off slowly; gathering momentum

Lucy Vickery

Just the job

In Competition No. 2537 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘The Song of the Chartered Accountant’. You were allowed to substitute an alternative profession. I interpreted the word ‘profession’ loosely and was tempted by Mike Morrison’s personal shopper and touched by Martin Parker’s sexually frustrated retired flea-circus trainer, though they didn’t make the final line-up in the end. Chartered accountants are traditionally described in shades of grey, and many of you went down that route. But leading the field this week is Basil Ransome-Davies, who gets the bonus fiver. I was won over by his portrayal of a pin-striped-suited wage slave’s hot-blooded alter ego. D.A. Prince’s bilious librarian’s

Aidan Hartley

Rural poor

Laikipia Gabriel Barasa was a week dead and already trouble was brewing. I could tell that as I stood at his grave on the farmstead. In 1966, Kenya’s government allocated Gabriel 27 acres of land, subdivided from a farm previously owned by a colonial European. The Trans Nzoia soil was very fertile. Today Gabriel would have been regarded as well-off, but in those days land was still plentiful, Kenya’s population tiny. Gabriel had married five wives, each of whom built her own hut on the farm. He fathered 22 children. Over the years, to pay for school fees and various debts, he sold off 16 acres. His children got an

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any Other Business | 29 March 2008

I think I’ve spotted the ‘trash and cash’ merchants, dining at Mayfair’s best tables A posse of hedge fund managers came round to The Spectator the other day, not to indulge in ‘trash and cash’ — or the even less attractive ‘pump and dump’ — but to participate in a breakfast discussion about how they are perceived by the media and the political world, and what they ought to do about it. I was asked to kick-start the debate, so I gave it to them straight in the croissants. Most journalists are not sure who you are or what you do, I began, but what we think you are is

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 29 March 2008

It would not surprise me if the present Pope, who is a man of strongly conservative instincts but also highly intelligent, energetic and forceful, abruptly decided to introduce women into the Catholic priesthood, and set about this fundamental reform with all deliberate speed. He would be right to do so, for it is urgent and overdue. The shortage of priests, especially in Europe, is now chronic and increasingly damaging. It is shocking to learn that in Catholic Ireland, which from the early Dark Ages until quite recently sent young, enthusiastic and well-educated priests, as pastors and missionaries, all over the world, only nine men were ordained as priests last year.

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 29 March 2008

Rather less than two years ago, bored and with time to kill at a Conservative party conference, I decided to do what is for a British journalist a rather unusual thing. I decided to read a whole speech, a long speech by a politician, a speech with no particular news value. I decided to read every word. The full text happened to be lying on my bed. I had taken it from a huge pile left largely untouched on the counter of the Press Office. It was Senator John McCain’s speech to the Tory conference. I knew that it had not caused much of a stir, had said nothing new,

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cricket and Baseball II

Ross responds to my gentle tweaking about baseball and cricket here. He makes some fair points. But thinking about it just now, it occurs to me that there’s another major difference between British sports and their American counterparts that sets British sports apart. Namely, participation. With the obvious and notable exception of basketball, it’s notable that very few people actually play the major American sports. Sure, kids play American football and baseball in school and some – a minority obviously – will do so in college but very few adults actually play these sports. I know that there are adult hardball baseball leagues and there are still some independent leagues

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Sports Journalism

If Furman Bisher (great name!) is typical of the sports staff at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution then, you know, newspapers probably do deserve to die. Baseball used to be a game played with nine men to a side, two managers, four umpires, and the major-league season always opened in Cincinnati. Come to think of it now, that would be sort of like “Gone With the Wind” opening in Valdosta. But Cincinnati had a deal, see. The first “major league” baseball game was played in Cincinnati on June 1, 1869. The locals, the Red Stockings, eked out a 48-14 victory over Mansfield, whoever Mansfield was. So, several years ago — even the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Small, Quiet Tragedy of Hillary Clinton

Fine Peggy Noonan column today: Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it’s fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton’s words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves. Not that her staff isn’t