Society

Saturday

Ursula Buchan

Clematis heaven

Ursula Buchan does a spot of gardening If you are an assiduous buyer of plants, you will know that there are quite a number of foreign-bred plants for sale in our nurseries. This has become more obvious in recent years, since the nomenclature rules have changed. These days a plant should be sold under its original name — if it is in a language using Roman script, at least. Penstemon ‘Garnet’, for example, should now be labelled Penstemon ‘Andenken an Friedrich Hahn’. It may not be as snappy, but it is right and proper, since this Penstemon was bred in Germany. If you are a keen grower of clematis, you will

Alex James

Forget the eggs

I’m a celebrity for hire. I do good causes for free — makes me feel good, dunnit? That’s the deal. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Be delighted to open a Fairtrade event in Witney. Be lovely.’ ‘You’re doing what?!’ said Mrs Neate James on Saturday morning. ‘You’re going to Witney? Well, that’s lovely for you. I’ll look after the kids as well as being pregnant and working full-time, shall I? Huh. So selfish.’ She’s had a rough week, started a new job in fashion. There is only one time zone in fashion and that is ‘right now’. Tattling twits from America have been calling her at two o’clock in the morning,

Jeremy Clarke

Nightmare in casualty

It’s half-past four in the morning and I’ve been sitting in the casualty department since two. I’m alone in the waiting room. Behind the glass partition two receptionists, one male, one female, are playing a video game on one of the computer screens.  Earlier, when I was on the verge of losing it because we’d had so long to wait, the bloke said, ‘Sir, I can understand that you don’t want to be here,’ as if he’s been taught to say it to defuse people’s anger. Then the woman had backed him up by saying that if I went and sat down for her, she’d bring me a cup of

Taki

Never on Sunday

It would take the greatest bloodhound reporter of all time to discover a person with a good word to say about Eliot Spitzer, the first man ever to bully Congress for an invite on bond insurance so he could meet with cutie-pie Ashley Alexandra Dupré in Room 871 the night before. When the  crumbum finally threw in the towel, the cheers could be heard all the way to Biloxi. Spitzer changed the law involving Johns, making it a federal crime punishable with a year in jail. Which means if life were fair he would have to do at least ten years. (He spent more than 80,000 greenbacks during the past

Robin Oakley

Breeze well; sell well

On hearing that I was off to a horse sale Mrs Oakley’s goodbye lacked the usual wifely warmth. Something a touch minatory about priorities and the need to keep a roof over our heads. Not to mention a replacement for the aged BMW. But at the first Goff’s ‘breeze-up’ auction of the year, held at Kempton Park, I was tempted. The pinhookers’ two-year-old offerings looked so much the finished article. Pinhookers back their judgment of conformation and pedigree by buying foals and selling them on as yearlings or, more frequently, by buying yearlings and selling them on six to eight months later as educated two-year-olds virtually ready to race. At

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 22 March 2008

Well, it finally happened. After 25 years of cycling in London, I had an accident. Bizarrely, it occurred right outside Action Bikes, the shop in Shepherd’s Bush where I bought my bicycle. There is a cycle lane running past the shop, but I wasn’t using it at the time because there was a Mercedes parked in it. The driver opened his door just as I was drawing level and sent me hurtling into space. Luckily, I landed on my left knee rather than my head so I was able to turn round and start hurling abuse. It was only when I realised that the driver was a large black man

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 22 March 2008

Q. I am dreading Easter as my children are always given so many eggs by their various godparents and grandparents. This is to say nothing of those they bring home from hunts. I consider it terribly bad for them to eat so much chocolate but since each egg has been effectively endorsed by the grown-up or Easter Bunny who supplied it, I don’t know how to manage this dilemma. What should I do? A.B., London W8 A. There is not much that can be done at this late stage, but you could prepare for next Easter by putting aside some of this year’s eggs so that they will be well

Henry Sands

Diary – 22 March 2008

Over the last 20 years, gentlemen’s clubs have had to pay at least a token deference to modernity — equal rights, health and safety, inclusiveness. And then there is St Moritz Tobogganing Club, a British club with its own rules. Located in the middle of the Swiss Alps, it makes one uncomplicated demand of its members. Men must slide down a three-quarter-mile run of ice on a toboggan at speeds of up to 80 mph. The run finishes in the tiny hamlet of Cresta, so this happy, if eccentric, sport is called the ‘Cresta Run’. I am in St Moritz for the second time. Last year I was invited —

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 22 March 2008

According to Mohamed Al Fayed, the Princess of Wales was murdered on the orders of Prince Philip working in cahoots with some 30 named individuals, the Home Office, the CIA, the Inland Revenue and the French intelligence and emergency services, judiciary and police. Ancient Athenians would have loved it. They saw conspiracies everywhere. Let there be the slightest suggestion, for example, that someone might be at work to (say) destroy the democracy, and panic ensued, ranks closed and politicians would rush to say that Athens was safe in their hands. Take the famous affair of the mutilation of the Hermai (good-luck statues of Hermes) and the profanation of the Mysteries.

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody – 22 March 2008

Monday Everyone on a major poll high! Ginseng tea and bran muffins all round this morning and not much work done. In the end Jed had to call in Mr Maude to calm us all down. FM said 16 points ahead was ‘nothing to get excited about’ and showed us all sorts of graphs that proved how badly we were doing. He said the reaction to Mr Hammond’s remarks about tax cuts not being possible was also bad — and we should be ashamed of ourselves for celebrating. It was nice to have him back. Then we had a big strategy meeting to iron out the Tax Problem. It’s all

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Mikes Blog Roundup

As Katherine Mangu-Ward says plenty of normal people aren’t following the presidential race. Then there’s rapper DMX who’s given the best interview of the year so far. Choose your own highlight… Are you following the presidential race? Not at all. You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton. His name is Barack?! Barack Obama, yeah. Barack?! Barack. What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa? Yeah, his dad is from Kenya. Barack Obama? Yeah. What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Top of the Table!

Selkirk’s Lee Jones tackles a West of Scotland player during this afternoon’s splendid 24-10 victory at Philiphaugh. My boys, it’s fair to say, gave Mr Eugenides’ boys one hell of a beating… Promotion to Scottish rugby’s Division One  – for the first time in nearly 20 years! – remains a dream that will not die. On to the final game of the season next Saturday: away to third-placed Biggar who still have promotion hopes of their own…

Nadine Dorries

The Embryology Bill, cui bono?

A guest blog from Nadine Dorries, MP.  The Human Tissue and Embryology Bill will be the show of the year in Parliament. The amendments I and others will lay down to reduce the upper limit at which abortion takes place from 24 weeks will be controversial and explosive. I had been concerned that this debate would overshadow other serious issues in the Bill, such as animal-human embryo hybrids, but then I hadn’t counted on Cardinal Keith O’Brien.  Cardinal O’Brien has not always been my favourite Cardinal; I have disagreed with him in the past. However, his typically forthright views have successfully grabbed the media’s attention at a time when we

Peter Hoskin

Merci beaucoup, Msr. Sarkozy

Next week, Gordon Brown will meet with Nicolas Sarkozy at the home of French football. And, according to early reports, Sarkozy will come bearing a few petits cadeaux – among which will be an Anglo-French agreement to construct a new generation of nuclear power stations. Why should we regard a mutual agreement as a gift from the French? Because we have so much more to gain from it than they have. After all, whilst our Government has spent the past decade pumping money into ineffectual wind power, the French have steamed ahead with nuclear energy. Around 79% of France’s electricity comes from nuclear power; and they have some of the most advanced technology

A.S.H. Smyth

Pullman gives God a break for Easter

The author of His Dark Materials talks to A.S.H. Smyth about the latest episode in the saga in which he turns towards politics — with a nod to The Magnificent Seven along the way Several years ago, Philip Pullman wrote that ‘“Thou shalt not” might reach the head, but it takes “Once upon a time” to reach the heart.’ Now, the prizewinning author and self-appointed scourge of God is preparing to unveil the latest episode from the universe of His Dark Materials, called Once Upon a Time in the North. With Easter upon us, the Church might be relieved to hear that God doesn’t get a look in. The writer

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 22 March 2008

Last summer we picked up a hire car at Inverness. As I was dumping the rental paperwork inside the glove compartment I unearthed a forgotten pair of sunglasses so hideous in design it suggested that the previous renter had been either a porn star or a German, perhaps even both. That he was at least German became clear when I turned the ignition key, and the on-board computer began to display words like ‘Wankschaft’, ‘Bumreisen’ and ‘Fahrtzwiegel’. Worse was to come — the Hun had fiendishly retuned the radio and changed all the distance and speed settings to metric. My wife speaks fluent German (in fact with shorter hair and

Lucy Vickery

Persuasion

In Competition No. 2536 you were invited to take an apparently unpromising holiday location, or a superficially unappealing activity holiday, and give it the hard sell in prose or verse form. One of my favourite spots is Dungeness in Kent. A nuclear power station might not be everyone’s cup of tea but its brooding presence adds considerably to the haunting charm of this eerie wilderness. I wasn’t convinced, though, by Sue Cain’s utilitarian case for a holiday spent cleaning her house: ‘…you can take all your newly learned skills back home and put them to good use’. Hmm. Nor Basil Ransome-Davies’s call to holidaymakers to turn their backs on the

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 22 March 2008

It is probably blasphemy, or sacrilege, or at least very rude, but whenever I see the Dalai Lama, I think of him as speaking in the voice of the late Mike Reid, who played Frank Butcher on EastEnders. It must be the tinted specs. ‘Look, me old China,’ he croaks, pinching at the bridge of his nose, ‘I know you got to look your best right now, what with them Olympics. I ain’t exploiting that. I ain’t orchestrating nuffin’. I’m only a monk, innit? Barry! Tell ’er!’ I’ll be eating my hat on this in a week or two, if the dusty Tibetan streets run red, but for now, hurrah

Marian L. Tupy

Mugabe is the Mobutu of our time

‘Nice shoes,’ said a young Zimbabwean looking wistfully at my $40 Nike tennis shoes that I wore when I encountered him sitting on the floor of a completely barren Bata shoe store in the town of Victoria Falls. It was last November and I was in Zimbabwe having crossed the border from Botswana earlier that day. The once charming town that used to teem with travellers from around the globe was more derelict and much emptier than I remembered it from my visit in the early 1990s. About half of the shops were either empty or closed altogether. The main shopping centre looked more like a warehouse and offered a

Guy Monson-Subitha-Subramaniam

Bernanke’s war against recession

Guy Monson and Subitha Subramaniam on how the US Federal Reserve is facing up to recession US policymakers are at war against recession. Since January, the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke has cut interest rates by 1.25 per cent; markets expect another cut of as much as 1 per cent this week. Such dramatic reductions are a far cry from the studied gradualism of the Greenspan years. In addition, Treasury secretary Hank Paulson has deployed fiscal policy to offset the housing squeeze with an aggressive package of $152 billion in tax rebates. At its core, this ‘war’ aims to shore up US house prices, the essential collateral for the US financial