Society

Saturday

7 Jun 2008

Tree talk

All my life I’ve tried to acquaint myself with trees by learning which ones are which, but the task seems beyond me. Wouldn’t it be praiseworthy, for example, to be able to recognise the 32 native species of broad-leafed tree — willow, oak, lime, ash, wych elm, and so forth — and the three conifer species — juniper, Scots pine and yew — that were growing here 7,000 years ago when the ice melted and Britain became an island. But when I go out with a field guide, I can hardly differentiate between a tree and a shrub, let alone between one species of tree and the next. There are

Taki

Umbrian idyll

Città di Castello, Umbria A few years before the end of the 19th century, King Leopold of Belgium summoned his favourite banker, Baron Lambert, for an intimate chat over lunch. ‘My dream is to have a little place in the sun,’ said the monarch to the banker. ‘Somewhere down south, where everyone runs around without clothes on so I can relax a bit.’ ‘I understand and will see what I can do,’ said the loyal baron, and then they proceeded to talk about more pressing matters. The little place in the sun turned out to be called Congo, a piece of real estate much larger than Europe and, I believe,

The Spectator

Letters | 7 June 2008

Poppy appeal Sir: Fraser Nelson’s article accurately outlines the urgent need to implement an alternative counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan (‘The precarious peace in Helmand’, 28 May). Helmand province now cultivates half of Afghanistan’s opium in a country which accounts for 93 per cent of the global illegal opium market. A significant element of the current approach to countering burgeoning opium production levels — forced poppy crop eradication — has proven disastrous. Instead of providing economic stability, heavy-handed policies analogous to the US-sponsored ‘War on Drugs’ approach in Colombia have undermined reconstruction efforts and failed to re-engage with local communities. Consequently, farmers are being driven further into the Taleban’s grasp and

Venetia Thompson

Diary – 7 June 2008

Venetia Thompson contends with a broken Blackberry, teeth-whitening kits and cyclists Last weekend I discovered what it is like to be a small furry animal in its burrow, when in an effort to catch up on some sleep and do some work, I had refused to go out and instead sat steadfast in my living-room. I was subsequently hissed at through the window and then smoked out when a tramp decided to set fire to himself and my rubbish under the building late one night while banging maniacally on my bedroom window. Whether it was that same mischievous Romanian tramp Sarah Standing was troubled by last week I do not know,

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 7 June 2008

‘See that pot plant?’ said Jeremy Clarkson. ‘I could get a column out of that.’ We were at a supper party in Hay and indulging in that parlour game often played by newspaper columnists whereby we try to outdo each other when it comes to the ingenuity with which we can transform any subject, no matter how threadbare, into a column. At the time, I couldn’t think of anything less promising than a pot plant so I kept quiet, but now I can: a column about another columnist claiming he can get a column out of a pot plant. As a confirmed petrolhead who prides himself on being politically incorrect,

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 7 June 2008

Dot Wordswoth on pens and puns ‘Why,’ asked my husband, looking up from his book, ‘is Joseph Gillott a very bad man?’ ‘What?’ I said. ‘Because,’ he replied, as if I had acknowledged defeat, ‘he wishes to accustom the public to steel pens and then tries to persuade them that they do write.’ By the way that he was slapping his thigh and spilling his glass of whisky, I could see that he thought this was a joke. There was, it appeared, a double play on words: steel and steal, and do write and do right. Who Joseph Gillott was, perhaps I should have known, but didn’t. He was, it

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

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

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

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

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

6 Jun 2008

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

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