Society

Saturday

Matthew Dancona

Joking apart: why Boris is the man for the job

Boris Johnson has confounded his critics, says Matthew d’Ancona. The contest will go to the wire, but our man has proved himself to be both shrewd enough and serious enough to take charge ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next Mayor of London…’ A January dinner at the Dorchester in honour of Boris Johnson, and it falls to me, as one of the hosts, to introduce the Tory candidate. I look across the room at the high-rollers, hacks, friends and acquaintances who have come along to toast the candidate and, in some cases, to see if he is for real. Many are already Boris-positive; others merely Boris-curious. Not for the

The Spectator

Brown’s weakness is his strength

Gordon Brown’s dramatic and humiliating climbdown on the abolition of the 10p tax rate averted at least one disaster: the Prime Minister was facing a knife-edge Commons vote next Monday over Frank Field’s amendment of the Finance Bill, and one that might have spelt oblivion if the government had lost. With a panicked series of compensatory measures, and a desperate plea for mercy from his parliamentary party, Mr Brown was able to see off this particular mutiny. But there is still plenty for him to worry about. Next Thursday, the PM faces another vote of confidence in the elections to 135 English local authorities, all Welsh councils, and the London

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 26 April 2008

Being a sports fan is, as Max Mosley knows too well, a painful and often expensive business. I knew my cavalier investment in Bernard Hopkins to beat Joe Calzaghe on Saturday night, despite Hopkins at 43 being almost as old as I am, was heading where the sun don’t shine as soon as Tom Jones popped up in the ring to sing the Welsh national anthem. Crikey, he’s good. It made my hairs, what’s left, stand on end so God knows what it did for Calzaghe let alone the flag-loads of Welsh fans ringside in Vegas. In truth it was a nasty, tight, uninspiring fight. Now Calzaghe has said he’s

Lucy Vickery

Index linked

In Competition No. 2541 you were invited to submit a revealing fragment from an index which is all that remains of the autobiography of someone who has privileged access to the great and good. It might have been a member of the royal household or, as in W.J. Webster’s entry, a hairdresser to the rich, famous and influential. To give you an idea of what I was after, here are a couple of snippets from J.G. Ballard’s ‘The Index’, a story implied through an index, which is the only surviving part of the unpublished autobiography of Henry Rhodes Hamilton: ‘Churchill, Winston, conversations with HRH, 221; at Chequers with HRH, 235;

Theodore Dalrymple

Global Warning | 26 April 2008

Death and taxes: these, according to Benjamin Franklin, are the two immovables of human existence. In modern life, however, there is a third: drivel, from which, try as one might, it is now impossible to escape. I concede, of course, that it is possible that it’s my sensitivity to drivel rather than its incidence or prevalence (to borrow two terms from epidemiology) that has increased over the years. But I don’t think so: I can’t go further than a few yards from my front door without encountering some. That wasn’t true always. Personally, I blame broadcasting. It insinuates itself everywhere almost without human agency, or none at any rate that

Aidan Hartley

Fat cat diary

Aidan Hartley on the Wild Life Nairobi I want to say Kenya is a victim of negative press. Shady characters called bloggers are nicknaming the President’s new Peace cabinet of ministers ‘Ali Baba and his 40 Thieves’. That is very cheeky. Everybody knows there are 42 ministers, 52 assistant ministers and 42 permanent secretaries. But ‘Ali Baba and his 136 Thieves’ isn’t so catchy. Typical imperialists and their comprador agents on the world wide web. Britain and the US should be careful. The Chinese can also be our friends. Unfortunately, we are not yet free. Even today our former colonial masters call the shots. That is why they forced our politicians

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 26 April 2008

My heart bleeds for cold-callers — it must be the most depressing job in the world It’s always happening. It happened again last Friday. I had finished my Times column for Saturday and, taking advantage of the two hours left of daylight, fetched the wheelbarrow, pick and spade and set to work finishing the construction of a stone table outside our house in Derbyshire. But hardly had I started work than from inside the house I heard the telephone ring. Downing tools, running up from the garden, shedding gloves and kicking off boots I reached it, breathless but just in time. ‘Good afternoon, have you thought about a new kitchen?

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The truth is that the house price crash is, overall, good news

If you take that excellent map showing negative equity ‘hot-spots’ produced by George Bridges for The Spectator a couple of weeks back, and overlay it across a map of cancer ‘hot-spots’ for the UK, you will find that those baleful dark areas, the bad places on each map, tally almost exactly. You might have expected as much: falling house prices cause cancer. Or maybe cancer causes house prices to fall — one of the two. Anyway, those areas where hundreds of tumours pop up like jack-in-the-boxes throughout your body while you are eating your breakfast are also the areas where your house is now worth less than a month’s chemotherapy.

Jack Valero

The Beeb behaved like a Da Vinci Code villain

The last time Opus Dei was portrayed as a murderous, self-flagellating, power-hungry secret society of monstrous hypocrites was — you may remember — in The Da Vinci Code, first in the novel, then in the film starring Tom Hanks. Millions read the book, millions saw the film, millions decided that we were the personification of evil. On the upside, for a few weeks the world’s media camped on our doorsteps, so we had a chance to respond. We invited the press in, gave them tea, and pointed out that we had nothing to do with the death in 1982 of Roberto Calvi (an Italian banker who died under suspicious circumstances),

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Common-Sense

Sometimes the news isn’t terrible: A doctor caught with 14 ecstasy tablets at a music festival has been allowed to keep his licence to practise. A General Medical Council panel told Dr Fraser Gibb they were satisfied he only used drugs to enhance his life and not to “prop it up”. However, it found him guilty of misconduct and imposed conditions on his licence over the next 18 months. But suppose Dr Gibb were popping the occasional pill to “prop-up” his life? Why would that be an affront to civilised society and all that’s sweet and wholesome on this planet? After all: Colleagues at Dumfries and Galloway NHS Trust said

Peter Hoskin

Any suggestions?

Over at the 180th Anniversary blog, we’re asking which historic events you’d like to see The Spectator’s take on.  Just head over there to post your suggestions. As part of the anniversary celebrations, we’ve also posted a recent photo of the current Spectator team.  If you really want to know what we all look like, now’s your chance…

The Skimmer

The Beeb’s anti-Thatcherism

What is it with the BBC and Margaret Thatcher? Britain’s leading public-service broadcaster never seems to miss an opportunity to do her down, especially in its dramatic depictions, which regularly demean and disparage her and her record. Not content with having a library full of anti-Thatcher footage, the excellent First Post Daily website reports that the Beeb is producing another two dramatic tilts at her. The first is called simply “Margaret”. According to First Post Daily “it portrays Lady T, who is now 82, as a humourless obsessive.” The second film, called “Mrs Thatcher, The Long Walk to Finchley”, deals with her early life. According to First Post Daily “the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A nuclear Syria?

Perhaps, the oddest event of 2007 was the non-reaction to Israel’s strike on Syria. One would have thought that Israel bombing a target deep inside Syria would have sparked off a major international incident. But it did not. As The Spectator reported at the time the Israelis, the Syrians and the Americans all wanted to draw a veil over the affair. Finally, though, the Bush administration has released some details about what happened. It seems that what the Israelis hit was a nuclear reactor that had been constructed with North Korean help—you can see the declassified evidence for this claim here. The Americans say that they were unaware of this facility’s

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Striking out

I have just ran into the striking teachers, placards aloft as they try to extort even more money from the taxpayer by closing a third of English schools today. Three things struck me. 1. One placard said “2.4%=Balls. 10%=NUT”. I wonder which of those two pay rise figures the public would consider more reasonable? 2. Their chant was a demand for “fair pay”. Yet the gap between teachers’ pay and the (lower) figure of the average worker has soared under this government to record highs. One may argue the pupils have lost out from the last ten years of Labour government. But not teachers. 3. Another placard read “tell the

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Public to Hillary and Barack: Put Us Out of Our Misery

I’m actually watching the Washington Capitals-Philadelphia Flyers ice hockey game* (hurrah for NASN!) but this Marc Ambinder post on the Pennsylvania primary was enough to raise an eyebrow: High Turnout Officials project a turnout of between 52% and 55% of the Democratic primary electorate; turnout is especially high in Philadelphia; Hmmm. That’s a high turnout? Now, sure Democrats may be more excited and enthused than Republicans. But this has been a month long campaign in a single state and it’s still the case almost half of all registered Democrats aren’t voting? Perhaps the public is just actually fed up with it all and wishes it was over? Bonus alternative explanation:

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cry Heffer for England and St George…

Happy St George’s day, English readers. To mark the occasion, the Telegraph offers us Simon Heffer, the would-be John Wilkes of our times, to declare the Union “as good as over”. And this, according to Heffer, is a fine thing since it ensures that England can finally be free from Tartan oppression. Apparently there’s been a conspiracy to to prevent the English from being, well, English: St     Patrick’s, St David’s and St Andrew’s days were decreed as the moments when the oppressed proclaimed their identity and possibly even their liberation. The only thing the English could possibly do on St George’s  Day was to reflect upon their centuries

Peter Hoskin

Introducing The Spectator 180th anniversary blog

We’ve just launched a blog celebrating the 180th anniversary of the Spectator. You can check it out here. At the moment, there are two posts up – an introduction and a look back at the 1711 Spectator – and there’s plenty more to come over the next few weeks.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama needs to knock Hillary out — and quick

Hillary Clinton did not have to wait until 3 a.m. for the call telling her that she had won the Pennsylvania primary. Within an hour of the polls closing, the news networks had declared her the winner and by the end of the night she had secured a double-digit lead, handily beating the spread set for her by the media. Pennsylvania was always going to be Hillary’s kind of state; its demographics play to her strengths. There are a smaller percentage of the groups with whom Barack Obama is strongest — blacks and college graduates — and an above average number of over 65s, with whom Clinton generally does well.

Simon Hoggart

Farewell, Foyle

So it’s goodbye to Foyle’s War (Sunday, ITV), for the time being at least. The series seems to have been cancelled not because it was no good; it was, for a TV ’tec drama, superb. Nor because it had poor ratings — they were huge for today’s crowded television schedules. The reason seems to be that it had the wrong kind of viewers, people who remembered the war or, increasingly these days, people who were born to people who remembered the war. It is a given of marketing that the young are the only target advertisers should bother to attract, since they are deemed to flit from brand to brand