Society

Saturday

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 19 April 2008

Peter Jones investigates whether the Olympic Games have always been political. The sight of Chinese thugs invading the streets of our capital in the name of the Olympic Holy Flame Protection Unit (OHFPU — most people’s thoughts exactly) should banish once and for all the idea that the Olympic Games are not ‘political’. Since the Olympic Games do not do God either, the idea that the flame is ‘holy’ is also rather rich, especially coming from China. The ancient Greeks did do god in a big way at the Olympic Games, since the Games were held in honour of Zeus, god of Olympus (not that Mount Olympus was anywhere near the site). Zeus,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Putin’s private side

The story of Vladimir Putin and Alina Kabayeva, the 24 year old gymnast turned MP, is bizarre. On Thursday, the newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent alleged that Putin was to leave his wife, who he has been married to since before Miss Kbayeva was born, to marry the gymnast. On Friday, Putin denied the story, the editor of the newspaper resigned and the owner issued a  retraction and insisted that he had had no knowledge of the story before publication. By Friday night, publication of the Moskovsky Korrespondent had been suspended.  But the paper’s staff stand by the story while Putin’s denial includes this odd aside: “In other such publications other successful,

The Spectator

UK Drugs Policy Commission responds to Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips makes three allegations about the UK Drug Policy Commission in her 22 May Spectator Blog, “Britain’s Drug Wars”. First is that we are a “bunch of self appointed busybodies of no status or authority whatsoever”. As a charity we may be self-appointed but a quick look at our web-site would have shown that our Commissioners are people of significant stature and reputation in their respective fields. Second is that we are “intent on bringing about the legalisation of drugs”. This is an absolute travesty and a wilful misrepresentation of our work which is aimed at supporting a more informed public and political debate about addressing issues of drug policy

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 19 April 2008

My article last week (‘Mad Men are taking over the world’) led me to be accused of elitism by one of the magazine’s online readers. What riled him was my suggestion that, rather than spending £6 billion on speeding up the Eurostar journey by an hour, it might have been better to spend a few million quid providing WiFi to the passengers, allowing them to make better use of their time on the train. I was told that this was typical of the ‘businessman’s arrogant assumption that only business passengers mattered’ — and what about people who wanted to go to Paris for leisure? In reply I said this chap

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 19 April 2008

Political wisdom coming from Robert Mugabe is hard to swallow. Nonetheless, I think the leathery old butcher might be on to something. ‘Gordon Brown,’ he said last week, ‘is a tiny dot on this world.’ From some people, that might be mere insult. Yet, when foul Bob describes Gordon Brown as a dot on the face of this world, one cannot help but consider that other unexpected dot, on the face of Robert Mugabe. Is it a moustache, do you think? I’m not sure. Ask many professed Africa experts about Robert Mugabe’s moustache, and about half of them will say, ‘He hasn’t got a moustache, are you thinking of Daniel

The Spectator

Welcome back, England

On 19 February 2005 The Spectator’s cover bore the arresting headline: ‘Goodbye England’, and the sombre silhouette of a lone huntsman. The issue attracted much attention, capturing, as it did, the sense of something ancestral and precious being needlessly slaughtered, as hunting with hounds finally became a criminal act. This was a feeling that spread far beyond the hunts themselves: a fear that New Labour’s bizarre fixation with a single pursuit symbolised what Roger Scruton so eloquently describes in his book England: An Elegy as ‘the forbidding of England’: the repudiation of its particular institutions, emblems and customs, usually by municipal authorities and liberal elites. Much has changed in the

Bernard Henry-Ivy

The French Left has much to learn from the English

Blairism may have had its day on this side of the Channel, but Bernard-Henri Lévy says that the English Third Way should be a model to his Gallic comrades French Socialists are extraordinary. For the past ten years, they have made ‘Blairism’ their foil, even declaring that it embodies exactly what the Left — and in particular, their Left — must not be. They see in Blairism the quasi-diabolical incarnation of the betrayal of the very ideals they claim to embody. They disavow former English Prime Minister Tony Blair and call his domestic policies ‘Thatcherism with a human face’. They insult his foreign policy, which they believe was driven by

Lucy Vickery

Follow the leader

In Competition No. 2540 you were invited to take a historical event and submit a newspaper leader on it in the style of either the Guardian, the Daily Mail or the Sun. There are some richly comic examples of the art of red-top headline writing in John Perry’s and Neil Roberts’s Hold Ye Front Page, a Sun-style romp through two millennia of history which features some spectacular punning. Highlights include: ‘Nazi Piece of Work’; ‘The Joy of Six’ (Henry VIII); ‘Napoleon Blown Apart’; and ‘You Canute be Serious’. And as far as share of entry was concerned it was the Sun wot won it, outnumbering the Mail and Guardian by

Simon Hoggart

April Spectator Wine Club Offer

I’m just back from the United States where the local wine is ridiculously expensive, apart from the ridiculously cheap, and you wouldn’t want to drink an awful lot of that, since Diet Coke may be more subtle. I’m just back from the United States where the local wine is ridiculously expensive, apart from the ridiculously cheap, and you wouldn’t want to drink an awful lot of that, since Diet Coke may be more subtle. The best Californian wine is superb, and priced to match. At the huge California tasting in London I tried a Cabernet Sauvignon which I thought first-rate. I asked the price. ‘Around 90 of your British pounds,’

Deborah Ross

Blame Quentin

In Bruges 18, Nationwide This film is about two Irish hitmen, Ken and Ray, who are forced to take a sort of minibreak in Bruges (hence the title; hence why this film isn’t, say, In Milton Keynes) on the instruction of their boss, Harry, who wants them to lie low for a while. The film is written and directed by Martin McDonagh, the celebrated playwright famed for The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Pillowman, but I don’t know. In Bruges has some cracking lines in it, a cracking performance from Brendan Gleeson as Ken, and some very funny, provocative jokes, but I still don’t know. Ken and Ray are utterly

Archie Bland

A choice of first novels | 19 April 2008

Oliver Tate, the hero of Submarine (Hamish Hamilton, £16.99), is a monologophobic parthenologist. Roughly translated, this means he is interested in finding new words to describe what it’s like being a virginal 14-year-old in Swansea. So is Joe Dunthorne, whose first novel this is, and both he and Oliver are extremely good at what they set out to do. Dunthorne’s success is rooted in his star’s: Oliver is surely the most charming adolescent borderline sociopath since Martin Amis lit up The Rachel Papers with Charles Highway. This is the sort of teenager whose determination to help others overcome their distressing limitations is matched only by his blindness to how unwelcome

Friday

Beryl Bainbridge

Diary – 18 April 2008

Last week several people — well, two to be exact — asked me if I was looking forward to St George’s Day. One of them was a road-sweeper. Apparently it falls this year on 23 April, although in 1861 its date appears to be two days earlier. I know this because I looked it up in the Book of Days. I keep thinking how confusing it would be if one came back from the dead and tried to look things up in newspapers. I visited Liverpool two days later, the road-sweeper’s query still in my head, and inquired of a girl loitering beside the paper stall at Lime Street Station

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What’s the actual cost of living?

Under the headline ‘The Real Rate of Inflation’, The Daily Mail launches its new Cost of Living Index. The idea is to show that the Consumer Price Index’s 2.5 percent rate does not reflect the actual cost of living. The Mail finds that the price of food is up 15.5 percent, with the price of tea bags up by two-thirds for some reason. People’s gas and electricity bills are up by 12.5 and 12.9 percent respectively. Indeed, the only things that seem to be going down in price are booze and broadband. For more on inflation see Brownie No. 1

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

G is for Gower

Well, better late than never, here’s the long, even keenly, awaited G XI. No excuses for its late arrival, but comfort yourselves with the thought that you’ll have less time to wait before the H XI arrives to batter everyone else’s bowling to pieces. So, following Armstrong, Benaud, Constantine, Dexter,  Edrich and Fry, it is time for Gower. 1. Sunil Gavaskar (IND)2. Gordon Greenidge (WI)3. David Gower (ENG) (Capt)4. WG Grace (ENG)5. Tom Graveney (ENG)6. Adam Gilchrest (AUS) (Wkt)7. Tony Greig (ENG)8. Jack Gregory (AUS) 9. Joel Garner (WI)10. Clarrie Grimmett (AUS)11. Lance Gibbs (WI) Number of players from each country in the series so far:England 31, Australia 13, West

Peter Hoskin

This is England | 17 April 2008

With St George’s Day fast approaching (it’s on April 23rd), The Spectator has taken the opportunity to release a special issue on England. You’ll find the relevant articles dotted around the website, although I’d recommend you check out Rod Liddle’s excellent piece in particular.   It’s also the perfect chance to hear CoffeeHousers’ thoughts on England and on being English. We’ve already asked various public figures “What is England?” – you can see their answers here. Why not register your own response in the comments section?

Wednesday

George Bridges

Hands off Jerusalem, my family heirloom

George Bridges on the part played by his great-grandfather, Robert Bridges, in the composition of Parry’s music to Blake’s lyric: too precious, he says, to be hijacked by separatists I suspect you had better things to do last Friday evening than stay in to watch the English Democrats’ party political broadcast. I missed it. In fact, I didn’t know the party existed until I was throwing out the newspapers at the weekend, and happened to see the broadcast listed on the TV page. Intrigued, I looked them up online. ‘England: we have a right to be angry. THE ENGLISH HAVE HAD ENOUGH.’ I began to feel as if I had

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Doctor’s dilemma

In those distant days when I used to hang out on Facebook one of my favourite user groups was ‘I hate Catherine Tate and she shouldn’t be in the new series of Doctor Who.’ I don’t remember many of the members’ exchanges being particularly witty or illuminating, but then they didn’t need to be. The group’s name said it all, really. And now she’s arrived just how bad and annoying is she? Well, the good news is: not as bad and annoying as you might have feared. But, given how bad and annoying you feared she would be, I’m not sure that’s going to provide total consolation. I’ll give you

Ian Hay-Davison

How to rescue a bank: be firm, be quick, be quiet

To judge from the media coverage of Northern Rock, one might imagine that the circumstances of a bank collapse have never occurred before — or at least not for 150 years. But this is not the case. There have been several in recent years, including those of Johnson Matthey and Barings. But the closest parallel is one that is less well known: the collapse of National Mortgage Bank (NMB), of which I was appointed chairman in February 1992 to supervise the run-off of its business. The story begins with the collapse of the fraud-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International in 1991. This was not the direct responsibility of the