Society

Saturday

Andrew Roberts

Diary – 8 December 2007

Well, I’ve learnt my lesson. After my last Speccie diary was satirised by the Guardian, Emily Maitlis, Michael White, Taki, a newspaper called the Asian Age, and — honour of genuine honours! — Craig Brown in Private Eye for being too name-droppy, this one is just going to be a sober chronicle of what I did last week, no frills attached. After that comprehensive going-over, I’m not going to run the same risk twice. Monday: Dinner at Brown’s with Paul Wolfowitz and his girlfriend Shaha Ali Riza, the lady over whose job there was all that fuss at the World Bank and State Department. Needless to say they don’t conform

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Blue Moon Over Vegas Tonight

No-one seems to know quite how many Britons have flown 7,000 miles to be in Las Vegas this weekend, but most estimates suggest it’s at least 15,000 and possibly as many as 25,000. Since no more than 4,000 of them can actually have tickets for Saturday’s fight between Ricky Hatton and Floyd Mayweather this is an invasion army of impressive proportions. But then the British – and especially the English – have always loved their fighters and their fights and Ricky Hatton today enjoys the sort of celebrity once known by the great prize-fighters of the nineteenth century.  If a spot of foreign travel can be thrown in then all

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Republican presidential contender wanted to quarantine AIDS victims

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has come from nowhere to lead the Republican field in the lead-off state of Iowa. A large part of Huckabee’s appeal has been that he’s the relaxed, affable face of Christian conservatism. But the answers that he gave to a 1992 survey have put a considerable dent in that image. Huckabee proposed quarantining those who had AIDS and suggested that “multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding” should pay for it rather than the Federal government. The problem for Huckabee is that having come from nowhere, he’s not received anywhere near the same level

The Spectator

December Wine Club

This is our positively final offer for Christmas, and it’s terrific. Thanks to Lay & Wheeler we have half a dozen French classics, all of which would be very welcome on the Yuletide dinner table, or at a memorable party. What’s more, every one is generously discounted. They are not cheap wines, but they are tremendous value. Take the magnificent 1966 Lay & Wheeler 150th Anniversary Cuvée Champagne (1). It’s made by the people at Duval-Leroy, and at £27, its list price, it is a good buy. For £22 (a £60 discount per case) it’s incredible. You can easily pay that for a non-vintage champagne from one of those companies

Robert Hardman

The older the Queen gets, the more she changes

In a fortnight the Queen will set a remarkable record. On 21 December, she will overtake Queen Victoria (81 years and 243 days) to become the oldest British monarch in history. Do not expect any fanfares, not from royal quarters at any rate. The Queen will be at Sandringham and there will be no official recognition of this milestone. As far as she is concerned, last month’s Diamond Wedding anniversary was quite enough celebration for one year. In any case, she is not one for getting competitive with the ancestors. But the rest of us are entitled to ruminate on this achievement. Of Britain’s three octogenarian monarchs, the other two

The Spectator

The sense of an ending

‘Sleaze has been the dominant factor throughout,’ declared the opposition, ‘and sleaze has been the end issue. Nothing better encapsulates what people think of this government. Sleaze will be one of the things that brings this government down.’ The opposition in question was New Labour and the government was Conservative. A decade on, with poetic symmetry, the positions are reversed: it is the supposedly irreproachable Gordon Brown who presides over a party mired in allegations of evasion, lies and outright criminality. In his memoirs, John Major correctly identifies the lethal quality of the word ‘sleaze’: ‘it fed the public belief that the Conservative party as an institution had been in

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

I oppose a ‘gay-hate’ law because that is not what criminal legislation is for

Should ‘gay-hate’ be a crime? Stonewall, the gay lobbying group of which I remain a solid supporter, has just sent me a briefing paper urging members to support Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, in his proposals to make inciting hatred of homosexuals a criminal offence. The government is proposing new amendments to its Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, adding ‘Hatred on the Grounds of Sexual Orientation’ to the offences of incitement to hatred on the grounds of race or religion. I’m not convinced. I was equally unconvinced it was appropriate to prosecute incitement to religious hatred. My doubts about that (relatively recent) arrival on the statute book were various, but

Matthew Lynn

The last Victorian bastion besieged

Matthew Lynn says London’s last 19th-century merchant bank, Close Brothers, is under threat of takeover by one of the modern breed of aggressive City traders, Andy Stewart Anyone approaching the headquarters of Close Brothers just off Broadgate in the heart of the City may be reminded of the words that open the Asterix books, about how one small village of indomitable Gauls held out against the invading Romans. In the last two decades, almost all the great names of what was once the Square Mile — the Flemings, the Kleinworts, the Schroders — have either been erased from the record books or reduced to nothing more than a couple of

Allister Heath

Braced for a new oil shock? Relax, this isn’t the 1970s

Those of us born in the late 1970s have a great advantage when it comes to understanding today’s oil market: we cannot remember Opec embargoes, nor the double-digit inflation and bitter recessions they triggered. So while many of our elders and betters were predicting Armageddon as the price of oil climbed inexorably over the past couple of years, we younger ones took the surge in our stride — rightly, as it turned out. There is little doubt that the black stuff will soon cost at least $100 a barrel, while a litre of petrol routinely tops £1. But the British and global economies have changed so much over the past

Richard Orange

Winemaker to the maharajas

It’s not often your host has passed up dinner with Mick Jagger and the Maharaja of Jodhpur to take you to his country house for the weekend. But that’s what Rajeev Samant, the pioneer of India’s wine craze, lets slip as we begin the long drive north from Mumbai to his Sula vineyard. Samant has come a long way since he drove a battered old Fiat up this road in the early 1990s to become a farmer on a patch of his father’s land — a gigantic risk for a young man who’d just chucked in a lucrative job in California’s Silicon Valley. ‘Every day I thank my lucky stars,’

Lucy Vickery

Dickens on Dickens

Competition No. 2526: Mixed messages   You are invited to submit a newspaper article from the health pages which reveals that something previously thought to be bad for you has been found to boost longevity. Maximum 150 words. Entries to ‘Competition 2526’ by 2 January or email lucy@spectator.co.uk. In Competition No. 2523 you were invited to submit a review of one of Charles Dickens’s novels written by a character from another Dickens novel. The most frequently occurring bylines by far were those of Ebenezer Scrooge, Gradgrind, Wilkins Micawber and Alfred Jingle. I couldn’t read the Jingle entries without hearing the voices of Ken and Kenneth, the ‘Suits you, Sir’ tailors

Frank Keating

Lords of the ring

Another big fight on Saturday in Vegas: Britain’s welterweight Ricky Hatton vs the accomplished American Floyd Mayweather. Victory for the four-square brickhouse banger from Manchester will, you see, have him headline-hailed back home as Britain’s finest ever — totally preposterous, of course, as were the ditto hosannahs hurrahed from the hillsides just a month ago for the talented Welsh middleweight Joe Calzaghe. Prizefighting has been awash with hyperbole ever since Kid Cain won the decision against Sugar Ray Abel all those biblical aeons ago. I’ve crossed the pond for quite a few bloody late nights down the years and I admit that on days like today I still miss the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The teddy bear teacher was released from prison too soon

So the mop-headed ingenue teacher Gillian Gibbons has been released from her torment in Sudan without being horsewhipped or banged up for too long. The Scousers — Ms Gibbons is from Liverpool, naturellement — had insufficient time to organise a candlelit vigil for her or a minute’s silence at Anfield, but they did manage to festoon lots of railings with yellow ribbons and bouquets from the local garage. The world, you might think, never changes. The Sudanese government — arguably the worst administration on earth — can now bask in the knowledge that they are deemed by the West to be compassionate and conciliatory. The charges against Ms Gibbons —

Christopher Thompson

‘Zimbabwe is like a flipped coin in the air’

It’s summer and the purple flowers on the jacaranda trees have begun to bloom, but they’re little comfort to Zimbabweans in the middle of a dire economic crisis. You can tell it’s bad here because even the death of Ian Smith last month did not arouse much hostile comment. The domestic consensus is that Mugabe has managed both to follow in Smith’s tyrannical footsteps and to wreck the formal economy at the same time. This is Africa’s breadbasket turned basket-case and though the first EU-Africa summit in seven years starts this week and there are presidential elections in March next year, no one sees much prospect for change. It’s true

Archie Bland

A choice of first novels | 8 December 2007

Rarely has Nietzsche been taken so literally as in Ron Currie’s God Is Dead (Picador, £12.99), wherein the deity adopts the form of a Sudanese refugee woman called Sora, and is blown to physical and metaphysical bits by a Janjaweed bomb. Just before He dies, He wishes for someone he could pray to. That’s chapter one. Thereafter, everything goes to pot. In lieu of any religious ideology to fight over, war breaks out between the adherents of evolutionary psychology and postmodern anthropology. Africans worship the omniscient dogs that picked at Sora’s corpse; Americans adore toddlers, ‘tangible, blameless, and as cute as all hell’; the government struggles to keep people from

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

You mean you still like rugby here?

Rugby blogging: Warren Gatland has coached in the English premiership, the Super 14 and been Ireland’s coach. And he’s still surprised that people in Wales think being Welsh coach is a big deal? New Wales coach Warren Gatland says he has been surprised by the level of media interest his first week in charge has attracted. The 44-year-old revealed the scrutiny has been far greater than anything he has ever experienced in his native New Zealand, another hot-bed of rugby. “I suppose I’ll just have to come to terms with the level of interest and media interest in the game,” he said. This is odd. The intense pressure that comes

Alex Massie Alex Massie

If you only see one documentary this year…

Public Service Announcement: the news that the CIA has taken to destroying videotape of its interrogations depresses but does not surprise. It also reminds me that you really ought to see Alex Gibney’s new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side when it is released in January. It’s a dispiriting, devastating indictment of the Bush administration’s detention and torture policies that have done so much* to destroy the United States’ reputation around the world (as well as, of course, increasing the dangers faced by captured US servicemen). Anyway, loony tunes conservatives will be able to ask why the Academy Hates America whe the movie is, as I’d bet it will be,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Way We Live Now…

Christmas relationships, courtesy of DCist: A Christmas tree lot on Wisconsin Avenue at about 9 p.m.: A busy, attractive, professional, unmarried couple in their early 30s who are clearly still in their work clothes. Guy to tree-seller: “We’ll take this wreath.” Tree-seller to couple: “Don’t you want a Christmas tree?” Couple awkwardly look at each other. Girl: “We can’t commit to that right now.” Picture of old-time DC tree-sellers from here.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The economic storm clouds gather

I’m not superstitious, but if I was Gordon Brown I wouldn’t take much comfort in tonight’s figure for the one-month LIBOR interbank interest rate. It’s an ominous 6.66% – having fallen just 0.09 percentage points since the 25-point cut in Bank of England base rate. The more important three-month LIBOR is down a paltry 3 points to 6.61%. This is the market bank rate which will affect our mortgages: it is what matters. And its not going anywhere fast. Ray Boulger from John Charcol has just talked me through it. Most mortgage lenders are just ignoring the BoE rate cut, he says. Egg has today cut its Standard Variable Rate

Matthew Dancona

Why teaching nonsense makes sense

There is more than enough dumbing down in modern education without seeing it where it doesn’t exist. The new Ofsted report complaining that under-11s are being taught too much Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and Spike Milligan is especially wrong-headed. For a start, it is impossible for anyone of any age to have too much Milligan: a meaningless phrase. Secondly, the report is leadenly illiterate in its approach to nonsense poetry: as Noel Malcolm explains in his excellent book on English nonsense, there is a rich strand in our nation’s literature that flows from a sense of the absurd and a crazy experimentalism with language. More to the point, this sort