Society

Saturday

15 Dec 2007

Alan Judd

Speeding questions

‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’ John Maynard Keynes retorted to a critic. A pity he’s not here to ask the same question of the Department for Transport (DfT) when they lecture us on road deaths this Christmas. Four years ago The Spectator (22 November 2003) helped to initiate the wider debate about speed cameras, hitherto primarily a concern of the specialist motoring press and the RAC Foundation. The article attracted considerable attention, partly because of the figures it quoted for cameras, drivers caught, revenue raised and the fact that, of 419 Somerset police officers caught in one year, only one was prosecuted.

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 15 December 2007

Those who indulge in the ‘infuriating genteelism’ of saying Christmas lunch must be castigated, a reader from Leicester, Mr Clifford Dunkley, tells me. Castigate them, do. But they won’t stay castigated. Yet it must be Christmas dinner, for the phrase is fossilised, as much as ‘God save the Queen’ is fossilised in preserving the subjunctive. Christmas dinner is unusual because the thing is fossilised as well as the name. The new online Oxford English Dictionary preserves the definition of dinner that it gave in June 1896: ‘The chief meal of the day, eaten originally, and still by the majority of people, about the middle of the day (cf. Ger. Mittagsessen),

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 15 December 2007

Since our parish newsletter does not have a wide circulation, I feel I am justified in plagiarising an article in the latest issue by its nature correspondent (my wife). She provides useful, or anyway, interesting information for Christmas decoration, with the preface that unless you wait until Christmas Eve before hanging up your greenery and be sure to take it down by Epiphany, every leaf will spawn a goblin: I. Holly. Tradition holds that if the holly you bring in is smooth-leaved, the woman of the house will dominate. If it is prickly, the man will be in charge. The botanical fact, though, is that all berried holly is female.

Emily Maitlis

Diary – 15 December 2007

Last night I came face to face with a pair of Victoria Beckham’s old white jeans. To be fair, it wasn’t just me and the jeans. It was more of a charity auction do where her trousers were up for grabs. I had a good look at them. But then came a slight panicky moment when my arm got stuck in the leg and I feared they might have to call security to release me. It has been that sort of week, really. A lot crammed into a smallish space. On Monday I dashed from the Policy Exchange Christmas party to the re-re-re-relaunch of Duran Duran. In the seats behind

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 15 December 2007

JANUARY 2007 As we await the coming of the Force of Darkness, work begins on election posters featuring Gordon as Darth Vader. Tory coffers bulging in preparation for the fight, half a million raised in one evening at a party at Blenheim. Pol Roger champagne flowing and as much caviar as you can eat (for only £5,000!). Back at HQ we launch our ‘Live Life For Less’ campaign, teaching poor people to be thrifty. We unveil plans to ban fast food, and clamp down on other ‘social pollutants’ such as Edward Leigh. FEBRUARY A lot of nosy-parkers demand to know whether we are going to cut taxes. As we haven’t

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 15 December 2007

From Edward McMillan-Scott, European Parliament vice-president Q. The problem of the universal greeting has become an obsession. As you may imagine, the European Parliament is a meeting place for people from all the EU’s 27 countries to those from Asia, America and all the continents. So from Borat-style hugs, to Muslim delicacy about human contact, to Chinese codes of kowtow or Indian supplicant anjali, I am daily confronted by the need for a new encounter technique. Moreover, the risk of passing on diseases like H5N1 (and, for British visitors, MRSA) demands a new European etiquette. Can you help, Mary? A. I understand some Euro MPs have discussed using the informal

Toby Young

What your Christmas card says about you (and it’s not usually very nice)

When a person does something to remind you of their superior status, I often wonder whether he or she is fully in control of what they’re doing. Name-droppers, for instance, often seem to be acting compulsively, as if they’re suffering from a mild personality disorder. Once the impulse to drop the name has been triggered — usually by some circuitous route that only makes sense to the name-dropper — these people can’t stop themselves. The name pops out in spite of the fact that they know it’s gauche. (That’s my excuse, anyway.) The same is true of Christmas cards. Normally, members of the British aristocracy are fairly reserved when it

Alex Massie

The Experience Primary

This interesting snapshot of voters’ hopes and fears and immediate impressions of Barack Obama comes from The Washington Post’s campaign blog The Trail:The Post explains that the cloud: includes the top thirty-nine words mentioned, each of which was cited by 8 or more people. The size of each word represents the number of people who said it. So in this instance, the biggest word, “inexperienced,” represents 123 people, the next largest, “young,” represents 83, etc. No wonder Bill Clinton decided to hammer Obama on the experience issue. As Marc Ambinder relates: In a hard-changing interview with Charlie Rose tonight, Bill Clinton said Americans who are prepared to

James Forsyth

Bill Clinton takes the gloves off

With Barack Obama becoming a more serious threat to Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions by the day, Bill Clinton has taken on the role of a silver-tongued attack dog. In a TV interview last night, he went after Obama hard on the experience front. Take this quote attacking Obama’s lack of national political experience which show just how panicked the Clinton camp is. “In theory, we could find someone who is a gifted television commentators and let them run. They’d have only one year less experience in national politics…” The Clintons know that the holiday season will pause the narrative of the campaign, so they are desperate to put a dent

Martin Vander Weyer

Is there an alternative to nationalising Northern Rock?

Tuesday’s announcement that the Treasury will guarantee lending from other banks to Northern Rock is last ditch bid to avoid having to nationalise the bank. But in truth, most of the best options were closed off by inaction back in September. National Rock? With the announcement this morning of a further extension of the scope of the Treasury’s guarantee of Northern Rock liabilities, nationalization of the crippled mortgage lender looks an even stronger bet than it did yesterday. The guarantee, you may remember, initially covered only the £24 billion or so of retail deposits made before everything went pear-shaped and panic-stricken in September. Then the guarantee was extended to cover

Boris Johnson

How, as Mayor, I would help our brave troops

Even if the story is exaggerated, the underlying psychology is convincing. It is reliably reported that last month a woman in her thirties was doing her daily laps of the pool in Leatherhead, Surrey, when she became aware of an obstacle. A section of the swimming-pool had been roped off to allow 15 wounded soldiers to receive the therapy needed for their rehabilitation. It is hard to know what went through the young woman’s mind, but she must have grasped that these disfigurements had been incurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. She understood in a flash that she was not only being inconvenienced; she was being inconvenienced by the British military,

Theodore Dalrymple

My goose was cooked — and it wasn’t very good

Unlike Wagner’s music, which is better than it sounds, roast goose is less good than it sounds. For a reason that I have not been able quite to fathom, it is really delicious only in Germany. Or so I, at any rate, have found. Whether this is because the Germans cook it better, or whether it is because it is a dish that is appropriate to the country, I am not sure. Perhaps you need to be near dense and dark pine forests, with clearings for witches and wicked stepmothers who either devour small children or send them out to find strawberries in the snow, to appreciate the comforts of

Tony Parsons

It is will, not greed, that makes you write a bestseller

When Ernest Hemingway met Harold Robbins, the grand old man of American literature asked the alpha male of the bestseller list why he wrote. ‘Wealth,’ said Harold Robbins. ‘And I got it.’ Of all the lies that Harold Robbins told in his life — the fantasy most often repeated as fact is that his first wife was a Chinese dancer who died of a parrot bite — this was the most outrageous. Harold Robbins — who liked to boast that he was the only author ‘with his own goddamn yacht’ — did not write for money. Nobody on the bestseller list writes for money. The people who write for money

Celia Walden

The reason we drink is that we think it’s naughty

As we become ever more steeped in Protestant guilt over the next week or so, each additional glass of wine swelling the self-loathing, redemption is in sight. New Year’s Day looms in all its stark innocence, symbolising enforced abstinence, a return to purity and, for a few weeks at least, the weight of our sinfulness will be lifted. Only then, as we all know, around 7 January, when virtue becomes boring, a friend offers us a glass, we accept, and the whole contorted mindset starts again. There is a single explanation for Britain’s problem with alcohol: we think it’s naughty. Why that theatrical pause before accepting a drink? The bitten

Barry Humphries

Christmas notebook

The trouble with living in London is that apoplexy is always just around the corner. A few weeks ago my telephone developed a funny sub-aqueous rustling noise sufficient to drown all conversations, so after a few stiff cups of tea, and setting aside several hours for the task, I phoned BT to have it fixed. The next day a nice man appeared with a name a bit like a Sudanese teddy bear, and within a mere hour had found and fixed the problem — a corroded wire outside the house. He departed smiling into the sunset, having refused a £10 tip. The next day we realised that in fixing the

Anne Applebaum

In Poland you can’t get hold of a Polish plumber

Warsaw ‘Hmm, let me see,’ said Tomasz the painter, rubbing his temples. He was trying to think of a plumber who could install a new bathroom shower. ‘Well, there’s Jacek — no, sorry, he’s gone to Dublin. There’s Lech — no, I’m afraid he’s away, I think in Bristol. There used to be that guy, what was his name, Jackowski — no, he’s in London.’ He thought for a few more minutes. ‘Sorry,’ he said at last. ‘Can’t recommend anyone.’ Thus did I discover that within a hundred-mile radius of my Polish country house — a territory that includes the city of Bydgoszcz (pop. 400,000), and the surrounding Pomeranian countryside

Tina Brown

New York Diary

I’ve always loved the Christmas (or rather Hulliday) season in New York because it’s so unapologetically, materialistically over the top. You want tinsel? No tinsel is fatter and furrier than New York tinsel. You want twinkling lights? It’s Vegas on 57th where we live. Even tangerines here are shinier and fatter, although some of those groaning fruit baskets that arrive look suspiciously familiar. ‘Re-gifting’ — as the practice of putting expensive presents into instant turnaround is known here — has become as openly acknowledged a seasonal custom as baking gingerbread houses. In the swanky lobbies of Upper East Side apartment buildings you invariably spot some towering floral arrangement with a

Rod Liddle

God’s role in politics is not to underwrite bad ideas

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews XI 1 Ah yes; things not seen. A little while ago this country had itself a Prime Minister who received rather more guidance from things not seen than any of us had imagined at the time. That thing not seen was, according to Tony Blair, God; apparently these two important figures in world history would fairly regularly commune, chew the fat, put the, er, world to rights. At the time, when he was Prime Minister, Mr Blair kept this a secret: he was plainly embarrassed by the perpetual presence of his divine associate. Since

Matthew Dancona

Christian virtue: a man in the prime of his second act

The night before I meet Christian Slater I am lazily channel-surfing and, a little spookily, on comes True Romance, the 1993 Tarantino-scripted love story and gangster movie that cemented the actor’s stardom. There is much to enjoy in the film: Brad Pitt as a stoner, Gary Oldman as a scary white pimp who thinks he is black, and Tarantino’s dialogue at its best, never better than in a scene between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper. But it is the performance delivered by Slater himself — a comic-store geek whose love for Patricia Arquette makes him capable of insane heroism — that sticks in the mind. And guess what? As he

Murphy O'Connor

In Umbria the truth of the Nativity was revealed to me

One of the perks of studying for the priesthood in Rome was the gita, an Italian word meaning ‘holiday’ or ‘trip’. We students rarely returned home in our seven-year stint out there, so we were given a list of places to visit during holidays, like Subiaco, the birthplace of Benedictine monasticism, Fiesole near Florence, where we would stay with the ‘Blue Nuns’, and many other places with religious resonance. But the most popular places for gitas were the Umbrian towns and villages like Perugia and, above all, Assisi — home of Sts Francis and Clare. The local stone and light, and the undulating country with delightful hill-top towns, make Umbria