Olympic Fever
From today’s Guardian: London Olympic organisers have been forced to abandon their original plans for the canoe slalom venue after the original site in Spitalbrook, Hertfordshire was found to be severely contaminated.
Society
Tuesday
A taxing friendship
At the risk of infuriating Coffee Housers (and Polly), I rather like Polly Toynbee. She’s good company and we chatted happily before appearing on Marr on Sunday. It’s just that she’s wrong, and particularly wrong about tax. See her article in today’s Guardian, calling on Gordon to open up clear red water between himself and the Tories, and to explain “what tax is for, why it is a public good and not a burden, how it is the agent of social justice.” Tax is a necessary evil to most people, especially the least affluent. They accept it as the membership fee of society, and the price they pay for common
Monday
Brown faces the press pack
Every time I’ve stood in a queue waiting for these No10 press conferences, the chat is usually “he’s really screwed now.” We’re usually disappointed. Same this time. This was neither the triumph nor the crucifixion many had predicted. Here’s my summary. 1) No speech: Blair would always start his hour-long press conferences with a little speech – using the focus of 24-hour News. Brown didn’t. A reminder of how unsure he still is on TV. 2) Whodunnit?? “My first instinct, if I were honest with you, was that I wanted to get on with putting my vision of the country across… but I did listen to people”. Ah, the dastardly
Society v. the state
It’s always a pleasure to hear Will Hutton on the radio, the perfect antidote to the idea that the battle in politics is over. He justified inheritance tax on the basis that “society” deserves a slice of other people’s savings: of course, he meant the government. To me, the dividing line is between society and the government. On the one hand, communities – people doing the best for their families and neighbours: on the other, the looters – mistrustful of the public and hungry for the fruits of their labour. David Cameron stood up for society last week and it shook Labour to the core. As he says, there is
Sunday
Allez les Bleus!
Sympathy? You gotta be kidding me. The New Zealand press has not – suprise! – taken France’s stirring victory in Cardiff yesterday very well. Of course, like their neighbours across the Tasman Sea they’re not quite so insufferable in defeat as they are in victory. Even so, schadenfreude* demands that one scour the Kiwi press today: Shattered All Black rugby fans can ease their mental pain by sticking with the World Cup until the bitter end, psychologist Marc Wilson says. Ignoring the tournament in the wake of yesterday’s shock 20-18 quarter-final loss to France would not help people get over the All Blacks’ early exit, said Dr Wilson, deputy head
Saturday
Just say no | 6 October 2007
In New York, I head for Citarella on Broadway only to be confronted by a noisy demo at the entrance. (Among New York foodies, Citarella is to Whole Foods what in London Waitrose is to Tesco.) People in straw sandals and peasant dresses are handing out leaflets proclaiming ‘Say no to foie gras!’ Citarella is probably one of the few places in the world which sells foie gras in volume, so this is a strike, as it were, at the very heart of the evil empire. Foie gras is goose liver swelled up by force-feeding just before the bird is killed; the liver, lightly sautéed or made into a terrine,
Smoking zone
As of this week my boy (17) is no longer legally entitled to buy cigarettes. His half-brother (16) the same. It must be galling for a teenager finally to reach an age when he or she becomes legally entitled to join the adults in one of their glamorous vices, to enjoy that entitlement to the full for several months, and then to have it peremptorily withdrawn again by a sanctimonious Scotsman. My boy has only two months to go before he can service his addiction legally again. To bridge the time gap he popped across to Brittany on a cross-Channel ferry last week to stockpile a couple of thousand cigarettes.
Letters to the Editor | 6 October 2007
Arnie on the big screen Sir: There’s no truth in Fraser Nelson’s suggestion that Governor Schwarzenegger changed his schedule in response to polls or any other political considerations (‘This will be Cameron’s finest hour’, 29 September). The Governor was delighted by the opportunity to speak to the Conservative conference, and only regrets that other responsibilities prevented him from making an appearance. We’re grateful that technology allowed the Governor to appear via a video link. Governor Schwarzenegger appreciated Mr Cameron’s invitation and was pleased to highlight how California’s move away from hardline partisanship has helped the Governor’s administration achieve groundbreaking new policies. Mr Cameron is realising a similar opportunity with the
Diary – 6 October 2007
Thank the Lord this will be the last time conference-goers have to endure the hellhole that calls itself Blackpool. The last time I stayed in a Blackpool hotel at a party conference was in the mid-1990s. I woke up at 2 a.m. on the first night covered in sweat. I hadn’t been indulging in any, er, nefarious activity and didn’t feel ill, but I eventually worked it out. The caring Blackpool hotel owner had thoughtfully put rubber incontinence sheets on the bed. Now I am sure some people would pay good money for that sort of thing, but I decided to check out the next morning. Each time I have
Ten years on, I’m still prone to a townie’s faux pas when I go deerstalking
As a lover of good drama, my favourite week of the year falls in the late summer when I make my annual pilgrimage to Scotland. The fabulous scenery, the weird and wacky costumes, the inventive use of language — it all adds up to a very memorable few days. No, I’m not talking about the Edinburgh Festival, but about deerstalking in the Highlands. For sheer, heart-stopping excitement, it knocks spots off a trip to the theatre. If you’re lucky, you’ll come home with more than just a fistful of programmes, too — though hand-luggage restrictions make it advisable to stick such souvenirs in the hold. Admittedly, it has taken me
Mind your language | 6 October 2007
I was having lunch with friends last week in a fairly swanky gastropub, and the menu promised a ballontine of quail. The waiter told me that ballontine meant that the quail had been deboned, then stuffed. It was quite nice to eat, but I have only just discovered what the menu intended to say, which is ballotine. I was put right by an amusing little book on French words in English with the not fantastically funny title of French Letters and the English Canon (Timewell Press, £9.99). It is by Mark Daniel. Actually, Mr Daniel says that the correct spelling is ballottine. He has seen it on menus even as
Your problems solved | 6 October 2007
Q. An elderly relative has developed the disgusting habit of licking her knife after using it for, say, jam, and then using it again to help herself to butter. It’s horrid having to take butter from a dish into which some one else’s saliva-strewn knife has been plunged. Any ideas? B.M, North Berwick A. Re-educate your relation by giving her tea at your own table. Serve scones from the oven, handing out the first one ‘to test’ by an accomplice who will have been primed to load it with butter, then lick his knife. As his knife-wielding hand now lunges for the jam, cry ‘Greystoke! Greystoke!’ and steer the hand
When Morons Attack
It’s the baseball play-offs. Hurrah. Let’s Go Yankees! But that also means it’s time for America’s sportswriters to be even dumber than is customarily the case. For the sake of your sanity as well as for proper hilarity, trot on over to the lads at Fire Joe Morgan. Recent highlights include: how your mother probably has a better understanding of the value of “wins” than the average Hall of Fame voter, why yes of course you’d be better off packing your team with people who aren’t very good at baseball come the play-offs because, hey, they’re plucky! And gusty! and, today, yet another welcome takedown of America’s worst gasbag, Mr
Picture of the Day | 6 October 2007
I trust that Steve Clemons, pride and joy of the New America Foundation, won’t object if I thieve this adorable picture of his dogs, Oakley (left) and Annie. I grew up with spaniels and have no idea about Weimeraners at all. Are they loopy and excessively highly-strung? Or are they as beautifully melancholy as they look? Explain, people, please. PS: Now that I think of it, the Weimeraner is a cousin of the (regal) Vizsla, is it not?
OK, let’s talk Turkey…
Andrew Sullivan says Turkey may be the United States’ “most important ally” (really?) and condemns “myopic” Europe for not immediately welcoming a non-European country into the EU. Easy for him to say of course. So does Andrew support the resolution coming before Congress that would (finally) recognise the Armenian genocide? Or does he line up with the American foreign policy establishment and think this is a subject best left under the carpet? I think I can recall Andrew being pretty vociferous about the horror of western indifference to Darfur and I doubt he’d be quite so friendly towards anyone who denied the Jewish (and gypsy and homosexual) holocaust so where
Brown’s Black Saturday
This is Brown’s Black Saturday. He could have won even on these polls, but it would have been a fight rather than a massacre. And this is what he balked at. He has shown himself to be a graduate of the Scooby Doo school of conflict: he saw danger, yelped “yikes” and skedaddled. Fleet Street will not forget this in a hurry.
A chastened City
Can we make a link between the chopping of 1,500 jobs, mostly in London and New York, by the Swiss banking giant UBS, and the news that the City of London Corporation has come up with a £300 million contribution to the financing of Crossrail, the long-awaited Heathrow-to-Docklands transport link? Well, connecting unrelated news events on any given day and extracting lessons from them is what columnists are supposed to be for. So let me have a go. The jobs lost at UBS Investment Bank, which include that of its chairman and chief executive Huw Jenkins, are the tip of the iceberg of City redundancies to come this autumn. Not
While you were away
This corner has already broken its fundamental annual rule not to get worked up about football till the clocks are altered at the end of this month — there is ample time ahead to concentrate on soccer’s unending imbroglio of speculation, satisfaction and scandal — and any number of faraway correspondents write to say they relish the seasons being topped and tailed with some shafts of basic information. In providing a few for you distant Spectator subscribers, I’m warmed by the memory of the late Peter Cook telling me how, as a schoolboy on summer hols from Radley at his father’s distant colonial service outpost in West Africa, the Times
OCTOBER WINE CLUB
This is a cellar that looks like a cellar, with stacks of wine in wooden cases, some of it covered in dust and cobwebs, the finest stored in a locked cage with a creaking door. In spite of that, they have a modern approach to pricing. The business has an enormous turnover, and the inevitable consequence is that they overstock on some wines, which have to be priced to clear. These are absolutely first-rate bottles, but some are a little unfamiliar and won’t sell off the page; others are so good that Averys’ people bought them in vast quantities. The result is that once again we are offering some terrific
Taking the rap
In Competition No. 2514 you were invited to recast a fairy tale as a rap. I thought that fairy tales might translate well into the language of rap. After all, violence is a dominant theme in both genres (especially in the Grimms’ original x-rated versions, which featured scenes of murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide and incest that would make Stephen King blanch). The winners this week, printed below, were outstanding. Convincing raps, like successful Mills & Boon romances, are not easy to pull off. So it’s a well-deserved £30 each. Natural-born rapper Bill Greenwell nets the bonus fiver. Felicity Powell didn’t enter this week’s comp but, driven to despair by the