Society

Saturday

Kate Chisholm

Forgotten Genius

He died in 1955, aged 45, in the back of a New York taxi cab (we were not told how), wrote the script for The African Queen (going so far as to direct the moment when the audience should hear Bogart’s stomach rumbling), and won the Pulitzer Prize posthumously for his once-read-never-forgotten novel, A Death in the Family. He died in 1955, aged 45, in the back of a New York taxi cab (we were not told how), wrote the script for The African Queen (going so far as to direct the moment when the audience should hear Bogart’s stomach rumbling), and won the Pulitzer Prize posthumously for his once-read-never-forgotten

Jules Evans

The Russian whose fortune fell from the sky

Jules Evans says billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska has global business ambitions — but a dispute with another Russian tycoon, Michael Cherney, may get in his way Oleg Deripaska wants it all. He already has quite a lot: assets in Russian insurance, pulp, construction, airports, media, cars, and oil, and a controlling stake in the world’s largest aluminium company, Rusal. These make him Russia’s second-richest man, worth $18 billion according to Forbes; only Roman Abramovich is richer. But Deripaska’s ambition is not yet sated. He wants a place in the top league of global businessmen alongside Bill Gates and Lakshmi Mittal. And so far his ambition appears to enjoy strong Kremlin

Ross Clark Ross Clark

More bad news: no housing shortage

While all eyes were on the crash of Northern Rock last week, something even scarier was happening. Two of Britain’s many house price indices — there were eight competing in a crowded market last time I counted — reminded us that property prices can fall as well as rise. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported that a net balance of 1.8 per cent of its members say house prices fell in August. Then Rightmove, the property website, reported that asking prices in England and Wales had fallen by an average of 2.6 per cent. If you have just bought a job lot of buy-to-let apartments in Docklands on the

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

How the spirit of the Rock triumphed over the prudence of the Northern

Hindsight suggests that the Rock was always likely to get the Northern into trouble one day. The Northern Counties Permanent Building Society, founded in 1850 as the successor to the Newcastle Land Society, was by reputation ‘a serious establishment’ (one of its first decisions was to ban women from its board, a ruling observed by its successor until 1999) and its early growth was relatively slow. By the turn of the 20th century, it still had only 216 mortgage borrowers, and was one of no less than 29 building societies in a city of 270,000 people. During and after the second world war it expanded by absorbing smaller societies —

The Spectator

There may be trouble ahead

Extraordinary measures are sometimes necessary to quell the madness of crowds. When Diana, Princess of Wales’s mourners threatened to vent their angry grief on the institution of monarchy itself, it became necessary for the Queen to speak directly to her people. Extraordinary measures are sometimes necessary to quell the madness of crowds. When Diana, Princess of Wales’s mourners threatened to vent their angry grief on the institution of monarchy itself, it became necessary for the Queen to speak directly to her people. As the run on Northern Rock gathered momentum on Monday and panic-stricken depositors threatened to vent their anger on the government, there were only two possible responses. The

Simon Hoggart

Spectator Mini-Bar offer

For some reason I like to have a theme for our mini-bar offers, concentrating on a particular country, region or grower. I couldn’t think of one this time, but I did want to bring back Private Cellar, one of my favourite merchants, whose small team seems to have pretty unerring palates and who can nose out excellent wines at good prices. I suppose, faute de mieux, I could call this offer Old and New Classics. The first new classic is Dr Ernst Loosen’s Villa Wolf Pinot Gris 2006 (1) from the Pfalz area of Germany. This is unlike any German wine you have tried. For one thing it is not

Lucy Vickery

Sobering thoughts | 22 September 2007

In Competition No. 2512 you were invited to submit a description of a hangover in heroic couplets. I judged the comp after a night’s carousing and your couplets, which were clearly informed by bitter experience, elicited shudders of queasy recognition and the inevitable doomed resolution never again to touch a drop. Simon Machin’s reference to being beaten up by secret police recalls Kingsley Amis’s unforgettable, wince-inducing description of Jim Dixon’s hangover: ‘And body sprawled as if in pained release,/ From being beaten by the secret police’. And thanks to Virginia Price Evans for a vivid description of drunkenness rather than its consequences. The winners, printed below, get £25 each and

Frank Keating

Victorious Plum

Spectator readers Alan Magid and Timothy Straker were quick on the draw (Letters, 25 August, 8 September) to champion Mike by P.G. Wodehouse in a matey reproach to Robert Stewart’s assertion in his review of Baseball Haiku (Books, 18 August) that there had never been a significant cricket novel. Spectator readers Alan Magid and Timothy Straker were quick on the draw (Letters, 25 August, 8 September) to champion Mike by P.G. Wodehouse in a matey reproach to Robert Stewart’s assertion in his review of Baseball Haiku (Books, 18 August) that there had never been a significant cricket novel. Their testimony would have cheered not only Wodehouse himself but another notable

Irwin Stelzer

Brown and his critics must admit their errors

Not even his severest critics doubt Gordon Brown’s intelligence. They might object to the causes in which it has been enlisted, but they knew that it is both formidable and restless. Nor do the Prime Minister’s critics doubt that he has a coherent vision of where he wants to take Great Britain, what sort of society he would like to create (the assumption being that it is in his power to do just that). Again, they might disagree on the consequences of striving for greater equality of income and wealth distribution, or the efficacy of stuffing an unreformed public sector with cash. But they have no doubt that Gordon Brown

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A fond farewell to the Commission for Racial Equality

Less a rage against the dying of the light, more a prolonged, high-pitched whine of complaint and self-justification, the sound of a swarm of badly earthed strimmers, heard from a distance on an early autumn morning. The Commission for Racial Equality has issued its valedictory press release before its duties are acquired by the Commission for Equality and Human Rights next month. The new organisation, headed by Trevor Phillips, will co-ordinate all manner of whining on behalf of absolutely anybody who considers him- or herself to be oppressed and victimised and discriminated against by the vindictive white male hegemony. Good luck to it. The CRE, meanwhile, has left us with

Sarah Vine

Scared of sexists? Try upsetting the feminists

As a study published the other day showed, the equality gap is far from sewn up. Despite the fact that women managers climb the career ladder faster than men and reach positions of responsibility five years earlier than their male counterparts, they are still paid less …an average of 12 per cent less, rising to 23 per cent at senior level. Are you still there? Because if I were you I would have wandered off by now, perhaps to tidy my sock drawer, or empty the bins — or perform any number of more fascinating tasks; anything apart from listening to yet another whingeing career woman bleating on about the

Friday

Sebastian Payne

It was Brown’s system that failed

Martin Vander Weyer examines who should be held responsible for the Northern Rock crisis and finds that as much as any individual, the system that Gordon Brown put in place in 1997 should be held responsible. Martin Vander Weyer The search for suspects goes on, the theories become more bizarre by the day, and yet no one’s quite sure whether there’s really a body. I speak of course of Northern Rock. Is it dead on its feet, creditworthiness destroyed, business model incapable of withstanding the stormy market conditions ahead, its management humiliated? Or will it now stagger on under its Treasury guarantee and award chief executive Adam Applegarth and his team a

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What Baroness Thatcher told me about tax cuts

I have just been telephoned by the BBC about my “interview with Margaret Thatcher” where she laid into David Cameron. Em, not quite. It was a comment of hers I reported in my News of the World column in April and repeated on Coffee House yesterday. It was picked up on ConservativeHome and ran in the Evening Standard, and then the Press Association and now the Daily Mail online. My friends are now calling up to congratulate me on interviewing a woman who hasn’t spoken publicly for years. The truth is far less glamorous. I met Baroness Thatcher after Lord Lamont’s excellent Keith Joseph lecture in April and asked her

Lucy Vickery

Dark Thoughts

If you ever roll your eyes to heaven in despair at the pretentious nonsense spouted by some rock journalists you might enjoy Graeme’s Thomson’s post on Guardian Unlimited’s music blog, where he calls for an immediate ban on the use of ‘brave’, ‘dark’ and ‘edgy’ in any album review. Although I’m 100% with Graeme on this one I should point out that this link was sent to me by a well-wisher after I’d used the d-word with reference to Serafina Steer, the foul-mouthed harpist from Hackney who we’d just seen in action (I did grapple briefly for an alternative adjective, honest, but I couldn’t think of one).

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How close did we come to another war in the Middle East?

The more that emerges about the Israeli air strike on Syria the more mysterious the whole thing becomes. The Washington Post reports today that the US corroborated an Israeli intelligence assessment that North Korean personnel were present in Syria before the strike; suggesting that the US effectively signed off on the strike despite the risk that it could have sparked an all out regional war just as Washington is desperately trying to damp things down so that it can make some progress on stabilizing Iraq and sanctioning Iran. But there is still no real read on precisely what the Israelis were bombing or how far along the Syrians were in

Matthew Dancona

The great Blue Peter voting scandal

The breaking news is that the BBC Blue Peter cat-naming scandal was even murkier than it first appeared. As the Beeb fessed up today, the true result of a viewer competition to choose the name of the cat – ‘Cookie’ was the people’s choice – was over-ridden by heartless Corporation executives who imposed the name ‘Socks’ instead. There are now sensational allegations of electoral fraud, as the inevitable blame game begins. Apparently, there was a suspicious late surge of votes in favour of ‘Cookie’, leading the heirs to Reith to conclude that they must intervene – a dubious decision which has now backfired spectacularly. As any parent knows, you don’t

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Journalism 101 | 20 September 2007

Paul Krugman complains that the scale of Democratic triumphs is deliberately under-played by the American media. Conspiracy! In fact, it’s quite strange how the magnitude of the Democratic victory has been downplayed. After the 1994 election, the cover of Time showed a charging elephant, and the headline read “GOP stampede.” Indeed, the GOP had won an impressive victory: in House races, Republicans had a 7 percentage point lead in the two-party vote. In 2006, Time’s cover was much more subdued; two overlapping circles, and the headline “The center is the new place to be.” You might assume that this was because the Democrats barely eked out a victory. In fact,

The Spectator

US Defense Secretary doesn’t know if it was right to invade Iraq

If you want an idea of how far the Iraq debate has shifted since 2003 consider this exchange between David Brooks, The New York Times columnist, and Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defence appointed by President Bush in late 2006 after he finally got rid of Donald Rumsfeld: “I don’t think you invade Iraq to bring liberty. You do it to eliminate an unstable regime and because sanctions are breaking down and you get liberty as a byproduct,” [Gates] continued. I asked him whether invading Iraq was a good idea, knowing what we know now. He looked at me for a bit and said, “I don’t know.” This is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ming Reviewed

Lloyd Evans, The Spectator’s theatre critic, has penned an absolutely fantastic sketch of Ming Campbell’s speech today for us which you can read here. I particularly enjoyed his final thoughts on Ming’s persona, “It isn’t relevant or sexy. But it’s thoroughly Liberal Democrat. Plenty of gravitas. No weight.”

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Bounders in clubland

I have been remiss, gentle reader, in failing to post another corker from The Daily Telegraph’s obituary pages. Lord Michael Pratt, who has died aged 61, will be remembered as one of the last Wodehouseian figures to inhabit London’s clubland and as a much travelled author who pined for the days of Empire; he will also be remembered as an unabashed snob and social interloper on a grand scale. Pratt would arrive at country houses announcing that he was en route to another castle or (even larger) stately home, and was intending to stay for only one night. Quite often the “night” would turn into weeks, and sometimes months. Although