Society

Saturday

The Spectator

The disease and us

Given the boost in the opinion polls enjoyed by Gordon Brown following the recent floods, a cynic might wonder whether the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey has been staged in order to give the Prime Minister an excuse to break off his holiday in Dorset and earn brownie points by taking control of a national crisis while David Cameron (who has since called off his own holiday) was lounging around on a Breton beach. That, we concede, is far-fetched, but it is not wrong to wonder whether the nation’s reaction to foot-and-mouth — which is rarely fatal in animals and causes no human symptoms whatsoever — is not a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The West is running a protectionist racket against the developing world

The West’s new greenness conceals a giant protectionist racket On 27 September, President George W. Bush will finally come in from the cold over global warming. On that day he will host a conference in Washington to be attended by what he has defined as the world’s 15 most polluting nations. He intends, for the first time, to commit the United States to slashing its carbon emissions. That, anyway, is the positive spin. Alternatively, one might put Bush’s multilateralist initiative like this: he is fed up with being depicted as the bad boy of climate change. Rather than keeping the US out of the world’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions,

Harry Mount

The irony and the ecstasy of Lady Mary Clive

Deep in a remote valley on the edge of the Black Mountains sits one of the last great witnesses of the 20th century. Lady Mary Clive, who turns 100 on 23 August, shook Kitchener’s hand before the first world war, and heard first-hand accounts of the 1916 Dublin Easter Uprising hours after it happened. During the 1926 General Strike she served tea to lorry drivers in the same year that she was presented to George V as a debutante. In the 1930s she was a denizen of Fleet Street, one of Lord Beaverbrook’s favourite journalists. Memoirs and biographies streamed from her pen throughout the century. Last December her children’s book,

D J-Taylor

Trusty steeds and saucy varlets

Supposedly narrated by the scholar and Aristotelian Michael Scott to his pupil the future Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, sometime in the early 13th century, Charlemagne and Roland completes the trilogy begun by The Evening of the World and Arthur the King. Although framed as a picturesquely tongue-in-cheek accompaniment to a great deal of Carolingian history, it also doubles up — and far more amusingly — as a highly sophisticated commentary on the whole idea of how one sets about writing an historical novel. The battlefield on which most purists of the genre take their stand lies on the plain of idiom. All very well cramming in casket-loads of period

Friday

The Spectator

Football’s back

The football season kicks off tomorrow and with England so far on the back foot in the cricket that they’re in danger of stepping on their stumps, it will be a welcome distraction. For what it’s worth, here are a few predictions—do leave yours in the comments. Manchester United will play fantastic football but won’t win the title. Across the road, City will start poorly but end up doing better under Sven Goran Eriksson than anyone is expecting and finish in the top half. Roy Keane’s Sunderland will, and as Newcastle fan this pains me to write, have a good season and finish in the top 7. Liverpool’s Marcus Babel

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ignoring our debt to the Iraqi interpreters

I would have thought that the idea of granting asylum to those Iraqis who have served as interpreters for British troops would be fairly uncontroversial. But Neil Clark has issued a ferocious broadside against it today on Comment is Free, saying “let’s do all we can to keep self-centred mercenaries who betrayed their fellow countrymen and women for financial gain out of Britain.” What’s particularly striking, or one might say sickening, about Clark’s arguments is that he is under no illusions about what will happen to these people once the British leave. He writes, “History tells us that down through history, Quislings have – surprise, surprise – not been well

The Spectator

Ashley’s Ashes

Simon Barnes has a lovely tribute to the retiring England spinner Ashley Giles in this morning’s Times. Giles had a bit of a rough press as he was nearly always used in purely negative ways by his captain. While he irritated the purists as he wasn’t a great spinner of the ball. But, as Barnes, points out England wouldn’t have won the Ashes in 2005 without him. Few small innings have been as important as Giles’s at Trent Bridge in 2005. England were collapsing chasing a mere 129 to win. The Australians had opened up every old English wound and looked to set to snatch the unlikeliest of victories and

The Spectator

A healthy crunch

It seems the silly season is extending to financial markets. I have yet to hear a convincing explanation about how the credit crunch is supposed to be such a disaster for the companies quoted in London and New York – yes, its bad news for American homeowners and a few of the more speculative private equity deals. But we need these credit squeezes to make sure we don’t repeat the mistake of Asia in 1998 and have asset prices pumped up to ridiculous levels by cheap debt. Isn’t this the kind of weeding we need in a healthy stock market? And as Lombard Street research powerfully argues here stock markets

Thursday

Sarah Standing

The security charade

Going to Calais from Dover this morning on the Eurotunnel was a master class in the ineptitude and pointlessness of security. As my car approached Passport Control I handed over my passport. My girlfriend was talking on her mobile whilst rummaging in her handbag and my 17 year old daughter was sleeping like a corpse in the back seat. After a cursory glance at my passport we were waved through. I honestly don’t think the officer on duty even noticed there was someone in the back-seat. My girlfriend still hadn’t found her passport by the time we drove the car onto the train. Every carriage is festooned with posters of

The Spectator

What Bush almost said about Iraq

George W. Bush’s speech in May 2003 declaring major combat operations in Iraq over while a banner behind him proclaimed “mission accomplished” was, with the benefit of hindsight, unfortunate at best. (Even at the time it was clear that the fighter pilot-style entrance was a little excessive.) But Bush’s words could have been so much worse. Apparently, his chief speechwriter had drafted the following for him: “The sirens of Baghdad are quiet. The desert has returned to silence. The Battle of Iraq is over, and the United States and our allies have prevailed.” One dreads to think how these words would have been hung round Bush, and every other Iraq

The Spectator

Are diversity and solidarity compatible?

Robert Putnam’s new work on diversity is sure to set the cat amongst the pigeons. The Boston Globe summarises the findings of The Bowling Alone author thus: “the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings.” This research bolsters the argument that David Goodhart made a few years back about the tensions between ever-growing diversity and the welfare state. But I suspect that diversity is not actually at the root of

The Spectator

Look who’s coming to dinner

The Bush clan will be gathering in their New England retreat this weekend and they will be joined, as Irwin Stelzer hinted they would be, by Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also holidaying in New England. Sarkozy is pulling off the opposite trick to Gordon Brown. While Brown has distanced himself stylistically from Bush but not substantively, Sarkozy is playing buddy buddy without changing anything other than the atmospherics of French policy towards America. Sarkozy has carried this off with even more élan than Brown. It is amazing to find the same people who used to think that France was a dirty word now praising its president and holding him up as

The Spectator

The Iranians in Iraq

Do watch the opening segment from yesterday’s edition of Newsnight on what the Iranians are up to in southern Iraq. It gives you a very good idea of what the Iranian game plan is and how they plan to benefit from a British withdrawal. Even if Newsnight did rather spoil it by then having John Bolton debate Denis Kucinich to give us the US point of view, which is a little bit like having Bill Cash and John McDonnell square off on British politics–entertaining but not particulalry enlightening.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Hold The Jaws Remake

It is safe to go back in the water in Cornwall. It turns out that the the great white shark that was supposedly seen off Newquay was actually photographed in South Africa by a Cornish nightclub bouncer who sent the photos into the papers claiming he had snapped them off the Cornish coast as a bit of a laugh.

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Barry Bonds Passes Hank Aaron

Even political bloggers and policy wonkers seem to feel the need to write something about Barry Lamar Bonds. Matt Yglesias says he must be the best ever; Brian Beutler – being a self-respecting Dodgers fan – must and does decline to endorse that opinion; Megan McArdle is infuriatingly non-commital while Dan Drezner reminds one that Tom Glavine should receive more respect for winning his 300th game (though of course the “wins” statistic is one of the most misleading and useless in all baseball; this is the only explanation for its continued existence) Clearly this is one of those situations that can only be judged by a foreigner. That being the

The Spectator

Obama hits Hillary over Iraq

The contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is entering a decisive phase. The first primary is now only five months away and Hillary retains a commanding national lead, even if things are closer in the early states. So Obama needs to start taking chunks out of Hillary’s numbers soon if he is not going to fade away. This exchange between the two front runners and Chris Dodd, another Senator running for president, at last night’s debate shows how the battle lines are being drawn. Note how hard Obama hits Hillary over her Iraq vote and the reaction of the crowd, albeit one from Obama’s home state of Illinois, when Hillary

The Spectator

The 2008 version of the Olympic Spirit

A small, but telling, example of the nature of the regime that will be hosting the 2008 Olympics comes in James Fallows’s latest missive from China. “CNN International began its report talking about what is obviously the main deal-breaking threat to the Olympics: the air. The correspondent had gotten far enough into the story to say, “Some foreign athletes fear…” and then the screen went blank for the next two minutes or so.” Do also take a look at these fantastic photos that show just how bad the pollution in Beijing really is. It will be a wonder if they get through the games without the poor air quality disrupting

The Spectator

When discrimination is good

Thank God for the Act of Settlement (1701). It keeps us focused. In the past week newspapers have been focusing on poor Peter Phillips, tenth in line to the throne, who is engaged to Autumn Kelly, a Canadian Catholic. If she does not abandon her religion, he will have to renounce his right to succeed — or call the wedding off.  That’s the deal with the Act of Settlement — the Supreme Governor of the Church of England may not be married to a Roman Catholic — and RCs are said to be very cross. In the words of the Times’s excitable Ruth Gledhill, the Act ‘has for centuries been

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What’s wrong with the right

Over at Conservative Home, Peter Franklin has written a hard-hitting piece setting out some ‘home truths for the right.’ He accuses various bits of it of being self-indulgent, hypocritical and living in the past amongst other things. I wouldn’t agree with everything he says, but it is well worth a read.