Society

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 4 August 2007

After al-Qa’eda’s no. 2 said that Britain would be attacked for knighting Salman Rushdie, Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Saanei chipped in on Sky News: ‘When your Queen awards Salman Rushdie and turns him into a knight, what do you expect? This is a blasphemy.’ After al-Qa’eda’s no. 2 said that Britain would be attacked for knighting Salman Rushdie, Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Saanei chipped in on Sky News: ‘When your Queen awards Salman Rushdie and turns him into a knight, what do you expect? This is a blasphemy.’ I’m not sure that the significance of knighthoods is better understood in Iran than the title ayatollah is in Britain. This Grand Ayatollah likes

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 4 August 2007

Monday I can’t take much more of this. Even Daddy says I need a holiday and our family motto is ‘Don’t Make a Fuss’ (it sounds better in Latin). It’s just unbearable, non-stop horridness. Every time we think we’ve got on top of it another Dipwig (Deeply Irrelevant Person With Grudge) comes crawling out of the woodwork to have a go at poor Dave. I wouldn’t mind but they’re all complete losers. At least DD has come out fighting for us. He’s on a major military discipline metaphor high. He addressed the morning strategy meeting and it was really exciting. Lot of talk about something called the Maginot Line and

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 4 August 2007

Enoch Powell once said to me, ‘I love the humbug of the English. I worship it. But I reserve the right from time to time to point it out.’ Enoch Powell once said to me, ‘I love the humbug of the English. I worship it. But I reserve the right from time to time to point it out.’ I thought of this last week when I took part in Radio 4’s Any Questions?, set up in the nave of Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire. The programme always has a ‘warm-up’ question before it goes live, and this time it was something to do with travel. Jonathan Dimbleby, the chairman, then asked the

Dom Joly

Diary – 4 August 2007

I’m in Canada, three hours north of Toronto, up in the great wilderness. I’m in Canada, three hours north of Toronto, up in the great wilderness. Well, wilderness with lattes if I’m being totally honest. I’m on Lake Joe, one of the three Muskoka lakes that are a little bit to Toronto as are the Hamptons to Manhattan. I’m ‘cottaging’, which always sounds a tad George Michael until you hastily explain that everything on a lake in Ontario is termed a ‘cottage’, from humble log cabins to huge Kennedy-like complexes. It’s worse in Quebec where they call them ‘chateaux’ whatever the size — very nouveau, very French. For my sins

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 04 August 2007

Apparently Gordon is planning another tax raid on savings, this time life-insurance companies which have ‘too much’ money in reserve against rainy days. After his last pension raid, this will not be a popular move. The Romans can help him solve the problem. Apparently Gordon is planning another tax raid on savings, this time life-insurance companies which have ‘too much’ money in reserve against rainy days. After his last pension raid, this will not be a popular move. The Romans can help him solve the problem. Roman finances under the emperors had two destinations: the Aerarium and the Fiscus. Into the Aerarium went the revenues from empire and from established

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Reasons for Mr Cameron to be cheerful

Gordon Brown will not holiday abroad this summer. Not for him the allure of a Tuscan palace or the sunbeds of Sharm el-Sheikh. The Prime Minister has instead created perfect happiness inside his home in Fife: a room wired up to the 10 Downing Street computer system where he can monitor the government he now controls. He intends to do nothing else this month, save for a quick visit to the south coast. Besides, he already seems well on his way to his main summer destination — the implosion of the Conservative party. In the space of a few weeks the opinion polls have turned around, and Labour has a

Frank Keating

Snap shots

Always keen to buff up its romantic aura, Lord’s this summer inaugurated a ‘tradition’ by nominating a different cricketing notable to toll the umpires’ bell before each day’s play. Always keen to buff up its romantic aura, Lord’s this summer inaugurated a ‘tradition’ by nominating a different cricketing notable to toll the umpires’ bell before each day’s play. At last week’s Test an old friend did the honours, fittingly because ace snapper Patrick Eagar was covering his 300th Test, an astonishing mark: OK, commentator Richie Benaud has covered (or played in) more than 500 Tests, and Times eminence Johnny Woodcock over 400, but for a freelance photographer paying his own way,

Lucy Vickery

Ode worthy

When I set this assignment I was thinking of Pablo Neruda and his odes to subjects as apparently mundane as a lemon, a tomato and ‘a large tuna in the market’.You didn’t go in for food, but animals featured strongly in the entry, as did buildings — Sixties architecture, in particular. Some strayed into unsavoury territory, musing on pubic hair and other unmentionables. Martin Parker made me smile with his meditation on the marvels of the she-baboon’s bum, which might not be everybody’s cup of tea but is clearly a thing of beauty to the amorous male of the species: ‘So, here’s to the she-baboon’s Technicolor bum,/ and its promise

Stephen Romer

Littlestone Days

Littlestone Days After the golf, the bridge and the cocktails,after the sets of tenniswith Noël Coward and the Maughamslooking on from the balcony,‘Ah, the dear boys!’ after sherry and theatricals,the dinner-dances and the outings,after charades and canastaand evenings with the gramophone, you alone of them would turn your backand cycle into the wind, then strideyour giant stride across that sacred name,Dungeness, hiss of a withdrawing seaacross the shingle, the bitter waters,exulting, sacred music perpetuallyon your tongueas you trudged to the Pointsobbing your pent-up grief-and-happiness into the wind, for God’s abundant mercies,in giving you such friends,and this wilderness to walk alone in.That is how I would greet you — had Ithe

Stephen Pollard

Why Europe may soon split along religious lines

Stephen Pollard says that if embryonic stem cell research is banned in some parts of Europe — as it might be under the new EU treaty — old hostilities will resurface I wouldn’t care to estimate how many words have been written so far on the draft EU reform treaty. If and when it becomes a legal document, the English language will have been near exhausted for new terms to express the fundamental theme of almost every comment — that it is the old constitution in another guise. But for all the words and all the assertions, almost everyone has ignored one of the most important elements of the treaty

Amelia Torode

Wired, retired and so hip it hurts

Oldies have taken to the digital age, says Amelia Torode, and so have their grandchildren. It’s the middle-aged professionals who fear and resent it Almost 200 years ago a grassroots movement began in Nottinghamshire close to Sherwood Forest — the Luddite movement. The Luddites wreaked havoc for a short but intense period of time in a vain attempt to hold back the tides of technological change. I’ve been thinking a lot about their 21st-century equivalents — the new Digital Luddites. It’s easy to assume that the older a person grows, the more reactionary they become; however, something interesting is taking place in digital space which is discounting that theory. The

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

I don’t mean to sneer, but which is more important: equality or inclusion?

Like a good many of you, I imagine, I was worried that hosting the 2012 Olympic Games in London might send out the wrong sort of message, especially to our young people. The games have traditionally been an appallingly elitist and singularly competitive tournament of a somewhat exclusive nature. Certain people, unfairly selected on the shallow basis of their physical prowess, run, jump and throw things and the people who do best are rewarded while those who do poorly are labelled failures. This is regrettably true even of the more recent Paralympic Games, where the noble aspiration of making crippled people feel valued is undermined by the process of forcing

Paul Johnson

Thinking of becoming a cartoonist in today’s Britain? Think again

The cartoonist Vicky (Victor Weisz, 1913–66) fled to London not long after the Reichstag fire, with the Gestapo at his heels. Had he not possessed a Hungarian passport he would never have got away, for as the boy wonder of Berlin political cartooning in the 12 Uhr Blatt, he had gone for Hitler as far back as 1928, and was a marked man. The cartoonist Vicky (Victor Weisz, 1913–66) fled to London not long after the Reichstag fire, with the Gestapo at his heels. Had he not possessed a Hungarian passport he would never have got away, for as the boy wonder of Berlin political cartooning in the 12 Uhr

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Your Friday Galloway

Reason’s Michael Moynihan reminds me that I’ve been remiss in not posting the video of George Galloway pretending to be a cat while appearing on Celebrity Big Brother. There’s no pressing need to post this, beyond reminding oneself just how vile Galloway is. And to think that this is a Member of Parliament… O tempora, o mores indeed:

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Come by! Come by!

Once more across the transatlantic divide, my friends… I’m not sure televised sheepdog trials would ever be likely to become a hit in the United States. This, then, is another difference between the old and new worlds. So it is sad to record the end of an era: Phil Drabble, the long-time presenter of One Man And His Dog has died. As always, we turn to The Daily Telegraph’s obituary to lament – and yet be entertained by – the passing of another (albeit minor) British institution: Phil Drabble, who died on Sunday aged 93, came to fame presenting BBC2’s sheepdog trials programme One Man and His Dog, a series

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Game, set, match to TNR? In a better world maybe…

If you’ve not tired of the “Baghdad Diarist” pseudo-controversy, The New Republic has published a statement defending and, to my mind, confirming the essential accuracy of their story. I doubt even this will be good enough for the hacks and harpies on the loony right, but it ought to satisfy reasonable observers. (Then again, being a pro-TNR type I would say that, wouldn’t I?) Meanwhile, comic relief is provided by the fact that one of the Weekly Standard‘s main sources in their effort to discredit Scott Beauchamp’s story allegedly turns out, according to Media Matters, to have been a former male escort who has appeared in a number of gay

Sarah Standing

Facing up to my new addiction

Today I joined a cult. In a weak moment this morning my 21 year old son “enabled” me to join Face Book. It was 5am and we “clashed”. I was waking up, he was returning from a club. We bonded. I took him out to breakfast at the Wolseley because he was hungry and I was jet-lagged. Result. However neither of my  daughters are talking to me and have effectively blackballed any of their friends from joining my world/network/friends/space. In fact they are barely talking to me. What do I care? I am hooked. After reading Amelia Torode’s feature in this weeks Spectator I worry that at 46 I am

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Forcing the issue

It is good news that the government has finally got round to making certain that forced marriages are illegal. (How on earth it took this long baffles me. It is hard to imagine a more clear cut case of denying someone their rights than forcing them to marry someone against their will). But as Sunny Hundal points out over at Comment is Free, the bill actually does far less than it should—social services can still turn a blind eye while victims can not sue for compensation.  How supposedly good feminists like Harriet Harman are content to sit by while the government is so weak on these issues never ceases to

The Spectator

Very possibly the worst idea from a presidential candidate ever

  Some dumb things are said during every presidential campaign but few statements in campaign history can be as reckless, irresponsible and downright idiotic as Republican Presidential contender Tom Tancredo’s proposal that the United States announce that in response to a nuclear terrorist attack it would nuke Mecca and Medina. Tancredo thinks that this would be an effective deterrent. But  it would actually play straight into the terrorist hands: not only would they have pulled off a spectacular on American soil, but the American response world then thrust the world into a full blown clash of civilisations. I know you can say that Tancredo is about as likely to win