Society

Monday

Nadine Dorries

What I would do if I were Gordon

Everyone is very upbeat this morning, despite the fact that I have yet to speak to anyone who got to bed before three am. There is a real buzz that if Brown does call an election we have everything to fight for; especially if we close the poll gap this week following some good gritty announcements. Brown is supposed to make a statement today on Iraq. If I were him, I would be worried about the fact that Cameron is going to have a blinder of a week, and, as we all know, is going to deliver the speech of his life which will throw raw meat to the electorate

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Blackpool truce holds

All those waiting for the latest instalment in the great grammar schools row are going to have to wait a little longer. The rumours that Graham Brady, the frontbencher who resigned over the issue, had come to an agreement with the leadership not to reopen the row this week have been confirmed by a very mild piece he has written in the Telegraph this morning. After a few paragraphs attacking Labour for its failings on education, Brady turns to grammars schools:  “Everyone knows I don’t see eye-to-eye with the leadership of the Conservative Party over grammar schools. I strongly believe that they are one of the most effective vehicles of social mobility

Sunday

Tamzin Lightwater

Tamzin’s Blackpool report

Hurrah! Finally arrived in Blackpool after only seven hours on train! It was v efficient, only had to change twice, and the engineering works only stopped us for an hour or so. Don’t know what all the fuss is about public transport – seems perfectly fine. DD talked me through all the likely problems with signalling failures and buffet car closures, so we took a nice picnic of smoked salmons and champers and I read another whole chapter of the Gordon Brown biography. V scary. Anyway, who cares about him – now we are going to win again. Only six points behind in the polls! Bit of a struggle making

Nadine Dorries

If the shoe fits

Nadine Dorries, the Tory MP for Mid-Bedfordhshire, will be blogging for Coffee House during conference. Heading for Blackpool. Slammed the boot of the car shut on far more luggage than any woman not obsessed with shoes would normally have, when my BlackBerry warbled with a couple of messages. First message was from my researcher which said “you were quoted by Andrew Pierce in the Telegraph yesterday with a sub heading – very good quote”. The second was from Nick Wood of Media Intelligence Partners. Nick headed up the Conservative Press Office through the Hague, IDS and Howard years. His said, “Just arrived. Are you here yet? Get a move on!”

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What Hezza missed

Great to see Hezza back in the saddle, talking about the plight of British cities. But I’m not sure I agree with his analysis. The main problem, which he did not mention in his speech, is that in Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool and (yes) Blackpool, one in four is claiming out of work benefits. No wonder social decay follows. The answer is to empower people by ending dependency, not empowering inept, spendthrift local authorities.

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 29 September 2007

Thank you for Peter Oborne’s ruthlessly accurate exposé of the Political Class (‘The Establishment is dead’, 15 September). Established truths Sir: Thank you for Peter Oborne’s ruthlessly accurate exposé of the Political Class (‘The Establishment is dead’, 15 September). The collateral damage caused by the killing of the Establishment can be distilled into just five words: the death of independent thought. This seems to apply to the populace as a whole as much as to politicians of all parties.   Ten short years ago Frank Field, an intelligent and thoughtful man, was appointed minister of welfare reform in the Department of Social Security with a mandate from Tony Blair to ‘think the unthinkable’.

Roy Hattersley

Expressions of gratitude

But we have closed the umbrellas over the tables on which we hoped to have tea on warm afternoons. It was a ritual admission that the summer, which never really started, is over. School is back — I can tell by the number of 4X4s outside my house at nine o’clock on a weekday morning — and the wreaths on the war memorial are sufficiently withered to prevent any regrets at their removal in time for new poppies to bloom next Armistice Day. Only the hardiest of walkers are still tramping through the Peak Park and, owing to illness and incapacity, I am not walking at all. The medical problems

Jeremy Clarke

Invisible man

He came aboard at Newton Abbot and sat down opposite without acknowledging me. Mid-fifties. Kempt, but only just. Navy blue, well-worn suit. Plain tie. Once he’d settled himself he looked out of the window and studied the passing sky. I tried to catch his eye. We had a three-hour journey ahead of us and it seemed absurd to share a table for that length of time without as much as an exchange of friendly glances or resigned smiles. But he wasn’t having it. He was looking away deliberately, as if eye-to-eye contact was somehow harmful to him. He studied the sky all the way to Taunton. I watched him and

Taki

Mark of distinction

A letter from Jonathan Guinness, Lord Moyne. It’s about Mark Birley. ‘He was an artist, but a more unusual one than his father. Rather than turning out portraits and still-lives, he decided to turn everything around him into a work of art. So it all had to be perfect. He was as close as any real person could be to Huysman’s Des Esseintes, central figure of A Rebours. Mark, as inventor of muslin round the half-lemon, will with luck be remembered when Polly Toynbee has been forgotten.’ What a good and civilised man Jonathan is. And how correct he is that Mark will be remembered long after the name Polly

Robin Oakley

Bargain hunting

‘Any fool can get a horse fit to run,’ I have been told by many a trainer. ‘It’s getting inside their minds that counts.’ Particularly with slow learners. Newbury’s card last Saturday produced plenty of traditional scenes — a Group winner for Barry Hills, the richest handicap of the day falling to Luca Cumani, a classy animal from Henry Cecil winning after a long injury break. But it also showed us how well they and some other trainers know their charges. Brian Meehan’s Fool’s Wildcat had been pleasing in his home gallops. But his racecourse figures in three attempts read 634. After the EBF Dubai Tennis Championships Maiden Stakes, however,

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 29 September 2007

Q. What is the etiquette regarding bowing or curtseying to Prince and Princess Michael of Kent? Last week I attended the memorial for Isabella Blow in the Guards Chapel. It was a magnificent occasion, but emotionally draining, and I was just collecting myself when suddenly the royal couple passed by, leading the mourners out of the chapel. Had I known they were present at the service, I would have been prepared to follow the lead of others and do the correct thing, but I was in the very back row and looking in the wrong direction so it was too late to do anything at all. I would not wish

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 29 September 2007

I have stumbled across a translation of Shakespeare into English on a website called No Fear Shakespeare. Hamlet’s well-known soliloquy goes: ‘The question is: is it better to be alive or dead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles by simply putting an end to them once and for all?’ The double is is certainly a modern touch. Nobler is a surprising survival, considering how much else was jettisoned. I’m not sure about nasty. If it does not have a babyish tone, then it connotes dirtiness, as in that resolution for ‘When I come

Toby Young Toby Young

Facebook versus MySpace is just how the Web 2.0 world expresses U and non-U

Not long ago, an obscure journal published what must rank as the most controversial essay of the 21st century. No, I’m not talking about ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’, an attack on the influence of the Jewish lobby that appeared in the London Review of Books. I’m referring to ‘Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace’ by Danah Boyd. Ms Boyd is a 29-year-old PhD student in the Sociology Department of the University of California, Berkeley and the reason her essay was so inflammatory is that she dared to raise the spectre of social class in a discussion of social networking sites on the internet. Her conclusions

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 29 September 2007

Its delivery was dull, but don’t puritanically fool yourself that the matter was better than the manner. It offered no new idea and made no attempt to reason with the audience about any of the phenomena in the modern world which might worry us. What is the nature of international Islamist terrorism? What is our foreign policy and what part are our troops playing in it? Why did we have an apparently sudden banking crisis last week? Mr Brown explained nothing about any of these things. Instead, he produced boilerplate faux-conservative phraseology about ‘our island’s story’ and ‘tough new powers’ against crime. He hymned the NHS for having had a

Oscar Humphries

Diary – 29 September 2007

It is unspeakably pretentious and whips some of my more fashion-conscious friends into a frenzy of wild-eyed insecurity. Have they been invited to the right parties? Does everyone else know which parties they chose to avoid? Fashion has no mercy apparently. London Fashion Week seems to have very little to do with fashion. There is a schedule of shows where young and suspiciously young-looking designers display their often unwearable cloths on dysentery-thin models. The Americans and the French don’t take it seriously. It ranks somewhere below Tokyo Fashion Week and above Kazakhstan Fashion Week, which by all accounts was a disaster. I went to the Luella party because Fashion Week

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 29 September 2007

In AD 212, partly to raise tax, Caracalla made citizenship automatic for all free peoples within the empire. But even though many foreigners/barbarians (e.g. Germanic peoples such as Goths, Visigoths and Vandals) settled within the empire to serve in the Roman army (etc.) after that date, we know of very few granted full citizenship. What was going on? The answer lies in Rome’s most brilliant, and certainly influential, invention — a public, structured and codified system of civil law (ius civile). Access to this guarantor of civilised dealings between men was eagerly sought, but it all depended on one’s status. Various disabilities (e.g. being a slave, or a freedman, or guilty

Tamzin Lightwater

Tamzin Lightwater’s conference diary

Sunday: All eyes on the opening ceremony for what I’m sure will be a truly memorable performance by world-renowned professional speechmaker William Hague. Owing to his impressive array of commitments on the premier after-dinner circuit, we don’t get to hear his celebrated humming routine for free too often these days, so book your seats in the hall early for a barnstorming display of one-liners (and something to do with foreign policy). Theresa May introduces ‘an inspiring presentation of our Social Action projects’. Bit of a problem with this one, I’m afraid. You would think candidates in marginal seats might be grateful for the chance to take their minds off leafleting

Paul Johnson

Who’s eating my favourite lizards on Lake Como?

The great thing about taking a holiday every year in the same place — provided it is the right place of course — is that you notice the huge, reassuring continuities, and the minute changes which prove that life, though stable, is at work. This is what I find in early autumn at Lake Como, which I have now been visiting for the best part of two decades. I look at it very intently, and necessarily so, for I paint it in watercolour every day I am there: at least one picture in the morning, and another in the afternoon, sometimes four per day. I have probably done over 200

Allister Heath

Northern Rock: morally hazardous

First we heard about ‘sub-prime mortgages’; then it was ‘collateralised debt obligations’; now it’s the turn of ‘moral hazard’ to appear on the Ten O’Clock News. Jolted out of prosperous complacency by market turmoil, the public has started to care about economics: strange jargon and obscure concepts previously familiar only to investment bankers are going mainstream. The best way to understand moral hazard is to reflect on how taking out insurance changes our behaviour, encouraging us to take greater risks and less care of our possessions. A holidaymaker without travel insurance is more likely to keep an eye on his baggage than one who can claim compensation if it’s lost

Neil Collins

The new senior partner sets out his stall

The trade could only gasp at the figures Charlie Mayfield revealed a fortnight ago. Next week, the new chairman of John Lewis Partnership hopes they’ll be gasping again as he opens 17,000 square feet of food hall at John Lewis in Oxford Street. No, not quite a Waitrose, but something that he claims will be different, the result of ‘co-operation between Waitrose and John Lewis’. If you thought that as sister companies they were on the same side, then you really don’t know how big corporations work. And JLP, as it is inevitably called by its executives, is a big corporation nowadays, with 68,000 employees — oops, sorry, partners —