Society

Saturday

Frank Keating

Big hits

Rugby’s World Cup has been surprisingly engaging — hooray for the gallant grandeur of England, France and the other small-fry nations! It has been salutary for the Celts, however, with Wales and Ireland given such a contemptuous bums’ rush that each had to watch last weekend’s quarter-finals on television back in their own homes and behind closed curtains. If their self-esteem is in shock, it’s nothing to the severe clattering their bodies had to endure. Mind you, that goes, with knobs on, for the surviving teams still scrapping to contest next week’s final, for any rugby pitch is now a major crash site — bell-clanging ambulances, paramedics and all. The

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Laws that constrain free speech bring out the childish bigot in me

There was a strange non sequitur in Jack Straw’s latest policy announcement. The Justice Secretary revealed that inciting hatred of homosexuals would soon be a crime punishable by seven years in prison. And justifying the legislation, he said this: ‘It is a measure of how far we have come as a society in the last ten years that we are now appalled by hatred and invective directed at people on the basis of their sexuality. It is time for the law to recognise this.’ The logic of this quite defeats me. It seems to be saying that because homosexuals are no longer loathed or despised, it should be against the

Peter Eyre

The ideal romantic partner

Before embarking on Julie Kavanagh’s magnificent Nureyev, I had recently the pleasure of reading Richard Buckle’s The Adventures of a Ballet Critic. This passionate and witty memoir (a book so obsessively driven by the author’s love of dance, I defy anyone to read it and not be intoxicated by this love) gives a wonderfully vivid picture of the English ballet scene after the war. The main characters featured among the dramatis personae include Fred (Ashton), Billy (Chappell), Bobby (Helpmann), Margot (Fonteyn), and Madam (Ninette de Valois). You get the feeling this rather cosy and oh-so-naughty group with their private jokes and schoolgirly tiffs could be amusingly transformed into the comedic

Edward Norman

The withdrawal of God

Here is a book which the theological establishment will doubtless fall upon as an obese child might reach for a packet of crisps. Not that they will understand much of it: for this is a universal explanation of things, written from a philosophical perspective, and which, despite the homely illustrations to which philosophical writers are sometimes given, is densely composed and at times difficult to follow. It is also nearly 1,000 pages of fine print. Yet endurance is rewarded; this is a distinguished work both of scholarship and of understanding, by an academic from McGill University of international reputation. The difficulty in following the arguments is not due to lack

Edward Skidelsky

A march that has lost momentum

‘Do not judge a book by its cover’ is not a dictum that applies in the present case. Towards the Light: The Story of the Struggle for Liberty and Rights that Made the Modern West by Mr A. C. Grayling, Printed in the year 2007, sets us up for a rollicking defence of Freedom and Enlightenment in the style of Tom Paine or William Godwin. And that is exactly what we get. This is the story of modern Europe as told by a 19th-century liberal secularist, updated but not fundamentally rethought. Beginning with the horrors of the Spanish inquisition, it moves on to liberators of the mind such as Galileo,

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

If Al Gore really wants to stop Hillary this is what he’ll do

The dream scenario for the Gore supporters who’ve kept the faith was that Al would pick up the Nobel, return to national acclaim and a draft Gore movement and then—like a modern day Cincinnatus—reluctantly return to public life for the good of the Republic. I’ve always been rather sceptical about this scenario. Gore still has many of the political weaknesses that so bedevilled his 2000 run for the presidency and if he gets in the race he splits the anti-Hillary vote. Also many doubt whether he has the stomach for the fight that would follow. But it is almost certain that Gore would still like to stop Hillary. To paraphrase

Lucy Vickery

Going for a song | 12 October 2007

Twenty years ago when I worked at Our Price Records the thing we shop assistants dreaded most were customers who would march up to the counter and announce that they’d heard this song on the radio by [insert artist’s name] before launching into a toe-curling rendition which we were expected to identify. Today’s Virgin Megastore employees are presumably spared such agonising encounters thanks to Web 2.0, which has spawned countless resources for tracking down a snippet of music that has tickled your fancy. My favourite is foxytunes.com which allows you to search for an artist and brings together, on a single page, relevant elements from all corners of the web:

Philip Hensher

A worthy winner

Most of the media seemed determined to turn Doris Lessing into a sweet old lady who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, as it were, in a fit of absence of mind. Almost all of them said, on no evidence at all, that she’d been “shopping” at the time of the announcement. She has never been one to waste anyone’s time, least of all her own, and was absolutely clear about this prize; she’d won every other literary prize by now, she said, so she might as well have this one. As indeed she might. When you start your literary career, nearly sixty years ago, by writing an absolutely

Matthew Dancona

From Oscar to Nobel

I think I am right that Al Gore and George Bernard Shaw are the only two people ever to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. Can Coffee Housers confirm this?

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Who remembers the Armenians?

I’d been quietly, if feebly, sympathetic towards some of the realpolitik concerns about the forthcoming Congressional vote on recognising the Armenian genocide. Then the Washington Post came out fighting. Apparently the resolution is “Worse than Irrelevant” The Post chuntered that Congressman Adam Schiff, the driving force behind the resolution thanks to the vociferous lobbying of US-Armenians in his California district (mere parochialism according to the Post because of course it’s stupid to listen to one’s constituents…) is up to no good. Worse still, the paper sneered: How many House members can be expected to carefully weigh Mr. Schiff’s one-sided “findings” about long-ago events in Anatolia? Apparently given: the high risk

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Blood Sports

Toby set tongues wagging with his post about whether David Cameron was Muhammed Ali to Gordon Brown’s George Foreman. (Do see Clive’s post on why Gordon is really Sonny Liston) So, here–at Toby’s suggestion–is yesterday’s encounter between Cameron and Brown and the combination of punches from the Rumble in the Jungle that Toby thought that Cameron threw the verbal equivalent of yesterday. Which was more brutal?

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What Darling really did with Inheritance Tax

I was too harsh on the Treasury. I derided their inheritance tax con, saying it may fool TV news but would be shredded by the press. This was not the case. Most newspapers, having two hours to digest the whole budget, jumped the wrong way on IHT, reporting that the threshold was doubled to £600,000. So mission accomplished: the public has been successfully misled. How so? I pass you over to a Coffee Houser, DaveyB, who is an inheritance tax specialist. He left a comment earlier on, and has kindly agreed to expand it. I suspect you may not read this in the press… Now, some of you may think:

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Lady Wasn’t For Turning (Thank God).

Tyler Cowen takes a look at Paul Krugman’s book and says Krugman isn’t prepared to think broadly on the question of why conservatism triumphed in the 1980s: Conservatism rose in the 1980s in large part because the mid to late 1970s were such an economic mess and because American had lost so much relative status internationally.  Krugman won’t face up to that; instead he blames the Republican manipulation of “the race card,” even though at the time racial tensions arguably were lower than ever before.  Of course in a relatively close election any single factor can be called decisive but I found this discussion well below the standards of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Get ready for a row over Europe

After being pummelled at PMQs today, the last thing Gordon Brown wants is an escalation of the row over the so-called EU Reform Treaty, what used to be called the constitution, and Labour’s broken promise to hold a referendum on it. But that’s what he is going to get. During an appearance in front of the Foreign Affairs select committee today, David Miliband promised to produce a letter setting out precisely where Britain’s red lines are protected. This will set off a row over whether these protections are worth the paper they’re written on and highlight just how similar the new treaty is to the old constitution. So, Brown will

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown disappoints his own supporters while Cameron cheers his

Columns by two of Britain’s most astute political commentators will not improve Gordon Brown’s mood this morning. In The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland bemoans how Brown doesn’t get the vision thing. He starts by saying, “For those who held high hopes for the premiership of Gordon Brown, who endured the long wait through the Blair years nurturing the belief that something better beckoned, these are testing times”. Freedland goes onto berate Brown’s team for being more interested in politicking than governing and for a conference speech that was long on populist measures but short on argument. He also makes the crucial point that Brown’s stumble has reinvigorated his internal critics: all those

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Reasons to elect Mitt Romney, cont…

Nonetheless, have a gander and tell me if Mitt Romney looks presidential in this clip? It’s not just the rather unfortunate – from Romney’s point of view that is, since it makes him seem a heartless jackass – encounter with a medical marijuana activist (who is, it should be said, commendably restrained and temperate), it’s the whole thing: the ghastly, aw-shucks-thanks-for-coming-out-on-the-weekend false modesty, the terrible, cliched waffling about how the kids are “the future” and eradication-of-freedom agenda everyone else in the world is hell-bent upon pursuing. Now, of course it is ghastly to be subjected to the endless miseries and humiliations of the campaign trail. But since it requires such

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Ugly American Abroad: Animal Version

DT Max had an entertaining piece in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday, exploring the Great British Squirrel Wars. Short story: its the worst sort of Squirrel Imperialism. American greys are driving out the smaller, but cuter, British red. Sadly the pair cannot coexist and it is always the red that succumbs – often killed by the mysterious Squirrelpox carried by the greys to which the American interlopers are irritatingly immune. The greys, already rampant across most of England are now targetting the Lake District and Southern Scotland. Something must be done! Happily the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body is on the case. I speak, of course, of the House

Rachel Johnson

Cracking Stuff

This morning’s Guardian hailed the fresh brilliance of the new Unilever Turbine Hall project at Tate Modern by Doris Salcedo.  It shows: “a laudable unwillingness to compromise, wanting to make a work about absolute indifference, and to address desolation and destitution…Shibboleth begins with a hairline crack in the concrete floor by the entrance. As insignificant as a flaw in a teacup, as telling as the build-up scenes of a disaster movie, the crack soon widens and deepens, a jagged crevasse making its jagged way the length of the Turbine Hall, 167 metres away, jabbing a fork of lightning and deepening as it goes. You can never quite see the bottom

Rachel Johnson

INSERT A HEADLINE

This morning’s Guardian hailed the fresh brilliance of the new Unilever Turbine Hall project at Tate Modern by Doris Salcedo. It shows “a laudable unwillingness to compromise, wanting to make a work about absolute indifference, and to address desolation and destitution…Shibboleth begins with a hairline crack in the concrete floor by the entrance. As insignificant as a flaw in a teacup, as telling as the build-up scenes of a disaster movie, the crack soon widens and deepens, a jagged crevasse making its jagged way the length of the Turbine Hall, 167 metres away, jabbing a fork of lightning and deepening as it goes. You can never quite see the bottom

The Spectator

The inheritance tax con

By Fraser Nelson Here’s the weasel. The Inheritance Tax “reduction” is a canard. Anyone with financial acumen (or a lawyer) will not benefit at all. KPMG have just been on the phone explaining it all to me and explain it here. “This change, although likely to grab headlines, is in practice only giving to most people what they already have,” says Carolyn Steppler, its tax director. Why? At present, couples can take out a zero-rate Discretionary Trust which in practise pools their inheritance tax allowances. Only those who have not availed themselves of this would be helped by today’s announcement. Yet Brown estimates this will cost him £1.4 billion –