Society

Tuesday

The Spectator

Sierra Leone’s tragedy

I was depressed to learn yesterday that nineteen people died on a Paramount-operated helicopter in Sierra Leone on Sunday night. They had been travelling to Lunghi airport from Freetown after a football game. Unlike in Europe, where it is usually rich businessmen and football club chairmen who travel back after matches on helicopters, in Sierra Leone everyone has to do it. Lunghi is situated just over the bay from Freetown, so your options are: a car, which can take over six hours on appalling roads; a ferry, which can take longer, with few lifejackets or lifeboats; or the helicopter, which should take about seven minutes. (If Tony Blair had felt

Sarah Standing

Not so glorious food

I’ve just returned from the much-anticipated opening of the Wholefoods emporium on Kensington High Street feeling strangely deflated and disappointed. Having shopped extensively at Wholefoods in America,  (developing an almost unhealthy obsession with the food and exciting ethos contained within the vast stores) , I fully expected to become an immediate convert. Shopping at Wholefoods USA is like attending a mass orgy. It’s culinary porn: addictive, exciting and leaves one with an insatiable appetite for more. Last nights inaugural bash was about as inspiring as attending a party to celebrate the opening of an ( eco-friendly, bio-degradable, ethically-sourced) envelope. Half the shelves were devoid of food – just empty boxes

Monday

The Spectator

Some mothers do ‘ave ’em

You would have thought that Lindsey Lohan’s mum would be a little suspicious of the whole showbiz tread mill what with her daughter checking into rehab for a month. But no, she’s in talks to put her two younger children—aged 11 and 14—on a reality show in which she’ll try and turn them into tabloid fodder, or depending on your point of view young starlets with a great future ahead of them. Also in celebrity land, one has to love the fact that the LAPD mug shot of Paris Hilton looks like a typical modelling shot. For the next 23 days, the outside world will be a Hilton-free-zone. Enjoy this

The Spectator

No go with the logo

I am a big fan of the London Olympics but I am not a fan of their new logo. It looks like one of the puzzles from the Krypton Factor c.1977 or a very bad local authority advert for a Festival of Fitness. Apparently it is meant to appeal to the “Google Generation”. Dear me, no.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How long do we have to stay in Iraq?

This New York Times report on the progress of the surge is sobering reading. Despite the current push, two-thirds of Baghdad’s neighbourhoods remain outside of the control of US forces. But contrary to the way that these stories feed into the political process, this is not actually an argument for leaving. Indeed, until things improve you can’t contemplate withdrawing unless you’re prepared to accept genocidal violence. Recently the director of the Iraq Study Group reversed his position on whether the US and Britain could withdraw in 2008 and now argues that you’ve got to be in Iraq at roughly current levels for at least five years. Here’s what he told CBS

Sunday

The Spectator

Name that job

Following the Coffee House debate a few days back on the lunacy of referring to “gangs” as “groups”, I was delighted by the revelation in today’s Mail on Sunday that an Islington primary school has decided that the headmaster should now be called the “lead learner”. What would Thomas Arnold have made of that redesignation, I wonder? And why stop there? Let’s call surgeons “health helpers” and psychiatrists “brain buddies”. Prison warders should be “incarceration facilitators”, while police officers might feel more comfortable re-titled “liaison workers with the criminal community”. And Stephen Hawking would surely be less forbidding if he were called an “atomic aide”, just there to help out

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Gordon and the mandarins

This piece by the investigative journalist Tom Bower on Gordon Brown’s relationship with the civil service is well worth a click. According to Bower’s assessment of Brown’s record at the Treasury, there’s little chance that Brown will restore spin-free government.

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 2 June 2007

Q. I have had a boyfriend, of whom I am very fond, for some time now. There is, however, one slight problem. On special occasions when he comes to visit my family, he always dons his best pair of shoes of which he is extremely proud. Unfortunately these are not of the gentlemanly variety. They are of a particularly common style and colour and would perhaps better appeal to a Sicilian waiter out on a Sunday jaunt. I thought this would be a matter of little impediment but my boyfriend only has to enter the room for the eyes of all my family to become inexorably transfixed on his shoes.

Taki

Mea culpa

The mother of my children rang me from Deauville and for probably the first time in her life asked me to retract something I had written. It was about Pal Sarkozy’s wife, Christine de Ganay, whom I described last week as the worst of a bad bunch. Well, Alexandra does have a point. I mixed up the cad’s wives. The poor de Ganey woman was left penniless with two young children by our pal Pal — and he is still very much with us as I saw a picture of him when his son was crowned at the Elysée. I simply mixed up his various wives and women and chose

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 2 June 2007

Major achievements Sir: I enjoyed and applauded Matthew Parris’s piece (Another voice, 26 May). It is indeed time that Sir John Major’s legacy was recognised and that he be remembered for those two acts that will leave what I hope will be an indelible mark on our daily life. Having been involved with cultural institutions that have been wholly renewed with Lottery money, I can only hope that its introduction will be remembered as his great contribution to this country. Let us fervently hope that this administration’s raid for the Olympics is resisted with maximum force by the current trustees to allow it to continue its remarkable work. Also let

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 2 June 2007

MONDAY Jed away for three weeks on horseback safari in Botswana and nobody knows who’s in charge. Nigel says it’s The Three Georges, Poppy reckons it’s Mr Maude, Wonky Tom says we ought to ring Sam — she’s bound to know what to do (‘All right, my darlin’, getcha notebook out…’). We will have to muddle on. Tom and I are doing a Grammar Schools Rebels stock-take — we estimate it’s 98 per cent of MPs and peers, including all of front bench, plus entire voluntary party. Personally, I feel this is going to make it difficult to draw a line under things by sacking Mr Brady. Last thing Jed

Bryan Forbes

Diary – 2 June 2007

I don’t keep a diary any more, having decided that my past efforts contained too much that was either libellous or trite. However, leafing through a collection of oldies this week I noted one pertinent item, namely that when the National Insurance scheme was launched in July 1948, Bevan’s vision was greeted with mixed feelings by doctors and sections of the public, especially those he had designated as vermin. A sum of 4s 11d was docked from wage packets, of which only 81/2d went to the Health Service. In nine months, costs had already spiralled an extra £50 million from the original estimate of £176 million, prompting the BMA to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A tricky initial

We all know a friend with an embarrassing second initial but Barack Obama’s H is particularly problematic. Hussein isn’t the pollster approved middle name for a US presidential candidate but amazingly 57% of the electorate think that this will be a problem for him in the campaign, that’s 13% percentage points more than the number who fret about the quasi-dynastic nature of a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton succession. This and many other fascinating polling numbers here, thanks to the Politico.

Tim Walker

‘I enjoy being an ousider’

At the Prince of Wales’s 50th birthday party at Buckingham Palace, Sir Geoffrey Cass, who was then the chairman of the Royal Shakespeare Company, presented Antony Sher to the Queen. ‘He is one of our leading actors, ma’am,’ Sir Geoffrey whispered into her ear. Her Majesty frowned, paused for a very long time and finally said, ‘Oh, are you?’ A string of words, mercifully unuttered, formed in Sher’s head. ‘No, of course not, Your Majesty, you’ve seen through me. I’m just a little gay Yid from somewhere called Sea Point on the other side of the world. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know why I am. I am an

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A VC won’t get you into Britain

Rifleman Tulbahadur Pun then seized the Bren gun, and firing from the hip as he went, continued the charge on this heavily bunkered position alone, in the face of the most shattering concentration of automatic fire, directed straight at him…. Despite …overwhelming odds, he reached the Red House and closed with the Japanese occupants. He killed three and put five more to flight and captured two light machineguns and much ammunition. He then gave accurate supporting fire from the bunker to the remainder of his platoon which enabled them to reach their objective.His outstanding courage and superb gallantry in the face of odds which meant almost certain death were most

Theodore Dalrymple

Global Warning

Not hell, but drunkenness, is other people. This insight was vouchsafed me in the London Underground the other evening. I had just passed a notice from the Mayor of London warning passengers to be careful after a few drinks. In the previous year, it said, two people had been killed and hundreds injured after a few drinks. I myself had had what I would call a few drinks, but I do not think I was in much danger. What the Mayor meant by a few drinks, of course, was the appalling uncontrolled drunkenness of the shameless young adults of all classes who so disfigure our capital city, many of whom

Paul Johnson

The young generation prefers to face life with their gloves off

I studied with interest the recent photo of Prince William and Prince Harry attending a military occasion in mufti. For officers in the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry, the sartorial drill is, or used to be, strict. Here is my report on the two young men. Bowlers: all right but nothing spectacular. Harry’s better than William’s. Indeed, the latter’s, worn a bit fore and after, might have inspired his great-great-grandfather’s scathing comment: ‘Hello, William, goin’ rattin’?’ Dark suits: oh dear, and no weskits so far as I can see. Who’s your tailor, William? Oh yes? Change him. Tightly rolled umbrellas: just passable. Shoes: well, it’s a democratic age. But

Stephen Romer

No Interruptions

I cannot wholly decideabout my father’s resolve not to speak or seek out textsor make arrangements except perhaps to the pillowand the blankets. Was it for him, or for us,or was he ‘in denial’ when he preferred to drift and dozeto music or ambient conversation as if some unusual actwould make the thing too real? That adherence to routine,The Times and the radio, was it because the stream of timeremained too precious to interruptearly, as when he waited for the concert toendbefore unfolding himself from thecar?

Aidan Hartley

Flying high | 2 June 2007

Kenya I have hated flying since 1989, when I was in a Boeing 737 that crashed into an Ethiopian mountain, lost its wings and burst into flames. Surviving that one was followed by years of pre-check-in heavy drinking. As if that were not enough, I now suffer this wrenching guilt about all the carbon I emit on my frequent long-haul flights. And my recent journey home from Mongolia to Africa was a 48-hour nightmare. I felt like an astronaut. I departed Ulan Bator loaded with souvenirs: a horn and sinew bow with a 40-lb pull and six arrows, cashmere and camel hair, pebbles from the Gobi desert and a very

Simon Hoggart

Spectator Mini-Bar Offer | 2 June 2007

Fashions in wine change, like everything else, so it was inevitable that when New World wines swept all before them, Europe would learn to follow the trend. Which is why in southern France, northern Spain and northern Italy these days you find much more highly flavoured wines — ‘fruit bombs’, some cynics call them — though often still showing some of the strength and backbone that comes with a less evenly sunny climate. In the past, the subtlety could be more important than the flavour; now there’s a better balance. And in turn the New World has copied that. These wines, from Graham Mitchell Vintners, who specialise in high-class wines