Society

Saturday

Theodore Dalrymple

Global warning | 18 August 2007

Do I grow cleverer with age, or does the world grow more stupid? Today, for example, I read what a police spokeswoman said after a man on a motorbike had been shot dead on the M40 motorway. The police, she said, were not treating it as a case of road rage; they were treating it as a case of murder. So from now on killing someone who annoys you while you are driving — a pedestrian, shall we say, or an old lady puttering along who holds you up on your way to a supremely important meeting — is not really murder, but an understandable and therefore excusable response to

Patrick Jephson

The real Diana was our future Queen

‘Oh God, not more Diana.’ We’ve all heard it this summer and Di-fatigue is unlikely to be reversed by the official programme of remembrance. The Wembley concert was truly moving in parts, especially the video inserts which recalled Diana at her spontaneous, compassionate best. I’ll admit they reduced me to tears, and not just because here and there I caught glimpses in the background of a younger, slimmer, more idealistic me. Tears may also be shed in the relatively modest surroundings of the Guards Chapel when on Friday 31 August the Princess is remembered by a carefully vetted congregation. Another cocktail of sentiment, though probably of a brand more acceptable

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The curious case of the spy who fell to his death

When a man falls to his death from a balcony, some cynics wonder: was he pushed? When that man happens to be the most infamous spy in the history of the modern Middle East, it’s the first question on everyone’s lips. On 27 June the body of Ashraf Marwan was found on the pavement below his flat in Carlton House Terrace, one of London’s most expensive streets, which overlooks the Mall and St James’s Park. Marwan was an astonishingly well-connected Egyptian, the son-in-law of the late Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president and hero of pan-Arabism, and the consigliere of Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat. After Sadat’s assassination in 1981 he

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The last Tommy says: ‘It was a waste of time’

Harry Patch, 109, recalls his career in Kitchener’s army Two years ago, when he was a mere spring chicken of 106, the last surviving Tommy, Harry Patch, was invited to inspect the Lewis guns at the museum of his old regiment, the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, in Bodmin, Cornwall. To help jog his memory, a young major in his party fumblingly demonstrated how to change the magazine. ‘I said: “Major, you’d have to be quicker than that in action,”’ recalls Harry in his soft Somerset burr. ‘I said: “Here. Give me the Lewis gun and set your watch.” So I took the magazine off and put a new one

Raymond Carr

Warding off the barbarians

Counterpoints: 25 Years of ‘The New Criterion’ on Culture and the Arts edited by Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer The 40 or so reviews and essays in this book celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of the New Criterion. It saw itself as the heir of T. S. Eliot’s Criterion. In 1922 Eliot wrote that his contributors sought to foster ‘a common concern for the highest standards of both thought and expression’. This was to echo Matthew Arnold’s definition of criticism as the disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world and to protect it from the onslaught of philistine barbarians.

Douglas Davis

Bush’s exit strategy: cut and run – but not too far

More than four years after the American-led invasion of Iraq, there are signs that George W. Bush is preparing to call it quits. When the Americans disbanded the Iraqi army in 2003 and left the borders wide open they sowed the seeds of disaster. Neither the ‘coalition of the willing’ nor even the recent ‘surge’ could put Humpty together again. That, at least, is the conclusion I have reached after intensive interviews with senior Iraqi politicians and Western experts for a book that I am writing on the imbroglio. Whatever gloss General Petraeus applies to his report to Washington next month, he is unlikely to be the bearer of good news. Nor, in the run-up to the

Paul Johnson

Not so much the Mad Hatter, more the Mad Scientist now

In this age of creeping censorship ‘mad’ is not a word to be used lightly. It would certainly be unlawful to use it in Kipling’s sense when he refers to frontier tribes being ‘stirred up’ by ‘a mad mullah’. In this age of creeping censorship ‘mad’ is not a word to be used lightly. It would certainly be unlawful to use it in Kipling’s sense when he refers to frontier tribes being ‘stirred up’ by ‘a mad mullah’. I rather think Winston Churchill used it in this sense in his book The Malakand Field Force, but then practically everything the old boy said or wrote in moments of excitement or

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Beckham begins earning his salary (on the pitch)

If you thought David Beckham would be a one day story and then quickly ignored in the US you might want to consider that notice of his first goal for the Los Angeles Galaxy was considered the most important “Breaking News” for a full hour on ESPN last night. Then again, it was a trademark piece of Beckhamite brilliance:

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Rick Santorum’s Wilderness Years

Ever wondered what happened to Rick Santorum after he lost his Senate race in Pennsylvania last year? Fret not, Michael Brendan Dougherty has done the yeoman work of listening to the appalling codswallop Mr Man on Dog is peddling these days. The whole thing is worth reading, but really Mr Santorum’s loony-tunes sing for themselves: For years, James Dobson, the Christian psychologist and popular radio talk-show host has been following Santorum’s efforts on behalf of socially conservative values. They both recently made Time’s list of the 25 most influential evangelicals, a true feat for a Catholic like Santorum. Like many evangelicals, Dobson’s interests now include foreign policy. In May, he

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Why don’t we just abolish the income tax?

Whew! In a bold statement of intent, the Tories said today they “will consider” cutting taxes. Wear them medals with pride, boys. You’ve earned them. Predictably Labour are calling proposals – mere proposals, not policy mark you –  to trim a mere £14bn from government spending a “lurch to the right” that would leave Britain in some kind of mysterious financial “black hole”. Stuff and nonsense, of course, but the people – and much of the media – might just buy it. For more on John Redwood’s plans – such as cutting regulation, offering tax relief on donations to universities and, hurrah!, Lifetime Savings Accounts, see the fine fellows at

The Spectator

McCain: “Life is not 24”

This John McCain interview with John Stewart demonstrates why it would be foolish to dismiss his presidential chances just yet. Watch from about two thirds of the way in and note how clearly—and effectively—McCain separates himself from others in his party on torture. 

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The suffering sub-primes

Now that the Fed has introduced a temporary reduction in interest rates, and my selfish fear has subsided, I’ve become obsessed with the debt-ridden or bankrupt souls that we now know to call sub-primes, because loans they take out are risky or sub-prime. And the more I read about sub-primes, the sorrier I feel for them and the more it seems that our financial system relies on treating them like livestock – to be fattened up, encouraged to consume, then sacrificed when the time is right. Poor sub-primes, sitting in their sub-prime trailers, watching sub-prime, prime time TV. All the Fed has to do is lower interest rates, as Alan

The Spectator

At last, some good news for Bush

The news that Jenna Bush, the president’s daughter, is engaged and likely to get married long before the family leaves the White House raises some delicious questions of both protocol and politics. The guest-list is sure to be pored over for its meaning and given the Bush family’s tendency to mix the political and the personal—at the last Bush family wedding the Bush twins toasted their cousin George P. Bush and his bride as the 47th president and his first lady—we can be sure that it will make for interesting reading. Look out for which world leaders make the cut, whether Tony gets an invite or not, which members of

The Spectator

Why there’s little difference between Hillary and Rudy

It’s not possible to be neutral about Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York and now a Republican presidential candidate. You either love him or hate him. The novelist Kevin Baker does not love him. In the August issue of Harper’s Baker gives Giuliani a pretty thorough hiding, in a cover piece (subscription required) headed A FATE WORSE THAN BUSH. The opening sentence sets the tone: “Rudolph Giuliani has, by far, the most dubious known personal history of any major presidential candidate in US history, what with his three marriages, and his open affairs and his almost total estrangement from his grown children, not to mention the startling frequency with

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Dumb Britain

The Assault on Reason continues: A-Level results are out today in the UK and, amazingly, our kids is learning even betterer – more than one in four papers is now given an “A”, ensuring, natch, that everyone can have a prize. 96.9% of papers received a passing grade. The always excellent Burning Our Money has been on the case for some time. This handy chart shows just how much the system has been corrupted: on average, pupils are being marked two grades more charitably than was the case 15 years ago: NB: the rot really sets in after 1992 which, happily, was the year I took my A-Levels. This affords

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Biden’s son to serve in Iraq

From the AP: The son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is preparing for deployment to Iraq next year. Capt. Beau Biden, a Judge Advocate General in the Delaware National Guard and the state’s attorney general, is part of the 261st Signal Brigade that has been told to prepare for duty in Iraq in 2008. They have not been given a date of deployment yet. “I don’t want him going,” Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said from the campaign trail Wednesday, according to a report on Radio Iowa. “But I tell you what, I don’t want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years and so how we leave

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

We should take lessons from the Swedes in education

Greetings from Sweden, where the newspapers today report that huge demand for Chinese has now made it one of the top three languages taught in schools here. Sweden has the voucher system, so the curriculum responds to parental demand rather than ministerial diktat. Imagine that. In Britain, just 4,000 of our 3.3 million state pupils study Chinese, and nearly all of them are Chinese. But don’t worry. A government adviser has instructed the country’s 250 specialist language schools to put Chinese on the curriculum as “the language of tomorrow”. Yes, it seems these language schools needed to be told. Moral: you can’t rely on mandarins to learn mandarin. PS I

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Barack Obama, narcissist?

By which I mean only this: is Barack Obama more of a narcissist than the average egotist running for the Presidency? Ryan Lizza’s interesting GQ piece on Obama prompted Daniel Larison to suspect that “In other words, underneath the megalomaniac is a con-man, and underneath the con-man is the guy with the delusions of grandeur. Sounds like a great combination.” I was struck by the conclusion to Ryan’s thoughtful piece: It always comes back to this, Obama struggling not to let the campaign change who he is. He has a way of reflecting on his own campaign as an outside observer. “We’ll joke,” his wife told me, “when we’re sitting

Alex Massie Alex Massie

White House does best to undermine public confidence in own strategy

I’m quite prepared to believe there has been some military progress in Iraq and that it might be possible for the US to move some troops from some areas to others where they could be more profitably engaged. But I’d be much more comfortable taking General David Petraeus’s report at face value if the Los Angeles Times were not reporting that: Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.