Society

Saturday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Don’t believe in trickledown economics? Consider the parable of the Chelsea nanny

Peter Hain says two thirds of City bonuses should be redirected to charity, or employers who dish them out should face tax penalties. David Cameron is trying to find a formula to suggest he disapproves of City greed while signalling that the City need fear no tax-grab from him. Those who find the disparity between bankers’ pay and everyone else’s morally repugnant, or at least uncomfortable, often also cast doubt on the ‘trickledown’ theory — that the wider economy benefits efficiently from the lavish spending of the lucky few. Such sceptics should consider the parable of the Chelsea nanny. A City friend who used to negotiate remuneration deals for bonus-hungry

Paul Johnson

Are we heading, eyes open, to a materialist Hell on Earth?

If I wanted to pick an artist whose work and mind seem peculiarly apt for the present day, my choice would fall on Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516), the Netherlandish master who specialised in moralising fantasies and diablerie. The world we live in is characterised by unchecked and unpunished, widening and deepening evil, manifesting itself in countless ways but in particular by what I call the Seven Deadly Sins of the 21st century. These are: violence and brutality, not just of a physical kind but expressed towards all the finer feelings of virtue, religion, temperance and gentleness, which are mocked and spat upon; grotesque lusts of the flesh, expressed in the

The Spectator

A nation of babysitters

First, let us not submit to the self-indulgence of moral panic: there has never been a time when British children have been less afflicted by poverty, disease and malnutrition. The new Unicef league table for ‘child well-being’ across 21 industrialised countries, for all its disturbing statistics, gives little sense of historical perspective. Much of the information it collates is seven or eight years out of date. The report also idealises the notion of childhood and, in its litany of figures, glosses over the reality of human experience through the ages. St Augustine was under no illusions about the capacity of even the youngest child to be brutal and selfish: ‘Myself

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

After Blair’s Big Tent, Brown plans a Big Football Stadium of popular causes

The 2018 World Cup is, by every measure, a long way off. Fifa intends to take three years to decide on which continent the tournament should be hosted, and only then start thinking about a specific country. Even the Football Association (which would submit a bid for England) has not yet come to a decision. But one fan is agitating already. Gordon Brown has commissioned a Treasury feasibility study and is already talking up Britain’s chances. The football world may not be ready, but the British political calendar cannot wait. There is something about a campaign for a sporting tournament which allows a politician to speak on a special frequency

Alasdair Palmer

Meeting Professor Torture

Guantanamo Bay has just marked its fifth anniversary. John Yoo was instrumental in setting up the prison camp which the normally solidly pro-American Daily Mail has called ‘the sort of show that once only dictators like Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao knew how to put on’. Yet Yoo’s infamy in America derives less from clearing the legal way for Guantanamo than from being the author of the ‘Torture Memo’, a legal opinion filed on 2 August 2002 by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), a section of the Department of Justice. It examined what methods of inflicting pain and suffering constitute torture, and whether the President can order torture if

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

We deserve Gillian McKeith

A couple of years ago an over-confident Scottish woman called Dr Gillian McKeith made history by being the first person ever to examine human stools on primetime television. A nutritionist — whatever that is — by trade, her shtick was to induce indolent and feckless working-class people to defecate into a tube and then — holding the tube aloft for the benefit of the viewing audience — berate them for the spineless quality of their product. From this unique vantage point she would then castigate the working-class people about their diets and force them to eat mung beans, lentils and chard, with ‘hilarious’ results. Someone somewhere obviously thought this would

Alan Johnson

We have not betrayed a generation

Impatience for improvements in education is something I share. It is not a new phenomenon: in 1439 William Bingham, a London rector, petitioned Henry VI about the ‘great scarcity of masters of grammar’. What amazes me in the modern age is our collective complacency on education since the war. The independent National Foundation for Educational Research pointed out in the early 1990s that reading results in primary schools scarcely budged for almost 50 years. Staggeringly, this appeared to placate governments of both colours who were simply concerned with ensuring that things didn’t get worse. In 1997 we rejected that quiet life. We set ourselves an ambitious task: to make far-reaching

Jaspistos

Schadenfreude

In Competition No. 2481 you were invited to supply a poem or a piece of prose ending with Gore Vidal’s nasty gnome, ‘It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.’ I’m not an especially nice person, but I’ve never experienced the pleasant frisson of schadenfreude; in fact, Rochefoucauld’s remark to the effect that there is something not unpleasing in the misfortunes of our friends strikes me as a bum maxim. This week, verse outshone prose so brightly that the prose writers, led by Frank Mc Donald, are not among the prizewinners. These are rewarded with £25 each, while the bonus fiver goes to the loony Hugh King. I’ve conclusively proved

Saturday

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 10 February 2007

Monday What a morning! Was having coffee with Jed’s new PA, Janice. Lovely lady. V spiritual — although some might say a bit severe-looking with the shaved head. Anyway, as Nigel says, she’s ‘taken a shine to me’. She tells me things that are troubling her and today she told me something’s going on which she doesn’t think is ethical. It seems Dave has been getting coaching from ‘a senior Labour figure’. She made me swear a dozen different oaths — including one on Sesame’s forthcoming dressage trials — before she told me who it was. Suffice to say that when she told me the name I swallowed a piece

Sally Emerson

Diary – 10 February 2007

Since my two children have dispersed to Hollywood and gap-year Sydney, I spend a great deal of time at home with the individual who needs me most: my house — mean, moody, magnificent, prone to upsets if left. Its tanks conveniently overflowed when we went away to Los Angeles at Christmas. That’ll show me. Today yet another painter came to inspect the damage and I thought I heard the pipes gurgle a little, as if with laughter. This house used to be the Chinese military attaché’s, and we still receive letters trying to persuade us to buy used fighter planes. Once we had an invitation to a party on a

The Spectator

Letters to the editor | 10 February 2007

It’s about the child From John Parfitt Sir: Matthew Parris should do better than his elegant nonsense about so-called gay adoption (Another voice, 3 February). Until the inclusiveness lobby turned the word ‘discriminating’ into a boo-word, it was a compliment, meaning the ability to know the difference between good and bad, deserving and undeserving; to prefer Beethoven to Big Brother. We all discriminate every day, and why not? We favour the things we like. Likewise, if my Catholic friends wish to run an adoption service for married couples, why not, especially when others are catered for elsewhere? Or will the government now insist that the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society make grants

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 10 February 2007

Q. At a recent lunch in an hotel to celebrate my parents’ wedding anniversary, my wife and I found ourselves engaged in animated conversation by our respective neighbours on all manner of interesting topics. However, in their enthusiasm they seemed totally oblivious to our need to deal with our well-behaved but still very young children who were sitting between us. What is the right balance to strike in such a situation when one’s children — both under two and being good as gold for the first hour or so — begin to show promise of hurling bread rolls all around the room?D.R., LondonA. There is a tendency for adults —

Jeremy Clarke

Matrimonial relations

Las Alpujarras There’s a man in one of the high mountain villages who lives with a cow and spends much of his time studying the cloud formations. By all accounts he can predict the weather for months, even years ahead with some accuracy, a skill passed down from father to son. For several months now, however, the clouds have consistently baffled and amazed him. Nothing like them, apparently, has been seen either in his lifetime or his father’s. If pressed to stick his neck out, his prediction for the coming year or two is tragedy, miracles, and meteorological cataclysm. On Saturday I joined a protest in the town square of the

Henrietta Bredin

Poetry and music

The great lyric poets of the English language wrote — and, I hope, are still writing — words which have their own melodic quality, cadences which lure composers to add music to them. Shakespeare, Herrick, Blake, Tennyson, Burns, Yeats have been set to music by numerous composers, creating a lasting heritage of English song. A smaller but intriguing category is poetry that is not turned into song but is spoken to music. Grand master of this compositional genre is Jim Parker. ‘I was an orchestral oboe player,’ he says, ‘but I was always wanting to get away from that and do something a bit more creative so I joined the

Peter Way

Unfinished Painting

The artist Fothergill; the scene an Essex landscape.Tall trees framing the fields, a church beyond.And riding towards the painter on a sturdy cobA country figure followed by vestigial shapes. The foreground grass growing from half-brushed strokes.The trees massing to summer leaf, as yet part-formed.Those nearly people following the rider and his horse,These ghostly labourers on the land, ephemeral folks. How often do unfinished works compel our gaze.Perhaps because we can complete them in our minds. Michaelangelo still emerging from the marble,Semi-suggestion, a sentence hinted from a phrase.

Paul Johnson

Is this a toasting fork I see before me?

Ghosts are fashionable just now. There are two productions of Ibsen’s play and a movie. At dinner parties, if conversation falters or begins to move down forbidden (by me) tramlines, I ask, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Instantly there is a babble. Nobody believes in ghosts personally. But everyone knows somebody who does, and provides an instance of what happened to him or, more often, her. This illustrates Dr Johnson’s dictum on haunting, ‘All argument is against it, but all belief is for it.’ Dr Johnson was torn between his great fear of death and confidence in supernatural agency, and his contempt for credulity and the delight he took in

Frank Keating

Too little, too late

Ignore an atoning little flurry at the death, England’s cricket winter has been a ghastly shambles. Embarked upon with such overweening bumptiousness — an arrogance admonished by this corner in the autumn, I might add — the expedition has long been a wrecked write-off all round. The Ashes urn was spinelessly surrendered — against admittedly a mighty fine team — by five-nil. In the follow-up one-day tournament England have been almost as pitiful. That has not quite finished as I write, but should they fluke a second place in the three-horse race, such a travesty should not remotely be allowed to camouflage the excruciating campaign. ‘Sorry we have let down people

Judi Bevan

The last of the City’s frequent flyers

When Win Bischoff and his colleagues Robert Swannell and David Challen threw a party last month to celebrate 100 years of working together at Schroders and Citigroup, it was quite a bash. Not only did it draw the cream of FTSE-100 chiefs — Sir Chris Gent, Sir Nigel Rudd and Stuart Rose, to name just three — but the throng in the Victoria and Albert Museum included a fair scattering of rival investment bankers. ‘You only have to play golf with Win to know how competitive he is, but he’s always worked well with other bankers,’ said one guest. Seven years earlier to the day, the tall, stylish Bischoff had

Joanna Pitman

Antiques: better value than Ikea

Not many people seem to realise this, but it’s cheaper in the long run to buy a solid carved mahogany antique chest of drawers than a modern pine one from Ikea. Without having to search far, you can get a beautiful Victorian chest of drawers in excellent condition for £200 which will last you and your descendants for a hundred years or more. The equivalent from Ikea might cost a quarter of that, but will probably last for only five years. And you have to build it yourself as well. ‘Basic “brown” antique furniture is extremely good value at the moment,’ says Mark Boyce of Ross Hamilton in London, dealers

The Spectator

The cockpit of truth

The tragic death in Iraq of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull under US ‘friendly fire’ in March 2003 has become a bleak parable of the flaws at the heart of the US-UK ‘special relationship’. Only now, and only thanks to a leak to the Sun of a classified recording of the conversation between two American pilots, has the precise nature of the accident become clear. As terrible as that error was, however, it is much more comprehensible than the disgraceful saga of bureaucracy and disdain which it triggered. All servicemen accept that there is a risk that they will be hit by friendly fire, or that they will fire