Society

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Beckham and Azharuddin…

Just recovering from a 21 hour Istanbul-Washington trip (thanks American Airlines), so still catching up with correspondence and the like. Still, here’s a piece I wrote for The New Republic defying the (emerging) conventional wisdom – at least amongst some soccer snobs – that Beckham’s arrival is the beginning of the end for US soccer. Of course, it’s also the case that, psychologically, some American soccer fans fear what might happen to their game if it really takes off (I argue that it has already taken off). Can soccer survive American interest? And, just as pressingly, can soccer fans, many of whom are proud to have the sophisitication and the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

By Galata Bridge I sat down and fished…

Marginal Revolution’s Alex Tabarrok writes: “On the famous Galata bridge fisherman cast from the top level while outdoor restaurants line the walkway below.  The fishermen’s lines are hard to see so dining at dusk you are surprised when silvery fish, glittering in the last light of the sun ascend to the sky as if swimming to the heavens.” Well, I was on the Galata Bridge on Sunday, watching these fellows cast their lines into the Golden Horn. I don’t munch fish anyway, but even if I did would I want to consume fish that swam in these waters? More, and possibly slightly deeper observations on a week in the Turkish

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Shambo, the Heroic Hindu Bull…

Mr Eugenides, guest-blogging in fine style at Jewcy, fills you in on the sad yet stirring story of Shambo, South Wales’ latest celebrity. Read all about how bureaucrats are doing their best to slaughter this sacred, er, bull, here.

Monday

The Spectator

The real Iraq question

Both sides in the Iraq debate tend to ignore, or downplay, the downside to their preferred course of action. On Meet the Press, New York Times columnist David Brooks put the dilemma that both sides need to address: So are we willing to prevent 10,000 Iraqi deaths a month at the cost of 125 Americans? That’s a tough moral issue, but it’s also a tough national interest issue because we don’t know what the consequences of getting out are. And the frustration of watching the debate in Washington, very few people are willing to, to grapple with those two facts, that there’s–that the surge will not work in the short-term, but

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Public sour on globalisation

There is a fascinating, and worrying, poll in the FT this morning about people’s attitudes to globalisation. Remarkably, about 60 percent of the electorate in the UK favour government imposed pay caps for the heads of companies. Less than 20% think globalisation is good for this country. Indeed, of the six countries surveyed—Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and the US—we are the least positive about globalisation. But, interestingly, only the Americans are more confident than us Brits about people’s prospects for social mobility.

The Spectator

Country music

In Competition No. 2503 you were invited to supply new words for the British national anthem, to be sung to the original tune. Spain’s opposition leader Mariano Rajoy recently called for its anthem to be given words following complaints from athletes who were fed up with humming self-consciously or staring solemnly into the middle-distance while it was playing at major sporting events. The story prompted the Today programme to invite the poet Murray Lachlan Young to come up with new words for ‘God Save the Queen’ which would reflect our changing political society. His opening was pretty feeble: ‘On this Atlantic rock/ We do complain a lot/ And like a

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 21 July 2007

Why Russia’s defensive Sir: The only pertinent fact from Fraser Nelson’s anti-Russia diatribe last week is that the country’s defence budget is 5 per cent that of America’s. (The New Cold War, 14 July). The rest of the article is scaremongering. An evening spent in Moscow should convince anyone that Russia has not left ‘the orbit of the West’, rather that it has embraced our way of life with gusto. Five minutes spent in a supermarket in Saint Petersburg, Saratov or Volgograd nails the lie that ‘the free market has perished in Russia’. And why should not Russian gas companies start to charge market prices for their output, after years

Taki

Beyond belief | 21 July 2007

On board S/Y Bushido Last Friday the 13th was not a good-news day. I was in Ibiza, sailing around, when the papers were brought in and I read about the death of my old and very good friend Nigel Dempster. Actually, it was a blessing. He had been suffering for years and every time I spoke with him – to him, rather, as he was unable to towards the end — it was getting worse. Talk about the end of an era. How I miss the good times with him. Then over the telephone we heard that Huntsie Schoenburg, my 19-year-old nephew, a six-foot-four blond Yale student, and the sweetest

Roy Hattersley

The great leveller

I spent much of my early boyhood in a disused cemetery — a Gothic beginning to my adolescence which was the result of nothing more romantic than the fact that only a high wall, over which I could climb with the help of an elderberry tree, divided our back garden from the overgrown graves. I spent much of my early boyhood in a disused cemetery — a Gothic beginning to my adolescence which was the result of nothing more romantic than the fact that only a high wall, over which I could climb with the help of an elderberry tree, divided our back garden from the overgrown graves. It was

Daphne Guinness

Diary – 21 July 2007

I miss Issie. I am waiting outside in the Orangerie in the Parc de St-Cloud, in Paris, where the Chanel show is about to begin. The incessant driving rain, the clouds, thick, and black with purpose, as another deluge begins. The huge white bright spotlights shining undiminished give a silvery magnificence to the scene. The team of Karl Lagerfeld and Chanel, undefeated by the elements, succeed in staging one of the best couture shows I have seen, and I have seen quite a few. Contrary to what one might expect, the rain heightens the senses and gives it a poetic surrealism. Showtime. The moment the first model exits to explosive

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 21 July 2007

Monday What a day! Just back from Service of Thanksgiving in the All-Faiths-And-None Prayer Room. Jed read an excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural speech about having nothing to fear but fear itself (I thought J.F.K. said that but never mind). It was v moving. Just like the American people in 1933 the citizens of London are about to be given back their energy and hope. Boris himself was going to pop in and address us briefly but apparently he couldn’t work out the entry system. Tuesday DD really enjoying the New Cold War. Says it’s even better this time around because the kit’s more advanced. Foxy ringing non-stop asking

Interconnect

JULY WINE CLUB

Fortnum & Mason has its own range of wines, and as you would expect, they are very good indeed. These are not simple house wines, trading under an anonymous label; they are selected by Fortnum’s chief buyer, Tim French, as the best example he can find of each type of wine. As well as the F&M imprimateur on the label, you’ll find details of who made the wine, how they made it, and where. They are not cheap, but they range from very good indeed to stunning. And, as an introduction to Spectator readers, Tim has discounted them all. Two are somewhat pricier than usual, so there is a pair

The Spectator

One of us

As Spectator readers would have expected, this magazine was an early and enthusiastic backer of Boris Johnson as the next Mayor of London. On 4 July we gave him our official endorsement and urged him to run on our Coffee House blog (new.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse). Now that he has thrown his bandana in the ring, we shall be providing regular updates on Boris’s progress: Toby Young, who will cover the campaign in these pages and online, delivers his opening despatch on p14 and his first video diary can be seen on our website.Yet our support for a former editor reflects much more than tribal loyalty. His entry to the race has been

Jeremy Clarke

A dog’s life

One of the main drawbacks to living on the south Devon coast is the number of drivers on the road who are over 80. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be there. One of the main drawbacks to living on the south Devon coast is the number of drivers on the road who are over 80. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be there. I just wish they’d speed up a bit. The lanes around here are narrow and winding. Overtaking opportunities are rare. Get stuck behind a 90-year-old creeping along at 15 miles an hour in the latest Vauxhall Vectra, and if you aren’t prepared to overtake on a blind bend

Robin Oakley

Star quality

Keeping thin enough to star in your sixties comes hard, and the recently sadly deceased George Melly once inquired of Mick Jagger why the rock supremo’s face was so lined. ‘Laughter lines,’ replied the Rolling Stone. Keeping thin enough to star in your sixties comes hard, and the recently sadly deceased George Melly once inquired of Mick Jagger why the rock supremo’s face was so lined. ‘Laughter lines,’ replied the Rolling Stone. ‘Nothing’s that funny,’ replied Melly. But, facial creases or not, Mick Jagger still pulls in the millions because he has star quality. On the racing scene we have been yearning for a British sprinter with enough star quality

Edward Skidelsky

Faith in the future

John Gray’s latest work brings together many themes that will be familiar to fans of this scintillatingly gloomy intellect. It denounces neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism as forms of utopianism, destined like all previous forms to shipwreck upon the hard facts of human existence. It emphasises al-Qa’eda’s roots in Western political extremism rather than Islamic tradition. It envisages a world in which history, far from coming to an end, has resumed its usual bloody course against a background of dwindling oil resources and proliferating weaponry. And it insists that our only escape from this miserable farrago lies in the company of ‘mystics, poets and pleasure-lovers’. All this is vintage Gray. What is

Merryn Somerset-Webb

The price of sex in the City

Morgan Stanley has just hosted its first ‘early access’ event for young women: 75 girls from 15 top schools were taken on a tour of the trading floor (I bet there weren’t many traders off sick that day) Morgan Stanley has just hosted its first ‘early access’ event for young women: 75 girls from 15 top schools were taken on a tour of the trading floor (I bet there weren’t many traders off sick that day) and given ‘networking’ sessions in which they could talk to female staffers. Morgan Stanley says the event was part of its strategy to ‘bring women in’, and it is not alone in this worthy-sounding

Jules Evans

The KGB man who spied on the bond markets

It’s not every day a former KGB spy invites you to interview him. But Alexander Lebedev is not your typical KGB spy. He’s made billions in stock-market trading, he throws lavish parties in London attended by the likes of Tom Wolfe and J.K. Rowling, and he might just be the most serious critic of Kremlin policy still standing. Naturally I accept, and go to meet him in the Hyatt hotel in central Moscow. He’s sitting at the back of the bar, dressed more like a rock-band manager than a billionaire spook. Lebedev joined the KGB in the early 1980s and was sent to London in 1988, operating out of a

Paul Johnson

And another thing | 21 July 2007

The wet weather this summer has made me think about umbrellas, and the curious moral associations they attract. It is not so in the Orient, where they were invented (in China) sometime early in the first millennium bc. There they were designed to protect exalted persons against the sun. They were carried by attendants in state processions and were associated with power, privilege and class. We would call them parasols. The plebs were not allowed to possess or use them and often they were carefully graded, in size and elaboration, in accordance with the dignity of the owner. There are occasional hints of similar status-parasols in the West. Thus Louis