Society

Saturday

9 Dec 2006

If Britain had its own Baker report on Iraq, this is what it would say

After so deftly avoiding any Iraq inquiry at home, Tony Blair will be cursing his luck to have walked straight into one in Washington. His talks with President Bush were planned months ago: it was a ‘happy coincidence’ (as his spokesman said through gritted teeth) that it should coincide with publication of the long-awaited Baker report on Iraq. But for once, the Prime Minister is ahead of the Americans. He did not need a ten-month report to get moving: the British withdrawal has quietly begun. The Americans were given no specific timetable for withdrawal in James Baker’s ‘which way now?’ report, but Britain’s was settled a fortnight ago. Of the

Neil Collins

I’ve seen the future of food retailing — and it works

It’s simple, this internet grocery shopping. Log on, pick what you want, pay with your credit card and get on with your life while you wait for the doorbell to ring. No need to schlep to the supermarket, fight your way to the checkout, lug all those overloaded plastic bags into the car and out again, to discover that you’ve carefully placed the bananas at the bottom of the heap. We spend £120 billion a year on groceries, so buying them on the net is such an obvious new market that it’s no wonder lots of people tried to get into it. For some, it has been a miserable, expensive

Richard Orange

‘This is not an industry for pussycats’

If you built a composite portrait of Leigh Clifford from the handful of newspaper profiles ever written about him, you would be presented with an archetypal Aussie miner, as tough as the rocks his company digs from the earth. Shortly before taking up, six years ago, the post of chief executive of Rio Tinto — the London-based international mining giant — Clifford famously brandished a clenched fist at a group of environmental activists who stormed the stage at a shareholder meeting. He quickly withdrew when he realised how the picture might look in the papers, but one mining analyst still describes him as ‘a hairy-arsed mining man rather than a

Jonathan Davis

The perils of insouciance

Jonathan Davis says investors’ disregard for risk has paid off handsomely in 2006 — but it may not in 2007 A good general rule for investors is to take no notice of consensus predictions about what is going to happen in the next 12 months. The track record of year-end investment punditry is consistently poor. That makes the Christmas and New Year period particularly hazardous for the unwary investor, as the demand for forecasts is at its peak, and the capacity for misdirection consequently also high. This is especially so for those who are not aware of J.K. Galbraith’s adage that economists forecast ‘not because they know, but because they

Jaspistos

Your Ps and Qs

In Competition No. 2472 you were given ten words or phrases and invited to incorporate them, in any order, in a plausible piece of prose. Why, when I asked for a piece of prose, did four of you submit verse? Why did Mary Holtby, usually a skilled competitor, substitute ‘plague’ for ‘plaque’? Did D. Gibson think I would accept disposing of Plaque, Pique and Quid Pro Quo by making them three racehorses? And when I lay down ‘quip’ I am not prepared to accept ‘quipped’ or ‘equipment’. Still brooding over those who sadly disqualified themselves, I award Godfrey Bullard the top prize of £30 and the other prizewinners printed below

Frank Keating

Dalton’s millions

This year’s Sportsbook of the Year is Unforgivable Blackness (Pimlico) This year’s Sportsbook of the Year is Unforgivable Blackness (Pimlico), a vividly enlightening new biog of Jack Johnson, the first black American boxing champion, by Geoffrey C. Ward, the US hist-orian who pockets the £18,000 prize plus a £2,000 free bet with the award’s loyal sponsor, bookmaker William Hill. White society was outraged at the boxer’s insolence, skill and, in particular, his success with white women. Closer to home, for a festive read inducing a more cuddly reverie, can I recommend British provincial nostalgia with less of a bitter edge? I guarantee middling-oldies of a certain bent will grab the port, nuts

Saturday

2 Dec 2006

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 2 December 2006

Q. The convention with regard to tipping in restaurants is that one leaves 10 per cent of the bill and hopes it will go to the staff. The bill, however, includes both hidden VAT on the cost of the meal and a mark-up of 250 per cent or more on the wine. The first is a government tax, and the other has nothing to do with the staff, so I do not think I should pay 10 per cent on either. I have considered deducting one fifth of the bill and leaving 10 per cent of the remainder (after explaining to the manager what I was doing) but have not

Deborah Ross

Restaurants | 2 December 2006

First off, I should say I’m no great expert when it comes to Swedish food. First off, I should say I’m no great expert when it comes to Swedish food. Yes, I’ve been to Ikea — so many veneers, so little time! — and, yes, I’ve had the meatballs in the café but, judging by the taste and texture, I think even they were MDF with a meatball veneer. I probably should have opted for the mushroom umlaut, but there you have it. However, having figured it might be silly to judge all Swedish food by Ikea meatballs and the sad little herrings in the refrigerated display, I think it

Taki

No joke | 2 December 2006

New York First it was Mel, as in Gibson, now it’s Michael, as in Richards. I’m sure none of you has ever heard of the latter, but he’s a big shot in America, especially among those with brains smaller than a pea. Richards played a character in Seinfeld, a programme about emptiness which is no longer on the air. I suppose celebrity is harder to give up than heroin because last week Richards used the N-word while doing a stand-up routine in a small Los Angeles club, calling two black guys who were heckling him ‘dirty n——s’. Well, he sure got back his celebrity in a hurry. Jesse Jackson and

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 2 December 2006

Readers respond to recent articles published in The Spectator Security v. rights From the Attorney General Sir: Stuart Wheeler’s article (‘Why the Tories must say No to torture’, 25 November) includes a quote from me about deportation. Taken from a Human Rights Watch report, and by HRW from a BBC online summary of a radio interview, some bits have fallen off the quote along the way, and the end result is misleading. No one is advocating a free rein to deport where there are risks. What we are going to ask the European Court of Human Rights to look at is whether, when we are considering deporting terrorist suspects, we

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 2 December 2006

Monday Trust Labour to go and apologise for the slave trade. The cheek of it! We played just as big a part, if not bigger, in the atrocities of Roots. It’s just as much ours to say sorry for, and Dave would have done it so much better. With real tears. Well, see if we care! Our man’s in Iraq sporting a flak jacket with panache and not looking like a constipated jellybaby — like certain people with clunking fists and the handwriting of a psychopath we could mention. It’s just so petty. No sooner do we announce that Churchill is ‘wholly inadequate’ (hello? statement of the obvious!) than Blair

Sheila Hancock

Diary – 2 December 2006

When, 50-odd years ago, I started in what was then known as the Business, later the Arts and more recently the Media, I was warned not to express opinions openly, for fear of alienating the Public. Added to that, my generation of little girls was told to be seen and not heard, and to do as our elders and betters, which included politicians, told us. They know best. Well, after a week of even more carnage in Iraq, I disobediently declare, ‘No, they don’t.’ This mere luvvie knew it was folly to try to impose a revolution on a country from outside, and force democracy on it. I knew it

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 02 December 2006

Elephants have been characterised as highly sensitive, socially aware and intelligent because they have noticed in the mirror a white cross marked on their head. What a pathetic test! Jumbo can do far better than that. The ancients speculated whether animals knew God, had memory, foresight or emotion, could distinguish between the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, could be happy, were political, could count, knew shame and so on. In relation to elephants, however, the elder Pliny (killed in the eruption of Vesuvius ad 79) had no doubts. He summarises: ‘The elephant is the nearest to man in intelligence. It understands the language of its homeland,

Interconnect

Hey, sweetie

The author salutes the 1847 vintage of the legendary sweet wine from the Gironde, Château d’Yquem, a bottle of which recently became the most expensive wine ever sold in the United States and is now the most expensive white wine in the world The author salutes the 1847 vintage of the legendary sweet wine from the Gironde, Chateau d’Yquem, a bottle of which recently became the most expensive wine ever sold in the United States and is now the most expensive white wine in the world Yquem 1847. Attached to this fabled name and date is one of the most iconic events of the 19th century: how a Russian grand

Paul Johnson

When a leading statesman is also a model of decorum

Good manners are an outward sign of inward grace, a harbinger of nicely judged moral actions, warmly reflecting decency in thought. And by good manners I do not mean Osric-like flourishes or Chesterfield’s polished insincerity. Good manners involve taking trouble, a degree, however slight, of self-sacrifice and unselfishness. They are the trade goods of civilisation and, as Yeats observed, civilisation is an exercise in self-restraint. Lockwood wrote of Sir Walter Scott, ‘He was a gentleman even to his dogs.’ I have often puzzled over this remark, for it is sometimes difficult to be good-mannered to dogs, with their bottomless servility. Cats are a different matter, having a super-fine dignity which

Allister Heath

The world is richer and healthier

For billions of people around the world, these are the best of times to be alive. From Beijing to Bratislava, more of us are living longer, healthier and more comfortable lives than at any time in history; fewer of us are suffering from poverty, hunger or illiteracy. Pestilence, famine, death and even war, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are in retreat, thanks to the liberating forces of capitalism and technology. If you believe that such apparently outlandish claims cannot possibly be true, think again. In a book which will trigger intense controversy when it is published later this month, the acclaimed American economist Indur Goklany, former US delegate to

Daniel Hannan

Ch

On Sunday, Venezuela goes to the polls. The likely triumph of Hugo Chávez, writes Daniel Hannan, reflects a phenomenon sweeping Latin America that feeds not on hope but on hatred There aren’t really any proper dictators left in South America, but Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez is getting close. His first attempt at power was through an old-fashioned putsch. When this failed, he tried the ballot box, winning a more or less free election in 1998. Once in office, he quickly set about undoing the democratic system that had got him there. Previously autonomous institutions — parliament, the judiciary, the Catholic Church, employers’ federations, trade unions — were subverted. Private firms were

Robin Lee-Navrozov

Zeffirelli: the Maestro of excess

The opening of the season at La Scala in Milan on 7 December is always a grand affair, and this year will be no exception. Franco Zeffirelli, 83 years old, is directing a new production of Aida, a work that has not been staged at this theatre for more than 20 years. It is noon when I arrive at La Scala to interview Zeffirelli, but inside the magnificent domed hall it seems like evening, and preparations are well under way for the big night. Round lights glow softly in the dainty red plush and gold-trimmed boxes, stacked like Christmas presents to a dizzying height. The splendid red velvet stage curtains

Celia Walden

Ségo and Dave: are they related?

The resemblance first struck me when, spotting Cameron’s waxy forehead on the front page of a newspaper recently, I unfolded the paper to find that the forehead belonged to French Socialist party candidate Ségolène Royal. It got me wondering whether similarities between the two extended beyond their oddly embalmed complexions. Politically, of course, they should be opposites, yet Royal has edged so far to the Right (to howls of protest from old French socialists) and Cameron so far to the Left (to equally noisy protests from Thatcherite Tories) that they seem destined to meet somewhere in the middle. Old socialists are appalled by 53-year-old ‘Ségo’ for adopting conservative policies to

Matthew Vincent

Think outside the jargon box

‘Dinosaurs … think inside the box. Dolphins … occupy the space outside the box. ‘Dinosaurs … think inside the box. Dolphins … occupy the space outside the box. The dinosaurs’ negative headset creates a lose-lose situation, whereas the dolphins’ can-do headset enables them to score a try!’ ‘Set out to leave the first vapour trail in the blue-sky scenario!’ Readers of the Financial Times, and viewers of The Office, will probably recognise these words of wisdom imparted by corporate thought-leader Martin Lukes and branch manager David Brent. But even if you’ve never encountered the fictional creations of, respectively, Lucy Kellaway and Ricky Gervais, you may well recognise their language from