Society

Saturday

28 Oct 2006

Time to invest in Korean reunification? I know a man who did

As the absurdly coiffed and probably deranged Kim Jong-Il fingers his nuclear button, not even the ballsiest hedge fund manager would contemplate investing in the prospect of Korean reunification. But I could name one secretive London investor who took a big punt back in the 1980s, buying a bundle of North Korean government debt at a tiny percentage of its nominal value on the off-chance that it will one day be redeemed at par by a united Korean treasury. I guess he’s going to have to hold on for a few years yet. It wasn’t such a mad idea, though. In the days when I was a regular visitor to

Boris Johnson

Talking about their generation: Britain’s golden youth

By the time we had been interviewing for three solid hours I was like a limp dishrag. I was wrung out with the hopefulness of it all. It was the talent, the energy, the sheer brilliance of these young people, all of them beaming ‘Pick me, pick me’ into my befuddled skull. We were only trying to hire a new researcher, and it was as though we were auditioning the next prime minister. They could write. They could talk. They could do anything. They had Grade 8 piccolo/flute and Grade 8 viola and awards for the top GCSE marks in the entire country. Their A-level results cascaded down the page

Tim Walker

Will Charles be the first multicultural monarch?

The Queen turned 80 on 21 April this year, and while she may finally have been prevailed upon to scale back on her public duties, she remains — as anyone who saw her during her visit to the Baltic States last week knows — in robust good health. Alex Galloway, the Clerk of the Privy Council, has however deemed this a prudent juncture to dispatch a circular letter to all the 500 or so members of Her Majesty’s Privy Council to ensure that he has up-to-date land and mobile telephone numbers and email addresses for each of them should he ever need to relay urgent information. The phraseology that the

James Shaw

I am a new kind of university drop-out

It’s been more than a month now since thousands of fresh-faced young students began their first year at university, full of excitement, confidence and hope. Poor souls. I felt that way at first, but it didn’t take long for my first doubts to surface. When I set out I was innocent enough to think that university was all about working hard (I was studying theology), absorbing facts and learning how to think and argue — as well as having fun, of course. I soon discovered my mistake. In fact I lasted only a term before deciding I wanted to leave, and I did so at the end of the first

The Spectator

Stern warning

On Monday the debate over climate change enters a new phase. Sir Nicholas Stern, who heads the Government Economic Service, will publish his review of the economics of climate change, which was commissioned by the Chancellor in July 2005. At last the debate on the environment will shift definitively towards the real choices facing the country and facing the world, and — we hope — away from the token gestures and feel-good rhetoric which have held sway thus far. Until now, economics has been conspic-uously absent from the climate change debate. We have heard a lot of science, much of it badly explained to the public. What we have not

Saturday

21 Oct 2006

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 21 October 2006

Monday DD is on a major ‘guns ’n’ ammo’ high. It was manageable while it was just General Dannatt stuff, but now it’s spread — badly. No one could make sense of his rant about veiled Muslims being the ‘unexploded bombs of modern politics’ until Poppy pointed out that he was, for about three hours, in the bomb disposal unit of the territorial SAS. A quick phonecall to Doreen confirmed that he spent the weekend creeping up on mysterious packages in the back garden. Found it strangely unsettling when he approached me after morning conference and said, ‘Y’know, Tammy, sometimes the best way to avoid a big explosion is to

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 21 October 2006

These notes are being written on 17 October, the day when, at the invitation of the History Matters campaign, we are all supposed to keep a diary for a day. Like Tom Lehrer on National Brotherhood Week, ‘Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year.’ We are overwhelmed with diaries. The politicians’ ones are the least satisfactory of the lot. Ex-ministers rush out their diaries (and memoirs) in the brief period when people can remember who they are and the colleagues they dislike are still in office. The authors play a double game — encouraging the publishers and television companies to pay big money with promises of revelations, and then

Louise Macbain

Diary – 21 October 2006

Finally the big week begins. In four days we open our new Institute — a 35,000 sq. ft former coachworks in Olaf Street, W11 — the home of our foundation. For the opening we have planned an exhibition of the extraordinary light artist James Turrell, with all 78 external windows to be lit in sequence, and over 25 pieces by Turrell inside. Strangely, it feels less real, like a dream, the more real it becomes. At the moment I’m looking forward to the last brush stroke (and praying it will take place before we open to the world) but we seem a long way from it right now. I suppose

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 21 October 2006

Q. I have received an email from a long-term dear acquaintance who lacks certain social graces because of long hours spent alone in his studio — he is a glass sculptor. It is an invitation to his birthday and he has provided two dates for a celebratory dinner, but unfortunately it has been phrased in such a way as to imply that he will reserve judgment as to which day it is to be. Given that we all have a busy social life and as an artist he is of a brittle disposition, how can I gently remind him that we cannot allocate two weekends on ‘stand-by’ as if we

Deborah Ross

Restaurants | 21 October 2006

My son and I are out for a night in the West End. This is unusual as he is a teenager and, usually, he wouldn’t be seen dead with me, not even after I’ve given him my word not to do funny dances in front of his friends or kiss him just as we’re passing the local gang of hoodies or appear at the school gate wearing leather and a push-up bra. Can you get fairer than that? I don’t think so. But he has his own social life now, which seems to involve going to somewhere called ‘the top field’ quite a lot. What do you do at ‘the

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 21 October 2006

Green realism From George Monbiot Sir: I realised long ago that we environmentalists cannot win. When we draw attention to the problem, we are told we are doom-mongers who refuse to accept that markets and human ingenuity can solve any difficulties caused by the overuse of resources. When we propose solutions, we are accused of being utopians who refuse to accept that nothing can be done. In reviewing my book Heat (Books, 14 October) Tom Fort agrees that the changes I propose are necessary to prevent runaway climate change, but claims there is no chance they will be adopted. He sees bus lanes on motorways, offshore wind farms and stronger

Roy Hattersley

Honest sweat

We celebrated harvest home last Sunday — late in the season by conventional standards, but postponed from the early days of autumn for the best of reasons. In our village, church and school are indivisible and it was agreed that the pupils should not switch from work to worship until half-term was upon them. So, in the words of the hymn, the thankful people came to a family service last Sunday morning and the school was grateful for all things bright and beautiful on Wednesday. Harvest Festivals are not what they were in the days when Canon George Cherry Weaver MA (Oxon) was vicar of the village in which I was

Taki

Masters of defence

New York Sometimes I wonder about Americans in general and Noo Yawkers in particular. Especially while watching war films. In Saving Private Ryan, GIs seem as cool under fire as the Wehrmacht troops look cowardly and ready to throw their hands up. In reality, of course, the Germans fought gallantly against overwhelming odds in men and materials. Some SS units kept counter-attacking when at only 10 per cent of their original strength. Total air superiority did the trick for the good guys. And von Rundstedt’s genius did not help. More than one million German front-line troops died on the Western front because old Gerd knew how to run rings around

Robin Oakley

Day to savour

Required by the day job to be in St Andrews on Friday night, reporting the latest example of governmental hope over experience in the Northern Ireland power-sharing talks, I was determined still to make it to Champions’ Day at Newmarket. Sir Percy’s first appearance since the Derby, a cracking contest for the Cesarewitch and the prospect of a renewed duel between two outstanding two-year-olds in the shape of Teofilo and Holy Roman Emperor for the Darley Dewhurst Stakes looked like providing the perfect Flat finale before most of us turn our attention to the jumping game. Hence a 2.45 a.m. reveille to drive to Edinburgh and check in 11 boxes

John Laughland

There’s no place like home

When we said we were thinking of moving to Urbino, our friends ooh-ed and aah-ed with envy. Urbino is a perfectly preserved mediaeval and Renaissance fortified town which sits on a hill in the Italian Marches commanding spectacular views over the surrounding fields and valleys. Its layout has hardly changed since the day when Duke Federico of Montefeltro posed for his portrait by Piero della Francesca, as there is no urban sprawl outside the old city walls. The etching studio where my wife once worked is housed in the magnificent cloister of a former convent, from which you can see the charming village church of San Bernardino nestling in the

Rachel Johnson

A place to plot

Some people dream of Palladian mansions in Wiltshire, of third homes in undiscovered parts of Puglia, of ozone pools in the basement. Others dream less majestically of mansards and conservatories and allotments. I, however, have a more modest fantasy. I work from home: a semi-detached dwelling I share with three children, an au pair, a husband and a dog. If I did not need an au pair, I could work in her romantic top-floor bedroom with its sweet verdant views over the communal garden. If I did not need a husband, I could take over his office, which he has carved out for himself by unilaterally occupying half of our

Mira Barhillel

The renting makeover

‘Policy without principle is like a house without foundations’, David Cameron said in his ‘Bring me sunshine’ conference speech in Bournemouth. Well, he should know. The young Tory leader’s own recently acquired £1.1 million home in Kensington is literally being undermined so that a basement room can be added to the already substantial house. The reason for this expensive and disruptive exercise is simple: London prices are so high that it is more cost-effective to extend, even downwards, than try to move up the property ladder. Central London is now virtually a no-go area for anyone other than Russian oligarchs, multinational executives or City whizzkids. In fact, at today’s prices,

Roger Coombs

John Betjeman: A Centenary Tribute

He was the People’s Laureate, of course,Observing things that others disregard:Post-Toasties, Craven A and HP sauce— Unworthy subjects for a royal bard?He wrote of tea-shops and the electric train;Of things familiar to the common man,Things which his critics sneeringly disdain,(Also maybe because he made his metres scanAnd took care to make his verses rhyme).He wrote of a spinster’s life in Tunbridge Wells,And inexpensive scent at Christmas time;Of Ruislip Gardens, Pinner and the bellsOf Mellstock in Dorset (that’s where Hardy lies);Of Fuller’s cake and picnics by the sea,Past pleasures which eluded other eyes;Of Mrs Fairclough as she sipped her tea,Watching Clemency, the general’s daughter‘Schoolboy-sure’ in slacks and lithe of limb,Pulling with

Martin Jacomb

The day the City entered the modern world

It was a day to remember: 20 years ago, on 27 October 1986, Big Bang caused a revolution in the securities market which turned the whole financial sector upside down. The early 1980s was a time of change. The Thatcher government’s thirst for deregulation was at its height. Exchange controls had been lifted, capital could be invested anywhere, nationalised industries were being privatised and restrictive practices were being crushed. Meanwhile, information technology was beginning its hugely influential growth. In fact Big Bang, which had at its heart the abolition of fixed minimum stock exchange commissions, was overdue. Fixed commissions had been abolished in New York more than ten years before.

Christopher Fildes

Before and after the Bang

25 October 1986 My friend the stockjobber closed his book, turned his back on his pitch, and walked with me off the Stock Exchange floor, down Throgmorton Street and into Bill Bentley’s fish house. We raised our glasses of Montrachet to the last of the good old days. On Monday he must quit the floor and settle down at his work-station, one of hundreds in a huge carpeted financial factory arranged, like all smart City factories, round an atrium. A deputy will man his pitch, empowered to deal on a modest scale, but not, like my friend, to make or lose on his own book a million pounds in a