Society

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Should Wolfowitz walk?

An interesting item by Tom Regan on the US National Public Radio blog points out that while our own Daily Telegraph and Guardian and Germany’s Der Spiegel all focus heavily on the negative aspects of the World Bank investigators’ report on Paul Wolfowitz’s conduct, both the Washington Post and the New York Times take the opposite line, giving prominence to Wolfowitz’s rebuttal of the accusation that he mishandled the issue of his girlfriend’s promotion and pay rise. Clearly the facts of the story are becoming buried under waves of anti-Us and anti-neocon sentiment; but clearly also, Wolfowitz was a hugely provocative appointment at the Bank in the first place and

The Spectator

A brainless policy

There is something phenomenally depressing about the relish with which the Tories are burying grammar schools. Here are the most effective implements of social mobility this country has ever had—by 1969 they had pushed Oxford’s intake from the state sector up to 62 percent, far higher than today’s 55 percent which is achieved in party by positive discrimination—and the Tories want to run a million miles from them on the grounds of political expediency. David Willetts sounds far from convincing when he says, “We must break free from the belief that academic selection is any longer the way to transform the life chances of bright poor kids.” The gap in

Tuesday

The Spectator

Melissa Kite bites back

Tory blogging is close to death, I can announce. It’s been in intensive care for some time thanks to the meanderings of Iain Dale and the endless pronouncements of ConservativeHome but now the Cornerstone has launched a blog and, mind crushingly dull as it is, it can only be a matter of time before these sites start eating each other. Conservative blogs are already almost exclusively the preserve of right wing men of a certain age. www.Cornerstonegroup.wordpress.com is just overkill. To explain for those who actually have a life, Cornerstone is a group of Christian right wing MPs who follow Iain Duncan Smith – yes, that’s right, some people still

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Documentary evidence

Some of the best journalism never appears in print, which is why it’s a tragedy that documentaries are so tough to get hold of once broadcast. I was being treated to a birthday curry last night and didn’t see Peter Oborne’s superb documentary on Gordon Brown where he had interviewed a hundred people (myself included) to build a fascinating picture. But thanks to the wonders of technology, you can download it free on Channel Four’s “on demand” internet service and watch it whenever you like. I’ve just finished watching it now. If you haven’t used on-demand television before (it’s the future!), getting hold of Peter’s documentary is a great excuse

The Spectator

Smile, you’re on camera

This titbit from The Sun is too good not to pass on: One of Jack Straw’s aides currently assigned to make Gordon Brown personable has come up with a rather novel way to make GB remember to smile more. He has stickered all of Brown’s notes, his briefcase and even his car with bright yellow “smileys” to jog his memory .

Monday

The Spectator

Understanding the lives of others

The New York Review of Books has a fantastic piece by Tim Garton Ash on the Stasi, pegged to The Lives of Others, which is one of the best explorations of Germany’s “paradoxical achievement” I have ever read.

The Spectator

Rudy’s rock

If you want to understand Rudy Giuliani do read this gripping piece from New York magazine on his relationship with his third wife, Judith. Considering how much of a vulnerability his personal life is among socially conservative Republicans, it is bizarre how keen Giuliani is push her forward—volunteering that she’d be allowed to attend cabinet meetings and the like—when the best strategy for him would be to campaign on his competence, track record and tough-on-terror image. But as Lloyd Grove, one of the best gossip columnists in the business, explains, Giuliani is like a love-sick teen around her: his speaking contract even requires that she is sat next to him

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Homes are where the votes are

Gordon Brown is to “set out his plans to build 100,000 houses in five eco-towns”. That’ll keep him busy. But it’s the Sunday Times splash and has wrong-footed the Tories who say this initiative was first announced last May. And that’s what I like about Brown. He has so far proved himself a bulwark against climate change alarmism. He’s fighting hype with hype, bangs the drum but does very little. As a numbers man, I suspect he appreciates – as Lord Lamont said in a superb Centre for Policy Studies lecture – that “We must not throttle the engine our economic prosperity for something which may yet prove illusory.” The

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 12 May 2007

Q. I have always had snaggle teeth but seem to have got away with it so far. They have given me no trouble and my husband says they are one of my most endearing features. Now, however, a new dentist has suggested that I have the whole lot straightened. This will involve months in braces and will cost £3,000. But is it worth it at my age? (I am 46.) It is so hard to get friends to give an honest answer when I press them. Name and address withheld A. Why not bring a photo to Snappy Snaps, the high-street photo and digital specialists, and have them straighten your

Taki

Winning streak

Southampton, New York I received a gift necktie from the King of Greece at the lunch I threw in his honour here in the Bagel. The design on the tie gave me food for thought. There were tiny white rocking chairs against the skyblue background. The message was clear. It’s time to hang it up. King Constantine is a valued friend who had advised me against competing in martial arts at my age. When he heard of my victory down south he figured I had lucked out — which I had — so in order for me not to press lady luck he went out and bought me the Brooks

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 12 May 2007

Whoever said, ‘Don’t give me problems, give me solutions’, was asking for it. Everyone seems to be claiming solutions now. I went past a children’s nursery the other day with a sign on the wall reading: Bright Horizons Family Solutions. ‘Bright Horizons Family Solutions,’ the company tells the world, ‘is the nation’s leading provider of work-site child care, early education, and work-life consulting services.’ It has got some competitors, such as Family Solutions Collaborative, the Centre for Family Solutions, Family Solution Inc, Trillium Family Solutions, the Family Solutions Institute, Systemic Family Solutions and Total Family Solutions. That terrible phrase ‘the Final Solution’ makes all this sound rather creepy. Now that

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 12 May 2007

Britain should come first Sir: Reading Clemency Burton-Hill’s ‘Cameron is taking on Brown — in Rwanda’ (5 May) I felt my blood boil. I have every sympathy with the people of Rwanda but surely Conservative MPs’ time would be much better spent grappling with the issues facing ordinary people in Britain? As Andrew Mitchell, Hugo Swire and David Mundell have some time on their hands this summer, perhaps they would like to help out at my daughter’s ‘bog-standard’ comprehensive where, while she works hard to achieve her ambition of studying Law, other pupils smoke cannabis in the toilets and routinely disrupt classes. Or perhaps they would prefer to clean up

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 12 May 2007

Everyone trying their best to look ‘socio-centric’ (Mr Letwin’s orders), but we are all secretly dreading this week. MONDAY Everyone trying their best to look ‘socio-centric’ (Mr Letwin’s orders), but we are all secretly dreading this week. Most of us have never known any other Leader. I will be glad when it’s over. Feels a bit like the time we all went down to Westminster Bridge to watch the great lost whale being towed down the Thames. We laughed and pointed, but inside you felt it was desperately sad and unfair. These reshuffle stories not helpful either. It is simply not true that Dave is going to demote Hague and

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 12 May 2007

Tony Blair gives a date for his departure. Many say that he would have been able to stay if he had not supported the war in Iraq. But what would have happened in British politics if he had opposed the war? He would for the first time have been the prisoner of the Left. The same voices in his party who ensured electoral humiliation with their support for unilateral nuclear disarmament in the Eighties would, along with the Euro-fanatics, have captured him. The Conservatives, given an opportunity at last, would have argued that, in the end, Labour can never be trusted to maintain good relations with our most important ally.

Joan Collins

Diary – 12 May 2007

I’m full of hurrahs, huzzahs, yippee-ki-yays and general end-of-term jubilation now that this gruelling 30-week US tour of Legends has finally ended. I’m full of hurrahs, huzzahs, yippee-ki-yays and general end-of-term jubilation now that this gruelling 30-week US tour of Legends has finally ended. To say it’s been tough is an understatement: 25 cities in 30 weeks, eight shows in six days each week, the days off spent travelling on dodgy airlines and checking into naff hotels (not to mention the gratuitous spitefulness of some critics) have contributed to a great ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ attitude by just about all of our cast and crew. My colleagues Joe Farrell and

The Spectator

Harry Potter and the amazing royalties

Simon Hoggart’s always excellent Saturday column in the Guardian has this great snippet about the publishing phenomenon that is Harry Potter: The other day a friend of mine signed up with a new literary agency, which also handles the author of Harry Potter. The chap who looks after him took him on a tour round the offices. At one point they looked into a room where eight busy people were sitting in front of computer screens, phones and directories to hand. He asked what they did and was told that they were all engaged, full time, in gathering JK Rowling’s royalties from around the world.

Matthew Dancona

Don’t wait 28 weeks to see this

Since Coffee House is always keen to recommend guilty pleasures, it is only right to say that 28 Weeks Later is a splendid multiplex movie. More than just another zombie flick – although it is certainly that – it follows the honourable tradition of Aliens in trying a completely new riff on the original film to which it is a sequel, Danny Boyle’s terrific 28 Days Later (virus escapes, whole of Britain wiped out in weeks etc). 28 Weeks Later picks up the story when American troops have moved in to rebuild the depopulated wasteland, and Canary Wharf is the ultra-secure “District One” which forms the Nato HQ. The allusions

Steve King

African wildlife is newly endangered

Richard Leakey never looked like he was going to mellow much with age. For the past 40 years he has been one of the most vital, energetic, tenacious and inflammatory figures on the African scene. When barely out of his teens, he made his name as an archaeological prodigy — a sort of Mozart of Lake Rudolph — and in the process very nearly beat his parents, Louis and Mary, at their own game. When he ran the Kenya Wildlife Service in the late 1980s he famously torched a 12-tonne pile of poached ivory. It was a typically unsubtle but effective gesture. The images were beamed out on network TV;

Paul Johnson

Maytime and ‘Some wet, bird-haunted English lawn’

The best thing this country has ever produced is a fine-sown, closely mown and weedless lawn. You really relish it this sunny time of year, when it becomes a work of art, or as Wordsworth put it, ‘a carpet all alive/ With shadows flung from leaves’. I have been thinking about lawns because ours, in London, the green punctuation mark between the steps leading down from my library, and my beloved cedar studio, had become hopelessly overgrown with moss. So a friendly lorry, controlled by a gruff-jovial man and his hard-working daughter, delivered an immense number of sausage-rolls of new turf. Then along came two immensely tall young men —