Society

Saturday

Theodore Dalrymple

Our enemies are right to mock us

A taxi driver in Mexico City, who in my presence had just paid la mordida (the bite) to a traffic cop, taught me some lines by the 17th-century Creole nun and poetess, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz:     O who is more to blame,    He who sins for pay    Or he who pays for sin? The application of this particular moral conundrum to the recent events in our own country is all too obvious. But whatever answer you may give to it, one thing seems indisputable: Britain has been shown in the past couple of weeks, quite accurately, to be a country of very slight account, with a population

Matthew Dancona

A world bursting at the seams

New York As I ascend the solemn steps of Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library, a Parthenon transplanted to Broadway, the early spring snow crunches underfoot and the woes of Africa and the developing world seem very distant. Yet that is what I am here to discuss with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the university’s Earth Institute and this year’s Reith Lecturer. For his five Radio 4 programmes, the first of which was broadcast this week, Sachs has chosen the title ‘Bursting at the Seams’, which is how he sees the 21st-century world and its afflictions: extreme poverty, environmental crisis, terrorism, disease, bad governance. A youthful 52, with a distinctive thatch

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The C of E must make up its mind

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has suggested that the Church of England has become obsessed by homosexuals. His implication seems to be that Jesus Christ didn’t go on about them too much and so, really, neither should we. The term ‘obsessed’ is a strong one, but I think justified. If Dr Sentamu had been less tactful, he might have suggested that one half of the Church of England clergy believes homosexuals will burn forever in the fires of Hell and wishes fervently to be on hand in order to help poke down the sodomites with those famous pitchforks, while the other half is more camp than Brownsea Island.

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 7 April 2007

Q. Several years ago I had a well-respected broadsheet editor to stay for the weekend. The house party included another friend who has since become a rising star in the world of politics. Last Sunday, as I leafed my way through the newspapers, I almost choked on my breakfast cereal when I saw a large photograph which included the editor, the politician, myself and assorted guests. I have since discovered that several other photographs, taken during this private house party, have appeared in the public domain. As I consider them to be friends, how should I express my disapproval to the former editor? And should I invite them back? R.D.,

Jeremy Clarke

Lonely planets

We love this old house and can’t imagine living anywhere else. But needs must and we’ve finally bitten the bullet — the house is on the market from today. Twenty years we’ve been here. For 15 of these it was a home for nine elderly residents run by my parents. Now everyone’s dust except me and my mother  — and she reckons she’s not far off it. We’re two lonely planets orbiting in a house on a cliff with seven bedrooms and 11 lavatories to choose from. It’s a long walk just to answer the phone. If it’s someone for my mother, the caller might hear the receiver being slammed

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 7 April 2007

Brits in denial Sir: James Forsyth (‘Where is the outrage at the kidnapping of our Marines?’, 31 March) points out that the indifference the public is showing towards the seizure and humiliation of 15 British service personnel by Iran demonstrates a country deeply disconnected from its armed forces. But the disconnection goes far deeper, to a radical disassociation of people from the country itself. The spirit and identity of the British has been broken by endless propaganda traducing their history and through mass immigration. Unfortunately, there is nothing to replace it with. The idea that a society can survive solely by reference to ‘shared values’, such as fairness, the rule

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 7 April 2007

MONDAYFeel dreadful. Had horrendous nightmare last night. Was sleeping fitfully when a ghostly form appeared above my bed. He was tieless, wearing a white, open-necked shirt (possibly Paul Smith), the sleeves billowing as he held out his arms in a Messiah-like way. He had dark hair, pale, gleaming skin and deep, piercing eyes. At first I thought it was just Dave again. Then I realised — it was The Other Dave. He was calling out: ‘Come to me! I can! You can!’ Woke up in a sweat and couldn’t get back to sleep. Went out to give Sesame some hay at 3 a.m. She looked at me knowingly. Horses can

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Diary – 7 April 2007

This afternoon we are saying farewell to the 11-year-old daughter of a close and much-loved colleague, Robin McKie, the revered and veteran science editor of the Observer. Olivia was killed in a road accident one Friday lunchtime. What the family has gone through is unimaginable, and everyone at the Observer has been affected by the tragedy. But the day is strangely uplifting. It is a brilliant, glorious early summer’s afternoon, warm, cloudless, glowing, and the crematorium is packed — with friends, colleagues and countless kids from Olivia’s school, their faces full of optimism but now shadowed by sadness. Her favourite colour was purple and we have all been asked to

Matthew Dancona

The magus of Fitzrovia

I meet Ian McEwan for lunch at Elena’s L’Etoile near his Fitzrovia home. He is greeted like a member of the family, and he tells me with relish that the restaurant features in The Dean’s December by one of his literary heroes, Saul Bellow. McEwan’s last book, Saturday, was explicitly influenced by Bellow, and in many ways a homage to the American master. But his new and eleventh novel, On Chesil Beach (a short masterwork), explores different terrain. Set in 1962, it takes as its narrative focus the wedding night of a virginal couple, Edward and Florence, at a hotel on the Dorset coast, and, more specifically, their first, disastrous

Stuart Reid

‘We Christians need more persecution’

In Westminster Cathedral a dozen or so deaf mutes are doing the Stations of the Cross. They have reached the 14th station, ‘Jesus is laid in the tomb’. A priest leads the prayers in sign language. ‘We, too, O God, will descend into the grave whenever it shall please Thee, as it shall please Thee, and wheresoever it shall please Thee.’ It is a humbling sight. The cathedral, though, is not to everyone’s taste. Many visitors are unhappy about the stations themselves, which were carved by the sex maniac Eric Gill. Others are distressed by the children’s paintings and Third World displays that appear from time to time in side

Paul Johnson

Tales of ‘Stuffing it’ Austen, ‘Eye-opener’ Dickens and ‘Banana’ Waugh

I suspect gluttony, the excessive consumption of food and drink, was the first of the deadly sins to be committed. The least glamorous of them too. It is universal today, to judge by the number of fatties and the stomach-heaving coverage of food, restaurants, chefs and booze in the media. Ugh! It was always thus. The Bible devotes a lot of space to gulosity in general, let alone the excesses of Lot, Belchezzar, Herod and other esurient characters, killing fatted calves, selling birthright for pottage and glaring examples of edacity. Gluttony is particularly objectionable in women, both in the act and the consequences. Queen Mary, wife of William III, was

Neil Collins

French trains: faster, cheaper, greener, sexier

Guillaume Pepy doesn’t look like a man in a hurry. An elegant 47-year-old Frenchman with impeccable manners, he doesn’t look like an archetypal railwayman either, which may be because he isn’t. It’s true that he’s an énarque, a graduate of France’s elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration, but he’s also been both a judge and a market-research expert with Taylor Nelson Sofres in France and America, which hardly sounds like suitable qualifications to run La Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer. Yet as chief executive of SNCF, which runs France’s pride and joy, Les Trains à Grande Vitesse, he can claim to be Europe’s most powerful and successful rail boss. Oh, and

Ross Clark Ross Clark

A way out of this Kafkaesque world

The regulator of premium-rate telephone services, ICSTIC, is investigating television companies which dangle prizes before viewers’ eyes and then make it extremely difficult to claim them. When it has finished with that, perhaps the watchdog might turn its attention to a similar scam: Gordon Brown’s tax credits. In last month’s Budget, the Chancellor held out the promise that 5.3 million people who will be left worse off by the abolition of the 10 pence starting rate for income tax will be able to offset some of their losses by claiming enhanced tax credits. What he didn’t say was that tax credits are so fiendishly complicated that millions fail to claim

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

In business since 1537, the City companythat’s acquiring targets in Basra

To Armoury House, headquarters of the Honourable Artillery Company, for lunch with the recruiting officer — not with a view to joining up, though the PT would do me good, but to inspect the morale of this ancient City institution and inquire how it is adjusting to the pressures of the modern world, military and financial. The HAC is both a serious territorial regiment, specialising in ‘surveillance and target acquisition’, and a rather good club with a beautiful cricket pitch — an oasis of the old City, walled in on three sides by anonymous new blocks. But nationally the TA is in dire straits: total reserve strength is half what

Dorothy Pope

No Picnic

Ironically, they rode a tandem bike,that warring pair, though any two less like to live in tandem would be hard to find.He rode in front. She took the seat behind. They quarrelled as they puffed up Devon hills.‘You pedalling?’ ‘Of course!’ ‘I swear it feels as if you’re not,’ he snarled. He spoke his mind.She held her tongue sometimes thinking it kind and wiser, since the sidecar held their child,a two-year-old aware and watchful of their wild abuse. Inevitably came the rift.The front, the back, the sidecar came adrift. He took their money, bought himself a carand left. The woman panicked, married far from suitably — again — sank without

Simon Hoggart

Spectator Mini-Bar Offer | 7 April 2007

Order your wines by email Prestige Agencies is part of the admirable Playford Ros company in North Yorkshire. They sell some wonderful wines from the world’s boutique vineyards, often made in tiny quantities, all created with the kind of loving attention you just don’t get in supermarket booze. Because the wineries are so small they are rarely well-known, so, like a drug dealer lurking outside the school gates, Andrew Firth has offered Spectator readers some remarkable bargains in the hope of getting you hooked. I think you will be as impressed and delighted as I was. The two whites come from Foxes Island, which is a dry ridge in the

Jaspistos

Hard sell

In competition No. 2488 you were invited to write a publisher’s press release for one of the following: Weeds in a Changing World; Bombproof your Horse; How Green were the Nazis?. The assignment was inspired by the contest for the Oddest Book Title of the Year, run since 1978 by the Bookseller. Bombproof your Horse (helpfully subtitled: Teach your Horse to Be Confident, Obedient, and Safe No Matter What You Encounter), a serious manual for equestrians by Rick Pelicano and Lauren Tjaden which sells a steady 400 copies a month, stormed to victory in 2004. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 a piece. Alan Millard’s brew of cliché and hyperbole,

Frank Keating

Championship fever

Eight teams, and scarcely 10 points between them for months. While the Premiership title has long been an unchallenging two-horse race between Manchester United and Chelsea, the top of English league football’s second tier, the Championship, remains thrillingly, feverishly congested. The frantic, concertina’d eightsome are (alphabetically is safer, so regularly do the leaders change) Birmingham City, Derby County, Cardiff City, Preston North End, Southampton, Sunderland, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers. One or two others jostle close behind, eager to join a late convulsion for the line. Just three promotion places: automatic for the leading two; the next four play-off to be the one to join them. Wolves at Sunderland

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 31 March 2007

Q. My son is on his gap year and travelling around India. While having lunch with a friend she showed me a website on to which her son has posted a blog of his gap year. By the looks of it virtually every 18–19-year-old public schoolchild in the country has done the same. Endless faces in various states of stupefaction leer out against tropical backgrounds accompanied by descriptions of how ‘chilled’ everyone is. I am only human so when she suggested typing my son’s name into the search box I naturally concurred. I was initially shocked to see that he too looked stupefied in his photographs and he too is

Jeremy Clarke

Fizzing with happiness

Since my boy passed his driving test, just one month after his 17th birthday, I no longer drive the ten miles to his mother’s house to pick him up at weekends. Now he comes and goes between his parents as he pleases, and the weekly mug of tea and a cigarette at her kitchen table, the 20 minutes of gossip, and the ceremony of the handing over of the 40 quid child maintenance, have come to an abrupt end. Missing the tea and gossip, however, I popped over there one day last week for a purely social visit. My boy’s mother hasn’t been able to go anywhere in the past