Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Feedback | 7 May 2005

Made in Britain ‘Today, the Mother of Parliaments has lost half its power, with Brussels making half of British laws,’ says Anthony Browne (‘Parliament of eunuchs’, 30 April). My Conservative opponent in Rotherham goes further. His election address says that 70 per cent of UK law is now made in Brussels. The truth is more modest. According to the House of Commons Library — an impartial all-party outfit — in a report produced in March, less than 9 per cent of UK law originates in Brussels. Confusion seems to have arisen because under the EU’s Single Market there are common rules applying to all European business — many of them

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 7 May 2005

I was surprised by the number of people who disliked the Daily Telegraph’s headline on the election of Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy: ‘“God’s rottweiler” is the new pope’. I don’t think it was meant to be as rude as many thought. But what puzzled me was that I had never heard anyone refer to Ratzinger as ‘God’s rottweiler’. It seems to be a common failure of the whole press to assert that people are ‘known as’ some catchy nickname, when no one ever uses it. One might call it the Dubbing Fallacy. Dub, since the 12th century has signified the conferring of a knighthood, and by the 16th century

Taki

How to win

Trust Tony Blair to call an election the day after The Spectator goes to press: 5 May is a lousy day for conservatives the world over. Karl Marx was born 5 May 1818 in Trier, the Rhineland. The only good thing about the date took place in 1816, when ‘O Solitude’, John Keats’s first published poem, appeared in the Examiner. Mind you, bad day or not, I’m rooting for only two men, the sainted editor and Michael Gove. Both will be elected, and that’s my final word. Michael Howard I will not feel sorry for. Although I know nothing about business, I used to use a sports metaphor when my

Frank Keating

Kelly’s eye

Dotted about the house is the occasional sporting print. Flash, bang, wallop, what a photograph! At the top of our staircase is Herbert Fishwick’s imperishable study at Sydney in 1928 of Hammond’s pluperfect cover-drive -— coiled power, poise, omnipotence, and with the famous blue handkerchief peeping from his pocket. Among the family snaps and sepia descendants on the walls of the downstairs cloakroom is Neil Leifer’s bespoke, breathtaking birdseye shot of Cleveland Williams canvas-flattened by Ali at Houston in 1966, a memorable Neil Libbert evocation of that golden afternoon at Wembley in the same year, and a Patrick Eager 1/500th-of-a-second first-ball freeze-frame of Warne vs Gatting at Old Trafford a

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 7 May 2005

Dear Mary… Q. My wife and I have been invited to an election-night party being given by neighbours of the opposite political persuasion to ourselves. We are very fond of these people but they are very much New Order and we are very much Old, so, to keep things harmonious, the subject of politics is normally given a wide berth. However, we cannot get out of attending this party. Should the worst happen and it becomes clear that New Labour will be swept back into office, how can we keep the despair and bitterness from registering on our faces and remain gracious during what will be a four-to-five hour alcohol-fuelled

Tim Congdon

Charity hopeth all things

Should rich nations give to poor nations? Put bluntly like that, the question of international aid demands the answer ‘yes’. Anyone who tries to qualify the ‘yes’ is liable to be criticised as selfish, unfeeling and inhuman. In his The End of Poverty Jeffrey Sachs sharpens the question. Should very rich people in very rich nations give to very poor nations, especially to the nations of sub-Saharan Africa? His answer is an unqualified ‘yes’. He urges all the leading industrial nations and, in particular, the USA to raise official development assistance to 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals proposed at the

Jaspistos

Playtime

In Competition No. 2390 you were invited to produce a poem which incorporates the titles of at least eight current West End theatrical productions. What with on the town, the anniversary, the birthday party, guys and dolls and blithe spirit, celebration was the keynote. ‘How we laughed to see the woman in white tights/Do cartwheels by the dresser in the hall,’ Tim Raikes recalled. He, Bernadette Evans, G.M. Davis, Shirley Curran and Brian Murdoch all sent in tempting entries, but the winners charmed me with a combination of an easy manner and a choice of the unexpected scene. I have had to take some things on trust, so don’t write

Andrew Lambirth

Revelation of space and time

Andrew Lambirth on an exhibition by one of the country’s foremost sculptors Forms in Light and Shade, an exhibition of Nigel Hall’s new work at Annely Juda Fine Art (23 Dering Street, W1, until 14 May), confirms him as one of our foremost sculptors, who has received too little official recognition in his country of origin and residence. Significantly he is highly regarded abroad — in Europe, America and the Far East — which suggests that his work has an international rather than cosily local appeal. It does, but that is no excuse for the lack of a proper museum retrospective in Britain. Thank-fully, there are rumours of a substantial

The Spectator

Not Howard’s end

The Spectator appears as the electorate goes to the polls, and any analysis of the outcome must therefore be hypothetical. Some points can be made with assurance. The first is that if Michael Howard wins, he will be rated a miracle-worker. Never in the history of magic would so colossal a rabbit have been pulled from such a battered old hat. A victory for Howard would be a stunning vindication of his courage, resilience, patience, powers of organisation and penchant for spasmodic acts of apodeictic ruthlessness. Whatever happens this Thursday, the Conservative party owes Michael Howard a huge debt of thanks. At an age when his colleagues retire to wallow

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Losing their religion

Brendan O’Neill says that Lapsed, or Recovering, Catholics are wallowing in their victim status now that a traditionalist has been elected Pope Lapsed Catholics are sorely disappointed that the 265th Pope of Rome, Benedict XVI, is — shock, horror — a strict Roman Catholic. The 20 million lapsed Catholics in America had hoped, according to an Ohio-based newspaper, that the Church would become a ‘friendlier place’ after the demise of John Paul II, and coax ‘hurt, angry and lapsed Catholics’ like themselves back into the pews. Lapsed Catholics in Britain also prayed for a new happy-clappy era under a less dogmatic Pope, who might, a friend of mine hoped, ‘bend

Stephanie Sprague

Girls just want to have boys

‘If my next child’s a boy, I’ll stop. If not, then I’ll keep trying until I get one.’ These words weren’t spoken by an Asian or Indian woman, desperate to give her husband an heir, but by a white woman, upper-middle-class and married to an investment banker. She spoke from the cosy confines of her flat in Hampstead two months after giving birth to her first child, a girl. Of course, she loves her daughter and she is a wonderful mother. Still, there it is: the disappointment that she didn’t bear a boy. This was not the first time I had met someone disappointed not to have a boy. A

Friday

Diary – 6 May 2005

I was sitting in Holland Park in the sun on Bank Holiday Monday. Just in front of me, a group of young people were having a picnic: crisps, processed cheese, tortilla chips, pepperoni — all washed down with Coca-Cola. There were about eight of them sharing this feast and half of them were seriously overweight. The rest looked pale and unwell. It reminded me that diet is becoming a serious issue in this country and it will not be too long before we face the same obesity problems as they do in America. Walking into a British supermarket is now a depressing experience: the aisles are full of crisps, sweets,

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 30 April 2005

The Mail on Sunday claimed that before the war on Iraq, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, had warned Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, in a 13-page letter that it was questionable whether Britain could legally attack Iraq under UN Resolution 1441. A nine-paragraph summary of the Attorney General’s advice, containing no such caveat, was later published by the government, but it has refused to publish any fuller advice. Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, said that Mr Blair had ‘told lies to win elections. And he’s only taken a stand on one thing in the last eight years — taking Britain to war. And he couldn’t

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 30 April 2005

Fascism is a bigger part of this election than most people realise. We know about the BNP already, but the growing force is Muslim extremism. The tactics are nasty. Look at the website of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) and you will see lists of MPs whom MPAC wishes to make the victims of what it calls ‘political jihad’. MPAC had to apologise for attacking Lorna Fitzsimons, the MP for Rochdale, for being Jewish (she isn’t, in fact), but this does not seem to have cramped its style. Its aim is to ‘eliminate all pro-Israeli, Zionist MPs from power’. An item against Mike Gapes, MP for Ilford South, calls

Robin Oakley

Irish on top

Humphrey Bogart once complained that the trouble with the world was that ‘everybody in it is three drinks behind’. He would have liked the three Irishmen ahead of me on the track to Esher station after Saturday’s Betfred Gold Cup meeting ended the 2004–5 jumping season. ‘Jasus, it was cramped in there, never seen such a crowd,’ declared one, weaving left and cutting off my inside break. ‘“Too many tramps?”, you’re right,’ muttered the next, swerving right to close down the next gap that appeared. ‘There wasn’t a decent woman in sight.’ ‘A decent old run, to be sure,’ declared the third, clearly referring to the big race victor Jack

Taki

Making a stand

New York Happiness is a German pope succeeding the greatest pope ever, a Pole. Not everyone agrees with me. Blogger Andrew Sullivan, a Brit expatriate and gay-rights advocate, called it a ‘full-scale assault’ on liberal Catholics. If he is a typical liberal Catholic, he has just doubled my joy at Benedict XVI’s election. Fifty years ago, secular liberals predicted that education and science would do away with the opium of the people. They were as wrong about the power of faith as they’ve been wrong about everything else. An hysterical Irish–American, Maureen Dowd, writing in the Big Bagel Times, described the new pope as a hatchet-faced bully, a Cardinal No,

Frank Keating

Playing the footie card

Obligatory at election time are party leaders compelled to treat voters as dolts by declaiming lifelong devotion to the people’s game. In 1997 Mr Blair made a complete idiot of himself with a tear-inducing reverie of a childhood on the terraces at St James’ Park drooling over Newcastle United’s Jackie Milburn — but without checking first whether he would have been out of nappies when the black-and-white legend last played there. Shamelessly undaunted, Master T has played it safer this time, nominating a comparative modern — the eager pudding-basin scruff Peter Beardsley — as his favourite player and, for his most memorable goal, ‘Alastair [Campbell] tells me it has to

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 30 April 2005

Dear Mary… Q. Further to your letter regarding the telephone habits of foreigners, would they by any chance be Greek? Married for 20 years to a Greek, I am aware that no convention attaches at all to what we consider to be good manners. Calls will be placed and accepted at any place and any time without restraint on the length, volume or banality of the discussion. I have regularly been to dinner parties where invitees settle on the sofa, among other guests, and as many as two or three of them will make outgoing calls which are manifestly not urgent. Remonstration is received with puzzlement as there is no

Michael Tanner

Animal passion

ENO’s production of Berg’s Lulu, first mounted three years ago, is one of its outstanding successes. Richard Jones, the director, seems to feel a special affinity with Berg, to judge from his recent and wonderful Wozzeck for WNO. Yet Berg’s two operas couldn’t be more different. Stravinsky complained, as many people have, about the big orchestral interlude just before the final brief scene of Wozzeck, that it seems to be telling us how to feel. ‘As if there were any question about how we should feel!’ Stravinsky added. And, however much one loves that stretch of music on its own terms, it’s hard to disagree. Whereas the over-riding feeling I