Society

Saturday

Harobed Ssor

Restaurants | 4 December 2004

Off to Ubon, sister restaurant to the famed Japanese fusion establishment Nobu, which is Nobu spelled backwards. No one had to point that out to me, by the way. I spotted it all by myself, which I think proves what I have said all along: I’m a pretty bright cookie. I’m not sure why the reversed spelling conceit annoys me so much but it does. It even makes me think about walking into the restaurant backwards and then signing the credit-card slip as ‘Harobed Ssor’. Harobed. I like that. It makes me sound like a brave Viking queen. ‘And that morning, Queen Harobed set sail with her army and lots

The Spectator

Feedback | 4 December 2004

I was horrified at the outright lies that got both the U.S. and Britain into the invasion of Iraq and said that if G.W. were re-elected (not that he won the popular vote the first time) I would leave the country. However, after reading this article, I cannot envision returning to Great Britain. My God! What has happened to the land of my birth? So resolute and fearless in time of war (I was a child during WWII and not once did I witness hysteria from any adult, whether parent, aunt, uncle, neighbour or teacher) and the same resolve to not be deterred from going about the daily business of

Frank Keating

The Alex-Arsène show

I fancy football’s most satisfying kick of the year has not been any particular jingo-jangle or hype-hype hooray on the pitch itself, but the cold-eyed gunslingers’ rivalry between two middle-aged obsessives — Sir Alex Ferguson and Monsieur Arsène Wenger, respectively the managers of Manchester United and Arsenal. As an irresistible sideshow it gets better and more compelling by the meeting as the two of them patrol the touchline almost shoulder to shoulder but each, to all intents, completely denying the existence of the other — the hot-blooded passionate Celt Ferguson, his lived-in mulberry cheeks rolling with rhythmic fierceness on his treble gob of Wrigleys, and the pallidly pent-up, wintry-faced Alsatian

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 4 December 2004

Q. At 50, I was entitled to retirement which left me free to start an easier career and I got a job as a driver/valet to a young Saudi Arabian who owns a racing stud. I enjoy the work and we get on well. As is correct, I call him ‘Sir’ and he addresses me by my surname. Trouble is, so does his personal assistant, who is posh but a slip of a girl. She does so in front of my daughter, who is older than her. How can I get her to see that I resent her calling me by my surname without upsetting the applecart? Perhaps I sound

John Laughland

Diary – 4 December 2004

A charming retired lady doctor of my acquaintance buttonholes me whenever I run into her in London. She knows I write for The Spectator and she is convinced that this Diary page is an irritating spoof. ‘It’s just not possible that those people, like Joan Collins, could ever actually write such rubbish,’ she tells me in a Donegal accent undiluted by a life spent in Goring. I have pleaded with her, insisting that she is confusing this page with the one in Private Eye, but I can tell she does not quite believe me. At last I have my chance, by penning the page myself, to convince her that the

Michael Tanner

Problem piece

Like many artists, Puccini seems happiest when creating beings whom he can proceed to subject to torture, while encouraging compassion and grief on the part of spectators. In this respect he is most like the God whom he had been brought up to believe in. Happiness, for him, is always the temporary condition which makes pain more vivid. He is good at creating fleeting comedy, so that when the mood darkens we sense how much deeper he is being. In Gianni Schicchi he makes us laugh all the way to the end only because of an omnipresent corpse, so that the piece is macabre as much as it’s merry. That

Jaspistos

Stormy weather

In Competition No. 2369 you were invited to submit extracts from an imaginary diary during a period of civil convulsion and anarchy in this country. Though I was thinking of future disturbances, I was quite willing to accept historic diaries and was pleased to get reports of unrest in the days of Boudicca, in King Stephen’s reign, and after the battle of Worcester. Moving to today, several of you concentrated on the animal rights brigade, who were busy freeing beasts from zoos, tearing down ‘Fox and Hounds’ and kindred inn signs and disrupting equestrian events. All in all, the chaos was delightful. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and

Stephen Glover

The who, what, where, when of the Blunkett-Quinn business

Who is more in the wrong, David Blunkett or Kimberly Quinn? Everyone has a view. Let me tell the story. I have deliberately chosen not to talk to Kimberly Quinn, who is publisher of The Spectator. Nor have I spoken to David Blunkett, or anyone who works for him. Last July Kimberly Quinn (she then called herself Kimberly Fortier) told Mr Blunkett that their three-year affair was over. Mr Blunkett was very unhappy about this. He was in love with Mrs Quinn, and seems not to have acted particularly rationally. He wanted at the very least to establish his paternity of Mrs Quinn’s two-year-old son, as well as the child

Peter Oborne

Politicians and journalists are in a conspiracy against the public

The universal predicament which confronts the western world at the start of the 21st century concerns the breakdown of boundaries. Philosophers blur the distinction between good and evil; society no longer protects family life; sociologists applaud the collapse of class barriers; globalisation challenges national borders; postmodernism asserts that truth and falsehood are the same. The act of adultery, with its savage betrayal of marriage, is the most accessible metaphor for our sorrowful modern predicament. At Westminster, as elsewhere, we suffer from transgression of boundaries. There are numerous examples of this in contemporary politics. One of the most curious is the collapse of the dividing line between politician and journalist. Go

The Spectator

Blunkett’s kiss and tell

There is no prize for predicting the two least exciting political events of 2005: the publication of Sir Alan Budd’s inquiry into David Blunkett’s alleged ‘fast-tracking’ of a visa application for his former lover’s nanny, and the conclusion of Sir Philip Mawer’s investigation into the Home Secretary’s misuse of a first-class Parliamentary rail warrant to speed his mistress to his Derbyshire weekend home. Unless Mr Blunkett has already resigned, these investigations — which needless to say will cost taxpayers vastly more than the railway tickets in question — are no more likely to assassinate him than Lords Hutton and Butler finished off the ministers involved in their respective inquiries. Clearly,

Theodore Dalrymple

Second Opinion | 4 December 2004

Occasionally I walk home from the prison. Usually I take a taxi. Very rarely indeed do I drive; I don’t much care for parking within a mile radius of an establishment from which car thieves are released daily. I turned on the wireless and an unctuously sermonising Church of England voice emerged. ‘We pray for our world,’ it said, ‘especially those parts of it afflicted with violence.’ I thought for a moment that he was referring to the bed-sits and housing estates near my home, as well as the casualty department of my hospital. But he wasn’t, of course. ‘We pray for the Middle East. We pray for the hostages,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Globophobia | 4 December 2004

A loftily named environmental pressure group called the Food Commission has been upset by the sale of bottled water from Fiji in Waitrose supermarkets. The water, it complains, has clocked up 10,000 ‘food miles’ before it reaches Western consumers. ‘Transporting water halfway across the world is surely the most ludicrous use of fossil fuels when water is plentiful in the UK,’ it complains. It is also concerned that we are wasting fossil fuels by importing prawns from Indonesia (7,000 food miles) and carrots from South Africa (5,900 food miles). Counting the number of miles travelled by a product is a bizarre and crude way of trying to assess the environmental

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 27 November 2004

‘Lord Rutherford,’ said my husband, looking up from the Telegraph and taking a glug of whisky. He might as well communicate by flags, because ‘Lord Rutherford’ means a letter to the editor from a reader who knows no more about a subject than he does about atomic physics. This time it was marmalade. ‘I was told by the French owner of a well-known brand of jam,’ wrote the reader, ‘that the origin of the word marmalade is in fact the English mispronunciation of the French phrase ‘‘maladie de Marie’’. Mary, Queen of Scots, would visit her close ally the French king by sea from Scotland rather than risk the wrath

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 27 November 2004

In the Queen’s Speech, the government announced 32 Bills: one to impose ‘voluntary’ identity cards and then compulsory cards; another to create a Serious Organised Crime Agency; a Counter-Terrorist Bill that might allow trial without jury and the admittance of evidence from tapped telephones; a Discrimination Bill to extend the rights of disabled people, and an Equality Bill to criminalise rudeness about religious beliefs, both to be enforced by a Commission for Equality and Human Rights. The Prince of Wales wrote in a memorandum about a woman who then went to an employment tribunal: ‘What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 27 November 2004

There is no shortage of people who say that they are willing to break the hunting ban. Particularly the young, who have no responsibilities, and the old, who feel they have nothing to lose, declare themselves ready for prison, even for suicide. But supporters of rural liberty should beware of the great curse of English romantics — the love of the futile gesture. And those hunting people on the other side of the argument who fear that they can now be arrested for absolutely anything should also calm down. It is time to study the ‘best practice’ (good New Labour term, that) of non-violent conflict. Extraordinary that English people now

Simon Courtauld

Bream lover

A bass, I have always thought, is a bass, but these days it is called sea bass — quite redundantly, since freshwater bass are not known in Europe. The bream of the sea, on the other hand, should be distinguished from the freshwater fish of the same name which is related to carp. Instead, it is usually referred to only by its colour — black, red or gilthead; but if it is described simply as ‘sea bream’, which I have seen recently on an expensive London restaurant menu, make sure you know which one you are getting. In North America sea bream is called porgy, a name by which it

Taki

Sexual imperative

Back in London for a debate at the Intelligence Squared Forum on the motion that monogamy is bad for the soul. I am arguing against it, as well I should. Had I not wasted my life and time chasing women non-stop, I could have been a contender, a somebody. As the 20th century’s greatest philosopher, Groucho Marx, once said, ‘Some people claim that monogamous marriage interferes with romance. There’s no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.’ Kidding aside, marriage does protect against feelings of loneliness. But that’s about all. Although I will argue for monogamy, I won’t believe a word I say.

Frank Keating

Salisbury tales

These days, I suppose, they would call it a gap year. In my case, it was nearer two. Idling around Africa with a rucksack, that is. Zimbabwe was called Southern Rhodesia then, and in 1961, in my early twenties, I chased a haughty blonde Virginia Veitch from London’s Earls Court, whose pa worked for Barclays in Harare (then Salisbury) and who, when I arrived with gormless grin — ‘Dwarling, ’tis me!’ — smartly sneered, ‘Get lost, punk.’ Africa was a large place to get lost in when you were a bum and broke. Nevertheless, between sweltering subbing shifts for the local Herald and sending back naive chancer’s dispatches on flimsy

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 27 November 2004

Dear Mary… Q. Last week I went to a private view of Craigie Aitchison’s new pictures. I have always been a fan of his and having had a windfall I was looking forward to purchasing one of his compositions. I asked a gallery assistant for a price list — a reasonable request, one might think, but her response was, ‘We don’t do price lists. However, if you were interested in a particular picture we might be able to help.’ I was left feeling snubbed and so pursued the matter no further. How should I have replied? Name and address withheld A. You could have pulled a sympathetic face and said,

Michael Mcmahon

Religious conversions

With half the kingdom now designated by New Labour as a grey Lego baseboard to press soul-less plastic bricks into, there is an ever-growing demand for properties of age and character. Homes made from redundant churches or chapels are blessed with both. One of the prayers that used to be recited in the most ancient of them was ‘Domine, dilexi decorum domus tuae’: ‘I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house.’ It could be said by many house-hunters today. FPD Savills’ Cambridge office is selling one of the most striking examples of contemporary religious conversion: ‘A magnificent Grade II*-listed former parish church arranged in the traditional chancel and