Society

Saturday

Petronella Wyatt

A bastard? Me?

David Davis is the first prospective Tory leader to have been born in a council house to an unmarried mother. The bookies’ favourite to take over from Michael Howard, Davis, 56, is said by his supporters to have garnered the necessary qualities on his way to the top: determination, spirit, tenacity, a sense of social justice and an understanding of ‘the man and woman on the street’. His detractors claim the shadow home secretary is arrogant, treacherous, lazy and unable to get on with those from more privileged backgrounds, such as the members of the ‘Notting Hill Set’, to which his leadership rival David Cameron belongs. I have arranged to

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern – 30 September 2005

In his Investigation a few weeks ago, the editor turned his thoughts to the poet Horace and his ‘special relationship’ with the emperor Augustus. He pointed out that, while the emperor’s largesse obliged Horace to turn out a good deal of praise poetry, Horace himself, while genuinely grateful, nevertheless exercised a good deal of ingenuity in not laying it on too thick. The editor may not have had the space to point out the intense pressure Horace was under ‘from the emperor himself’. In his Life of Horace, the historian Suetonius records the various attempts that Augustus made to grapple Horace to him tighter than a brother. Augustus invited Horace

Anthony Howard

Diary – 30 September 2005

It was that faintly implausible radical and revolutionary, Clem Attlee, who once likened the Labour party annual conference to ‘a Parliament of the movement’. And so, indeed, it used to be before our current Great Helmsman and his chums on the central committee put an end to all that. The party may still make its autumnal trip to the seaside but all it does when it gets there is to lay on a pageant or present a TV carnival. Worse than that, it is now essentially a commercial undertaking, with even journalists — below the rank of editor or political editor — required to pay for the privilege of being

Saturday

Jeremy Clarke

Doctor in the house | 24 September 2005

Six for Sunday lunch. Me, my boy, my mother, my mother’s boyfriend Dr Lovepants, my sister, and this poised, well-groomed, long-haired chap, billed as the new man in my sister’s life. Me and the boy are a bit late and everyone else has started eating. The new man in my sister’s life’s hair is receding at the front and long at the back and he’s got a pointy beard. I’m dying to discomfit him with searching questions. New men in my sister’s life, as a group, are normally among the most unserious people in the world. But this one looks like he’s treating the occasion with at least as much

Frank Keating

Men of Kent

‘Judo Al’ Hayes has died in Dallas, aged 76. My hearing the sad news coincided with a tumble of forgotten yesterdays as I watched last week, as part of ITV’s 50th birthday party, some evocatively grainy snatches of the all-in wrestling which used to clock up more than 10 million viewers on a midweek winter evening and every Saturday teatime. Each of the channel’s regional companies took turns to record the fun. Four decades ago I was a callow, clueless ITV outside broadcasts producer for Rediffusion’s London channel sometimes charged with covering these grunt-and-groan passion plays from a series of suburban small halls. Suddenly on TV last week, in a

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 24 September 2005

Dear Mary… Q. Staying with English friends in the south of France (about whom I have written to you before) my hosts took me to a rather raucous fancy dress party. Being sartorially challenged, I opted for a very short belly-dancing skirt and a minimalist top. My fortysomething hostess went as a Seventies go-go dancer so I did not feel underdressed. The party was made up of an eclectic mix of doctors, designers, artists, rock stars and other exotica, and after supper the music began in earnest. You cannot possibly imagine my frisson of excitement when I was smoothly and subtly led on to the dance floor by a very

The Spectator

Feedback | 24 September 2005

Comments on Why do we tolerate intolerance? by Rod Liddle As Secretary of the Scottish Friends of Israel, www.scottishfriendsofisrael.org, I read Rod Liddle’s article and considered it going some way to explaining some of what gets in the way of the seemingly simple idea of differing shades of humanitarian aid working together for the better good. Yet, among many of the friends which I forwarded the article to many, like me, were a little perplexed at who Mr Liddle was describing as “Zionist cockroaches of Israel”. I would very much appreciate a short explanation of that remark from Mr Liddle as to who it was, and wasn’t, he was referring

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 24 September 2005

The government decided to put off overhauling council tax by revaluing houses until after the next election. The National Health Service, despite unprecedented increases in government spending on it, went into the red for the first time in five years, with a deficit of £250 million, which Sir Nigel Crisp, its chief executive, pointed out was only 0.4 per cent of its £69.7 billion budget. Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, proposed keeping suspected terrorists in jail for three months without charge; but he inadvertently sent out a letter that retained an earlier draft of his views, including the sentence, ‘I believe there is room for debate as to whether

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 24 September 2005

Even in successful parliamentary democracies there comes a time when no political party is confronting the questions which matter most, and so the voter feels cheated. The worst time for this in Britain was the 1930s. Conservative appeasement seemed more and more inadequate, but the Labour party, then in pacifist mood, did not offer a convincing alternative. It is similar today, only the other way round in party terms. The biggest problem facing the country is Islamist terrorism, not so much because of the security threat (grave though that is), but because of the cultural and political war that is behind it. An effort is being made, like the effort

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 24 September 2005

Our vanishing hospitals In 1909 my great-grandfather C.H.E. Croydon built and gave the Croydon Cottage Hospital to the people of Felixstowe. It consisted of ten beds and the population at that time was roughly 1,840. We now find that, with a population of nearly 33,000 and ever more need for hospital beds, it faces the possibility of closure (‘Fear in the community’, 17 September). The Bartlett Hospital, also in Felixstowe, is to close; this has already been decided by the PCT. They say that to have two hospitals in Felixstowe is unsustainable because of the large deficit position they are in. But when the buildings are sold and the money

Robert Stewart

Pinning down the king

While well-heeled, self-preserving lawyers of eminence and rank fled to London to avoid a perilous undertaking, John Cooke, a low-born Puritan of great courage, submitting himself to God’s purposes and remaining true to his Roundhead convictions, accepted the brief to prosecute Charles I in the High Court established by an act of parliament for the purpose. In telling his story Geoffrey Robertson has redeemed from obscurity an unsung hero of true greatness, a selfless champion of the poor and a law reformer of rare distinction. More important, he has shed invigorating light on the course of the English Civil War, especially on its legal aspects and consequences. Charles’ unshakable belief

The Spectator

Catastrophe in Basra

To understand the full scale of the catastrophe that might be about to enfold British forces in southern Iraq, it is important to be clear about what happened on Monday. When two SAS men were waved down at a police checkpoint, they did not stop. Why not? Because the Iraqi police force has become so densely infiltrated by terrorists and extremists that they believed their lives would have been at risk. In May this year Basra’s chief of police, Hassan al-Sade, admitted that he had lost control of 75 per cent of his 13,750-strong force, and that his men were mainly loyal to one Shiite faction or another. Faced with

Jaspistos

The honest truth

In Competition No. 2410 you were provided with opening and closing words and invited to write a story with the above title. The given words were supposed to be the opening and closing ones of a Maclaren Ross story with this title, but owing to a clerical error, in other words my own foolish blunder, the ending I gave you was the ending of a different story by the same author. The correct ending was ‘I felt I deserved it.’ No matter, you grappled well with the problem presented. I especially enjoyed Basil Ransome-Davies’s cheeky opening: ‘The clock on the street corner said six but it was really five centuries

Alasdair Palmer

Is torture always wrong?

The officers who pumped seven bullets into Jean Charles de Menezes as he sat in a Tube train in Stockwell station on 22 July believed he was a suicide-bomber about to detonate a bomb. They were wrong, and may now face trial for murder. Whether or not they are prosecuted, however, it is almost certain that the Metropolitan Police’s policy of killing people who its senior officers believe are about to detonate bombs will remain. Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Met, has said it will stay, and insists it has been approved by the Home Office, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan Police Authority. Charles Clarke, the

Interconnect

RACE AND CULTURE: Whites need not apply

The ideology of multiculturalism is theoretically meant to build a more tolerant, inclusive Britain. But in practice it is a deeply racist concept, one that judges people by their ethnic origin and thereby promotes division in our society. The very basis of multiculturalism is a contradiction of the democratic principle that everyone should be treated equally, regardless of their background or skin colour. Through its obsession with racial identity, this pernicious creed actually encourages discrimination. The first anti-racism campaigners in Britain fought for equality, demanding government action to combat overt racial prejudice in employment and the provision of public services, especially housing. But since the early 1980s the agenda of

Interconnect

RACE AND CULTURE: ‘Schooling people to be strangers’

About halfway through our interview, Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, lets out a snort of exasperation. It had been building up for quite a while, I think; every time I quoted some good old leftie shibboleth about race relations I sensed a hidden snort or a stifled guffaw. Eventually the man could hold back no longer. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘You can’t make people love people of other races. You just can’t. And you can’t have a law which says we have to love each other. That’s bonkers.’ Phillips is, to his many detractors (mostly on the Left), an unequivocal Blair toadie who has been rewarded

Friday

Joan Collins

Diary – 23 September 2005

I was asked, in January, if I would have dinner with the winner of a raffle in aid of the Conservative party. I gladly agreed. Months later Percy and I turned up a polite 20 minutes late at the Drones Club, only to find a near-empty room. The only people there were two Labour MPs who were so delighted that the Tories hadn’t shown that they jokingly offered to give us dinner. An hour later the raffle winner arrived with some tipsy mates and I found myself the only woman at a table of ten. Thank goodness Percy was there for moral support. I asked Mr Lucky why he was

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 17 September 2005

More on treacle, thanks to Mr Christopher Couchman of Bath, who sends a lovely recipe for Venice treacle, taken from the English Dispensatory of John Quincy (who died in 1722). My husband, before going off on some pharmaceutically funded freebie, said he remembered the book but hadn’t used it recently. I love strange lists, but have no room for all the contents of this ‘capital alexipharmic’. They include ‘Troches of Squills, Troches of Vipers, Long Pepper, Opium, Hedychroi, exungulated dry Red Roses, fragrant sclavonian Orrice, Juice of Liquorice, sweet Navew seeds, Tops of Schordium, Opobalsamum, Cinnamon, Agaric, Myrrh, sweet Coftus or Zedoary, Saffron, true Cassia Bark, Spikenard, Schoenanth, Male Frankincense,

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 17 September 2005

As the price of petrol rose above £1 per litre, a group of protesters calling itself the Fuel Lobby threatened to blockade motorways and oil refineries in protest against fuel duty. Many petrol stations ran out of fuel as motorists resorted to panic-buying. Loyalists rioted in Belfast for two nights, injuring 30 police officers, after the Orange Order was told by the Parades Commission to alter the route of one of its marches by 100 yards. The TUC gathered in Brighton for its annual conference and demanded a return of the right for secondary picketing. A team from Edinburgh University announced it had succeeded in creating a human embryo using

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 17 September 2005

When a disaster or a war happens, very large estimates of the number of dead quickly emerge in the media. These tend to be propagated by two groups — those seeking money to deal with the problem, and those wanting to blame somebody for it. Thus, on 11 September 2001, some early estimates spoke of up to 40,000 dead, and even the more serious ones referred to 5,000. The actual figure was about 2,800. In Iraq a report in the Lancet, using an extraordinary method of extrapolation from a tiny sample, came up with the figure of 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians; yet it seems that the true figure, though bad