Society

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

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 17 September 2005

Pro-God, anti-religion Theo Hobson makes some interesting points in his article about ‘literary atheism’ (‘Writing God off’, 10 September) but his case is fatally flawed by his repeated tendency to assume that ‘religion’, ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ are somehow synonymous. They are not. It is, in fact, perfectly possible to reject religion without rejecting God; one can be anti-religion without being an atheist. In many minds, especially today, ‘religion’ has come to mean the kind of established and organised institutions, be they Christian, Jewish or Muslim, noted more for their intolerance of dissent — or much, much worse — than for anything positive. Condemning Martin Amis for being influenced by Mick

Simon Courtauld

Shark ascending

The first barracuda to be caught in British waters was landed at Newlyn, Cornwall four years ago. This summer giant fin whales have been spotted off the Pembrokeshire coast. The evidence of these alien visitors may be attributable to global warming, or to changes in the flow of ocean currents, but it makes one wonder if it may be only a matter of time before a fearsome great white shark moves up the Atlantic from its present killing grounds on the South African coast to the bathing beaches of north Cornwall (from where, watching a school of porpoises not being chased by a shark, I am writing this month). I

Robin Oakley

Donny style

‘A German joke,’ a former British ambassador once told me, ‘is no laughing matter.’ The Germans take their elections seriously, too. It has been no easy matter, in my day job for CNN, spraying an international audience with initials as I try to explain how the Red–Green coalition of the SPD and Joschka Fischer’s lot are trying to fight off the CDU and its sister party the CSU, who want to govern with the FDP but who, because of the intervention of the PDS plus some SPD rebels in the new Linkspartei, may be forced to govern in a ‘Grand Coalition’ with the aforesaid SPD…. had enough? Sorting out the

Frank Keating

Hail to the coach!

The Ashes cricket series was unimaginably compelling from first day to last. At Lord’s on 21 July England began their challenge by bowling out the world champion Australians for just 190 to kick-start the turbulent rollercoaster, and in the following 54 days of beguiling intensity and speculation the whole cricket world — and far beyond it — became engulfed in the flamboyant ride right up to the barmy damp-squib ‘bad-light’ ending. The best team deservedly won. The losers, surprised by such a sustained challenge, fought like cornered cats, then gave generous best. Cricket folk had to half-close moist eyes and summon thoughts of Jessop’s imperishable century on the very same

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 17 September 2005

Q. I sympathise with B.M.F. (20 August). At a recent Proms concert, a superb performance of ‘Gerontius’ was ruined by a middle-aged woman continually fanning herself with her programme. It was not a hot night, and she was the only person in the hall doing so. She was very rude when someone tried to approach her about it in the interval. What do you suggest, Mary?J.McC., London W8 A. In these situations it is always easier to use a third person as a human buffer than to deal directly with a miscreant who may be defensive. You could have whispered to one of the people sitting next to the fanner

The Spectator

Feedback | 17 September 2005

Comments on The grim lessons of Katrina by Walter Ellis What a ridiculous negative article. We get hit by a level 5 hurricane. What do you know? There’s death and destruction. Mr Ellis notes the fact that there is a black underclass in New Orleans, which has been there for 200 years, and in other major American cities as well, which have been there for 150 years. If this is a measure of our inherent racialism what does he say about the growing black middle and upper class, the phenomenon of the browning of American society, the tremendous influx of Hispanics and Asians, all attracted by the relative political and

William Brett

Trapped in a shaming role

Racial shame looms large in this ‘imaginative reconstruction’ of the life of Bert Williams, the black American entertainer. Williams only began to achieve notable success after deciding, in 1895, to smear his face with burnt cork and widen his lips with make-up, in order to ‘play the coon’. He would shuffle his feet and boggle his eyes, thereby providing white audiences with a stereotype they could easily recognise. Performers can experience complex and ambiguous emotions when presenting characters for the benefit of audiences, and the adoption of ‘blackface’ by black performers is perhaps the most potent example of this phenomenon. It is for this reason that Caryl Phillips is entitled

Toby Young Toby Young

Yorkshire grit

The second half of Harvest, Richard Bean’s new play about four generations of a Yorkshire farming family, opens with the main character, William Harrison, sitting by himself and listening to the wireless. Suddenly, we hear the opening theme music of The Archers and, without hesitating, he leans over and switches it off. Harvest is full of amusing little touches like that. It’s a political play with some serious points to make about the plight of the small British farmer, but Bean is canny enough to leaven the mix with plenty of gags, a couple of romantic subplots, a handful of comic characters and — in the final scene, at least

Jaspistos

Rotten reviews

In Competition No. 2409 you were invited to provide a vitriolic review of a generally acknowledged masterpiece by a critic at the time of its appearance. ‘Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer’ was Le Figaro’s stern verdict on Madame Bovary. The Odessa Courier greeted Anna Karenina with ‘Sentimental rubbish …Show me one page that contains an idea.’ And after seeing A Midsummer Night’s Dream Pepys recorded: ‘The most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.’ I must confess that I too can be numbered among the barbarians: I have never come enjoyably to grips with either Proust or Ulysses, and there’s not much time left for conversion.

Ursula Buchan

Climate change

All my working life, I have been adapting to climate change. As an apprentice in a garden near Antwerp in the summer of 1976, I spent the early mornings and evenings (we could not work in the day since the temperatures topped 40?C) trying to save the languishing, but famous, collection of rhododendrons, by watering them from dustbins filled at a borehole. That early experience gave me both a sharper eye for stress in plants and a scepticism about the immutability of circumstances. I don’t appear to be unusual. In recent years, in our best private and public gardens, there has been much adventurous experimenting, both with plants which will

Paul Johnson

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore

To someone of my age, who has seen the world and now wants only repose and beauty, Lake Como is the perfect place. I do not know how many times I have visited it in the last two decades, but over 100 watercolours (not counting the ones I have given away or sold) testify to its hold on my affections. Twice a day I walk up from the castle to my painting-tower, whence the whole stupendous panorama of the lake can be seen, pointing to St Moritz mountain in the north, and to the south to Como itself, city of silk. It is quiet up there. You hear, of course,

Peter Oborne

What’s cricket and what’s not: the secret sporting history of Tony Blair

I used to play for the same cricket club as Tony Blair, though not at the same time. It was called the Cricket Pistols, named after the punk rock band which is still indelibly associated in the public mind with the names Johnny Rotten and the late Sid Vicious. My own association with the Pistols was comparatively brief. They were affable, faintly druggie types, many of whom had attended Cambridge university, and in some cases completed their degrees. At least one had spent time in borstal. The Pistols were fairly down at heel then, but have since made good and tend to live in large houses in Notting Hill Gate.

The Spectator

A fair tax

It is tempting to sympathise with the hoary mob of farmers and hauliers, collectively known as the Fuel Lobby, who as we go to press are threatening to blockade motorways and oil refineries in an attempt to force the government to cut the duty on petrol and diesel. As we have frequently argued in these pages, Gordon Brown’s eight-year programme of stealthy tax rises has raided our pockets, yet failed to produce any corresponding improvements in public services. Given that the farmers and hauliers have provided the most vociferous and powerful protest against Labour’s excessive taxation, it is easy to understand why ordinary motorists should be moved to toot in

Leo McKinstry

Disability allowances

An insidious paradox lies at the heart of the modern thrust for disability rights. This agenda is supposed to promote equality and fair treatment, goals to which no one could object. Yet the official definition of disability is now so wide, so all-embracing, that it includes the feckless, the antisocial, even the criminal. In the madhouse of today’s Britain, even the crack addict and the violent thug can be classified as disabled under anti-discrimination regulations. Such absurdities have arisen because of the influence of the psychiatric profession, which has decided that almost any selfish or dangerous conduct can now be categorised as mental illness. In this twisted world all concepts

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Fear in the community

The local people who turned out to see Princess Helen Louise open the new wing of St Leonard’s Hospital in Sudbury, Suffolk, in 1938 would not have recognised the term ‘stakeholder’, but they would seem to have fitted perfectly Tony Blair’s vision of a breed of socially responsible citizens helping to run the country’s public services. ‘They paid for the hospital through voluntary subscriptions of a few pence a week,’ says local historian Barry Wall. ‘The hospital had been built in 1867 using the proceeds of the sale of the site of an old leper home which had been in existence since the reign of Edward II. But it was

Friday

Simon Heffer

Diary – 16 September 2005

The New Labour assault on John Humphrys was inevitable, not because he is a Tory (I have no reason to suppose he is) but because he defies Labour’s Gestapo, being always scrupulously fair. He interviewed me last week in a debate with the genial Mr Billy Bragg. When Mr Bragg misrepresented something I had said, Mr Humphrys immediately corrected him and set the record straight. Instead of being castigated by a director-general who manifestly lives in fear of his masters in No. 10, Mr Humphrys should be given a huge pay rise and put in charge of improving the training of other BBC journalists. One offence he would never commit