Society

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern – 19 August 2005

Given the fault-line between religion and politics in the Muslim world and the priority of Sharia over secular law, what can Muslims do to reassure us that they understand their responsibilities as British citizens? Pliny the Younger and Daniel Stylites may be able to help them. In the absence of an imperial policy towards Christians, Pliny (governor of Bithynia, northern Turkey, ad 110–13) had them arrested and ordered to invoke pagan gods, make offerings to the emperor’s statue and revile the name of Christ. If they did not, they were executed. The emperor Trajan approved, adding three important riders. Christians must not be hunted down; if they repent they must

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 13 August 2005

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, floated all kinds of schemes to counter terrorists, with legislation to be introduced in the autumn, including the amendment of the Human Rights Act in respect of the provisions of the European convention on human rights. Involvement with extremist websites, bookshops or centres would be used as grounds for deporting foreign nationals; bilateral arrangements would be made to protect deportees from torture in their native lands. Mr Blair predicted ‘a lot of battles’ with the courts. ‘Let no one be in any doubt, the rules of the game are changing,’ he said, before going off on holiday, leaving Britain under the notional care of

The Spectator

Letters

Our ‘decadent’ society As Conservative MPs elected at this year’s general election we represent a new generation unencumbered by the political baggage of the past. In this spirit we enthusiastically endorse the rejection articulated by John Hayes (‘Muslims are right about Britain’, 6 August) of the liberal establishment’s assumptions about our society. For too long politicians of the centre and centre-Left — including some who curiously wear the badge of Conservatism — have ignored the common-sense opinions of the hard-working, patriotic majority of Britons who retain their belief in traditional values. In a recent Centre for Social Justice pamphlet, Iain Duncan Smith suggests that ‘it is noteworthy — even remarkable

Frank Keating

Wigan’s peers

Premiership soccer begins today. The poor prancing zillionaires do not get much respite from it, do they? Nor, alas, do we. Newcastle United at Arsenal for starters is a result to watch out for, ditto when Wayne Rooney’s Manchester United make the short journey to Wayne Rooney’s former Everton. Also on day one, folks, the first of the relegation heartstoppers already — Albion at Man. City and Brum at Fulham. I’m afraid the Premiership these days must be regarded as a four-division league in itself — those clubs seethingly fighting relegation, those in relieved but meaningless limbo, the handful scrapping for a minnow’s place in Europe, and that elite, permanent

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 13 August 2005

Dear Mary… Q. I am shortly to attend a wedding. My problem is that I feel uneasy about kissing the bride as she stands in the receiving line because I am very aware of the dozens, if not hundreds, of lips that will have distributed various germs on to the same area of cheek I will be kissing myself. Would it be in order to make a little joke of my neurosis, bring out a facial cleaning wipe and dab her cheek with it before planting my kiss? Might she, indeed, be grateful to me for stripping off some of these accumulated DNA samples?P.E., Pewsey, Wilts A. The bride will

Taki

Papa on a boat

On board S/Y Bushido In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain and the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees… I once quoted the exact passage in these here pages and called it writing at its best, and a very nice Oxford don wrote me a very nice letter telling

Jeremy Clarke

Poor reception

In summer we let half the house out to paying visitors, who generally stay for a week, from Saturday to Saturday. Before the guests arrive we always worry about whether they’ll like the place; whether they’ll feel that their hard-earned money has been well spent. The ones that come every year must like it, of course. But if people are coming for the first time, there is always the nagging anxiety that they might not think the place is all it’s cracked up to be in the brochure and feel cheated. This week’s guests, a couple, were first- timers. On Saturday morning I mowed the grass and strimmed the edges

Simon Courtauld

Perchance to eat

I have recently acquired a charming little book by Ambrose Heath called From Creel to Kitchen. Published in 1939, it offers recipes for 20 species of freshwater fish caught in our rivers and lakes, including barbel, chub, gudgeon, roach and tench, though not powan or the unappealingly named burbot. It had not occurred to me that there are apparently more species of fish in fresh water than in the sea, though I doubt whether many readers, or indeed the editor, would be impressed by my devoting a column to dace or rudd. But I do think perch deserves more than a mention in passing. Izaak Walton, who was knowledgable on

The Spectator

Feedback | 13 August 2005

Comments on All Men Are Not Equal by Mark Steyn Mark Steyn makes so much sense, even while writing in an entertaining way. I worry a bit about him -I just hope he does not put himself at risk.Beryl Thomas Excellent, as usual. ‘Blairism’ ain’t British. Britain hasn’t been British since Thatcher was stabbed in the back by idiots. Canada hasn’t been close to sanity since the faux intellectual, would-be revolutionary Marxist actor Trudeau was appointed PM by the whores and thieves of the Liberal party, looking for a Great White North JFK.Alex Dryden I see that Mark Steyn doesn’t like the invaders of Canada paying the real owners of

Jaspistos

Gods or dogs

In Competition No. 2404 you were invited to supply a poem beginning, ‘I do not know much about gods; but …’, substituting, if you prefer, ‘dogs’ for ‘gods’. As I know almost nothing about either, I judged this with a benevolently neutral eye. I suspect that several of you who disclaimed much knowledge of dogs were lying, but as long as you fooled me I was happy. Three of you competed for my attention — and why not? — by interpreting ‘gods’ in the sense of the upper gallery of a theatre; nobody, however, treated ‘dogs’ as andirons. The prizewinners, printed below, gods before dogs of course, get £25 each

Christopher Fildes

Here’s a better way to run Gordon’s asylum: pay attention to the inmates

To put the lunatics in charge of the asylum makes admirable sense. They are the market for its services. They know where the straitjacket pinches. The Commissioner in Lunacy may think that he knows better, but the sum total of their knowledge must be more than he, cocooned in some distant office, could conceivably deploy. The Treasury pays lip service to these principles, but it always expects to know best, and better, certainly, than the two million customers for its tax credits who seem to have been sent the wrong amount of money. These credits were Gordon Brown’s invention, based on an idea that his factotum, Ed Balls, had brought

The Spectator

Women in Iraq

For the dwindling band of us prepared to admit that we backed the war in Iraq, there appears to be yet more bad news from Baghdad. By next Monday the Iraqis are supposed to have agreed a new constitution, and early indications have been that it will not be an entirely progressive document. Women’s groups in Iraq and the West are alarmed at concessions to the Shiite majority, which seem to destroy any advances made by women under the secular Baathist regime. One clause, inserted to please the mullahs, says that ‘the followers of any religion or sect are free to choose their civil status according to their religious or

Dean Godson

Terror camps in the Lake District

Colin Cramphorn, the chief constable of West Yorkshire, occupies one of the two hottest seats in British policing today. Since it emerged that all four British suicide bombers of 7 July came from his patch, he has scarcely drawn breath. Cramphorn’s only relaxation in that fevered week came after his surgeon — who has been treating him for prostate cancer — called on the day of the police raids in Leeds and Dewsbury with the bad news that the tumour had spread to his spine. The consultant dispatched Cramphorn straight to the MRI scanner. ‘I stuck on my earphones, lay back and listened to Vivaldi,’ he recalls with customary matter-of-factness.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Sardonic genius

On the morning of 13 August 1985 I was at my desk at the London Evening Standard when Mary Kenny rang; she had left a message the previous evening on my answering machine at home which I had failed to pick up. Shiva Naipaul had held his 40th birthday party in the spring. Less than a week earlier, he had rung and suggested lunch, which I couldn’t make. Now Mary told me that he had died the day before. Shiva had always been afraid of death. In that respect alone it had come to him mercifully, when he was struck by a coronary thrombosis while sitting alone in his flat

Bruce Anderson

Let them build nukes

It would appear to be another August crisis. From Washington to Tel Aviv there are expressions of alarm and despondency, especially in Brussels. It looks as if European diplomacy has failed. The Iranians seem determined to press ahead with their nuclear weapons programme. To judge by the newspapers, one would assume that this has come as a shock. But anyone involved with Iran policy who claims to be shocked is only pretending. Apart from Britain’s relations with the EU, it is hard to think of a foreign policy question on which there has been a greater divergence between the public version of events and the policy-makers’ private thoughts. Over the

Andrew Gilligan

The real threat to Britain

In these frightening days, we must seek our consolations where we can; and one of mine, over the last month, has been running a private contest to log the most idiotic remark made by one of the battalions of ‘security experts’ on standby at times like this to provide vitally needed, life-sustaining, 24-hour fatuous commentary on all major broadcast news outlets. There was the lady from the prestigious think-tank on Sky News who said, quite late on 7 July, that the bombings were ‘clearly a major incident’. There was the ‘risk management consultant’ on The World Tonight who said that shooting people in the head, à la Jean Charles de

Friday

Diary – 12 August 2005

I have always thought I was allergic to the English countryside: too melancholic, too dark, too many Daily Mail readers. So it was with some misgivings that I received the news from my wife that we had taken a lease on a cottage in Oxfordshire. I should say that the property is in the grounds of Blenheim Palace, so it’s not exactly the untamed wilds of the countryside: we have 2,000 acres of beautifully tended Capability Brown parkland to enjoy, we are only an hour and a half from the Ivy, and our fellow tenants on the estate are public relations chiefs, television presenters and TV production executives. In fact,

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 6 August 2005

The Irish Republican Army sent out a digital video disc in which Mr Seanna Walsh, once imprisoned for his deeds, read out a statement saying, ‘The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign …Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.’ In a joint response Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Mr Bertie Ahern, the Taoiseach of Ireland, took this to mean ‘the end of the IRA as a paramilitary organisation’. Mr Blair called it ‘a step of unparalleled magnitude’. The IRA offered to let a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister see some arms being put

The Spectator

Feedback | 6 August 2005

The evil of Hiroshima Andrew Kenny’s article on the blessedness of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima had an unpleasant whiff of 1945 propaganda (‘Giving thanks for Hiroshima’, 30 July). He seems to base his views on his own visits to Hiroshima in modern times, and on the opinions of British people who in 1945 were fed the lie that unless the bomb had been dropped, the war would have continued with great loss of life. A more dispassionate historical understanding suggests that the reason the Americans dropped the bomb when they did was to prevent the Russians entering and dominating the Pacific theatre of war. It had nothing to

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 6 August 2005

As his contribution to Anglo-Islamic understanding, my husband asked me what the connection was between genius loci and the genie in the bottle. I couldn’t say that I knew, although I don’t suppose Osama bin Laden knows either. Genius is complicated semantically. I think it has gone a step further than the OED suggests, now signifying an Einsteinian ‘brains’, not so much in contradistinction to a man of talent as 100 years ago. In Latin it meant first the tutelary deity accompanying a man through life, like Socrates’ daemon. The Middle Ages entertained what was said to be a Pythagorean belief in a good and a bad genius that lead