Society

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern – 26 August 2005

These days the ability to understand and explain in public prints the aims of the people perceived as public enemies is likely to get you deported. So one wonders what our government would have made of that pillar of the Roman establishment Tacitus — consul, provincial governor and historian — who invented an extraordinarily sympathetic speech to put in the mouth of Calgacus, the Caledonian ‘terrorist’ who fought Agricola’s army somewhere in the mountains of Aberdeenshire in ad 83. Here is the first selection of extracts from it: ‘As often as I examine the reasons for this war and the crisis we now face, I am fully confident that the

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 20 August 2005

To Sir John Hall, Bt (not to be confused with the other Sir John Hall, Bt, the magician), I owe the most satisfying defining statement I have seen for a long time: ‘The chief use of vipers is for the making of treacle.’ Sir John did not write that sentence himself, for his subject was the Golden Syrup tin. The declaration about vipers came from the Natural History (1693) of Sir Thomas Blount, Bt, whose wife bore him five sons and nine daughters before he died, aged 47. I stumbled across that in following up something Sir John wrote about the ‘strong’ in the Golden Syrup motto having a subsidiary

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 20 August 2005

British Airways flights to and from London Heathrow were brought to a standstill for a day, and disrupted for days afterwards, by unofficial strikes by ground staff in sympathy with 700 staff sacked by a company supplying airline meals. Leaked documents showed that the Brazilian man shot dead at Stockwell in London by police seeking suicide-bombers had not vaulted over a barrier at the station, nor had he been wearing a baggy jacket. Mr Omar Bakri, a radical Islamic cleric who had left Britain after 20 years to visit his mother, he said, in Lebanon, was barred from returning by Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, who declared his presence

Robin Oakley

A feeling in your bones

Racing at Newbury on Stan James Day was more like yachting, once defined as standing in a gale tearing up £20 notes. Nor did it help when the heavens opened that my umbrella was in the stands 200 yards away and that, thanks to a back injury, I could only hobble at the pace of an asthmatic turtle. It just wasn’t my day. On the way from Kennington to Paddington I had been foolish enough to question the sainted Mrs Oakley’s navigational skills and only narrowly escaped being turned to stone in the froideur which followed. I had mistimed my trains and was bound to miss the first race anyway,

Frank Keating

Trent warfare

The Ashes are burning bright all right. A lot of cricket still to play. Two Tests remaining — the fourth begins at Nottingham on Thursday, and how might things stand as they go for the grandest of finales at Kennington on 8 September? The series has easily outstripped its ballyhoo billing, every dramatic switch and swash pinning back the ears of the nation. ‘What’s the score?’ is the ubiquitous question. In every high street you see huddles of the citizenry pausing on pavements, fretfully to peer through the plateglass shopfronts of premises which sell television sets. A month ago the Australian captain, with disdainful sauce, reckoned that only a solitary

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 20 August 2005

Dear Mary… Q. My wife and I have had a number of people to stay at our seaside house this summer. We are writers and since most of our friends are what would be called ‘arty types’ we are usually a very relaxed party. Nevertheless I still feel ill at ease when hosting breakfast in pyjamas, which is usually the case, because of the insecure aperture of the traditional pyjama trouser. Should one inadvertently give offence, what is the correct apology? How do other men manage to keep the aperture from gaping when in mixed company? C.B., Aldeburgh, Suffolk A. It is almost impossible for a pyjama-wearer to avoid giving

The Spectator

Feedback | 20 August 2005

Comments on Don’t blame religion by Theo Hobson 15/08/05 It is not the belief in an afterlife that is the problem, it is the absolute belief in God, the Fuhrer or the working class or whatever else. Once you have that belief it is a short step to being willing to kill those who are not part of the group. George Bush’s ‘if you are not with us you are against us’ attitude is the basis of all religious violence and oppression through the ages. The current spate of Islamic violence is not an odd aberration. This is what the religious do, and have done, for thousands of years. Jeff

Jaspistos

Inst

In Competition No. 2405 you were invited to write a poem in praise or dispraise of the month of August. ‘The English winter — ending in July,/ To recommence in August,’ grumbled Byron when he was particularly fed up with the island. On the other hand Day Lewis wrote a delightful poem, ‘A Windy Day in August’: Dust leaps up, apples thud down,The river’s caught between a smile and a frown… ‘August for the people and their favourite islands’ — today I’m leaving for Andros, which I hope will not prove a people’s favourite. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, barring Alanna Blake, who has £30. Though August is

Mark Glazebrook

Northern lights

The Edinburgh Festival started in 1947 as essentially a music festival, the brainchild of Glyndebourne’s John Christie. The capital was soon turned into a magnet for fringe theatre and other events. It is said that dour natives fearing success left town in a hurry in order to escape the culture-tourist influx. Meanwhile public and private galleries rose to the occasion with special exhibitions, despite the fact that the visual arts have never been part of the official International Festival. Douglas Cooper’s threat to resign his curatorship of a major 1960s Arts Council Delacroix show because some loans had been refused was a sign, among other things, that standards were of

Paul Johnson

Wittgenstein and the fatal propensity of politicians to lie

Lying is a terrible thing in any circumstances. When politicians and governments lie, it is a sin against society as a whole, against justice and civilisation. In Ray Monk’s admirable life of Wittgenstein, I learn that at the age of eight he asked himself the question: ‘Why should one tell the truth, if it’s to one’s advantage to tell a lie?’ This was the first time he posed a philosophical query. His answer was a kind of Kantian categorical imperative: ‘One must be truthful, and that is the end of the matter. The “Why?” is inappropriate and cannot be answered.’ He concluded, quite young, that one had an inviolable duty

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor

A plague on the new Puritans Tories beware! Roundheads are infiltrating the party of the Cavaliers. The six new MPs (Letters, 13 August) who issued a tirade against contemporary decadence claim to be ‘unencumbered by the political baggage of the past’. They are not, for they sing an old song. Their proposed new moral order is full of the dire warnings and prohibitions dear to the heart of Cromwell and his Puritans. Nothing less than a return to the bleak years of the ‘Rule of the Saints’ is proposed. New moral gendarmeries succeeded the Puritans, all self-appointed moral elites who assumed the right to tell others what to do, read

The Spectator

A necessary betrayal

Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, deserves praise for forcing the settlers in Gaza off the land and out of the homes that he encouraged them to settle and to build over 35 years ago. As he admitted in his televised address to Israel on Monday evening, he ‘hoped we could forever hold on’ to the settlements in Gaza — and he certainly encouraged the unfortunate settlers he sent there to share his hope. Until very recently, Mr Sharon was one of the leading advocates of the policy of settling Jews in the areas occupied by Israel after its victory over its Arab neighbours in the 1967 Six Day

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

A land of puritans, snobs and socialists

Martin Vander Weyer on the British idea that businessmen are by nature greedy, heartless, incompetent or dishonest — or all four Our local arts festival this summer included a community opera with a large cast of children and teenagers, playing to a capacity audience of their families and friends. The show was so full of joy and energy that I came out with tears in my eyes — but also a feeling of unease. The problem was ideological: Maggio’s Magic — book and lyrics by Peter Spafford — was a theatrical triumph, but it was also a vivid parable of the perceived evils of capitalism, a reinforcement in all those

Douglas Davis

United in hate

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Stranger still when the odd couple are fundamentalist Islam and the secular Left. The evolving Black–Red alliance is growing in France, Germany and Belgium. But, based on the successful British model, it is now going global to declare war on the war on terror. No fewer than three international conferences have been convened in Cairo, presided over by the former president of Algeria, Ahmed Ben Bella, under the auspices of the International Campaign Against US and Zionist Occupations. One outcome is ‘The Cairo Declaration Against US Hegemony, War on Iraq and Solidarity with Palestine.’ British signatories included Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn and, of course, the indefatigable

Friday

Barbara Amiel

Diary – 19 August 2005

I’ve taken to calling myself Lady Black of No Fixed Address while I spend the summer betwixt and between houses. Floating happily in a semi-weightless state, I stay in touch wherever I am by watching BBC World News. The BBC addiction to anti-Americanism is getting more acute and can only end in delirium tremens. Every second story has a negative take on America. Last week the ratio seemed higher. Every 20 minutes an anonymous voice promoted the upcoming news stories to the accompaniment of agitated music. Cue announcer: ‘Sixty years after the US dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, how do you feel about that attack?’ Cut to faces of

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