Society

Saturday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Globophobia | 10 January 2004

Every year, according to a new report by the World Health Organisation, 150,000 people succumb to the effects of global warming, which, it asserts, is responsible for 2.4 per cent of cases of diarrhoea and 6 per cent of cases of malaria. And if we in the first world think we can feel smug, it adds, 25,842 Europeans died in last summer’s heatwave, while Britain sees a 12 per cent increase in salmonella cases for every one degree rise in temperature. But what about all the elderly and infirm people who would have died had this winter been as cold as those frequently experienced in Europe during the 19th century?

Stephen Glover

We have never been closer to state control of the press

I must confess that I have not watched the development of Ofcom with the care I should have. In the distance I heard the voices of colleagues muttering that the new media regulator would interfere in the freedom of the press, but I chose not to listen. I thought that Ofcom, as the successor of the Independent Television Commission, the Radio Authority, the Broadcasting Standards Commission, Oftel and the Radio Communications Agency, would concern itself with issues which do not on the whole concern the rest of us very much. Dear reader, I have let you down. Ofcom opened for business on 29 December with a spanking new office and

The Spectator

The uses of adversity

On Sunday, Tony Blair told the troops in Basra that they were ‘new pioneers of 21st-century soldiering’. The praise was fully deserved and sincerely delivered. Over his years in office, the Prime Minister has become a great admirer of the armed forces. Even so, there was a slight problem about the way he chose to phrase his compliment. The emphasis on new century, new army could obscure a crucial point: that the British Army is so good because so many of its traditions and so much of its ethos do not change with the calendar. Tried and tested, they endure. This also applies to training methods, which have come under

Peter Oborne

The truth is he lied

Last Monday it emerged that the Saville inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings would carry on for at least another year. By the time it ends, supposing it ever does, Saville’s shambles will have taken nearly a decade, cost more than £200 million, and some of those most intimately involved will surely have died. Over Christmas and the New Year, Lord Hutton is said to have been at his home in Northern Ireland, not that far from Saville’s Londonderry base, drafting the final passages of his investigation into the death of the brave, public-spirited government scientist Dr David Kelly CMG. It will have taken six months, start to finish. Maybe

Saturday

Simon Heffer

Diary – 3 January 2004

The recent story in the Sunday Times about the hundreds of people who have declined honours in the past 50 or 60 years was fascinating. Contrary to the usual interpretation, it showed that the system is actually fairer than I thought. The list was dominated by people of immense worth whose apparent neglect by the establishment had seemed inexplicable. The other day the self-advertising poet and retired burglar Benjamin Zephaniah rejected an honour as a protest against colonial oppression (yawn). How much better to have the inward satisfaction, and the good manners, to refuse privately. Only one refusenik was well known to me, and that was the composer George Lloyd.

Petronella Wyatt

Behind bars

Johannesburg The South African sun is beating down on my brother’s garden. We have just returned from a shopping mall in Johannesburg. Jo’burg is full of shopping malls, massive American-style walkways. My brother and I have been sitting outside the Seattle Coffee Company watching people as they pass by. South Africans are averse to tanning. Some claim this is latent racism, others argue that in a country where the sun shines nearly every day they simply wish to preserve an element of youthfulness for as long as possible. My brother lives in one of those high-security compounds. It has walls with electric barbed-wire and armed guards. I am supposed to

Leo McKinstry

In defence of Wacko Jacko

In Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie described the bed that the ‘rampageous’ boys made for themselves in their magical primitive home in Neverland: ‘It filled nearly half the room and all the boys slept in it, lying like sardines in a tin.’ Today, the sleeping arrangements at a modern version of this fantastic place have led to one of the most explosive prosecutions in recent criminal history. The singer Michael Jackson, who so loves the Peter Pan story that he named his own Californian ranch ‘Neverland’, is awaiting trial on charges of molesting a 12-year-old boy, Gavin Arvizo, who has cancer, and of using an ‘intoxicating agent’ to facilitate sexual contact.

Mary Killen

Your problems solved

Dear Mary… Q. Last year my husband and I bought a house on Exmoor which came with two cottages superfluous to our needs. We have been renting these out as holiday lets. Out of six recent lettings three of the punters, all of whom appeared happy while they were in situ, complained retrospectively and asked for money back and/or free weeks in the future. One complained of having been kept awake by an owl, another complained that she had been disappointed by the cottage because of the amount of Ikea furniture. We are sure that punters are just ‘trying it on’. How can we outwit future chancers?Name and address withheld

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language

So many much-loved books have been badly done on television — The Irish RM, and just now The Young Visiters, which anyone could have seen would be difficult to do well on telly — that I wonder how much longer they can resist dear old Parson Woodforde. I’ve been reading bits of his diary again and wondering about some of his characteristic uses of language. Some are just strange, such as spelling off as ‘of’, like William P. Taplow in Private Opinions of a British Bluejacket. A puzzling usage was plumb in plumb-pudding. I half remembered Charles Lamb explaining in jest that he spelled plumb-pudding himself with a b because

Stephen Glover

Whatever Hutton reports, there is no case for getting rid of Andrew Gilligan

Within the next few weeks Lord Hutton will publish his inquiry. None of us can know where, if anywhere, his axe will fall. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, may be feeling his neck a little anxiously. So too will Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter whose story about Downing Street ‘sexing up’ the September 2002 dossier lies at the very centre of this drama. It is certain that the Hutton report will be at least mildly critical of Mr Gilligan. He has himself admitted, or almost admitted, to having made some errors. He was unwise to suggest on the Today programme on 29 May — since he had no proof —

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Détente is back in fashion, thank heaven, and the horrors of Bam could change history

Should liberal internationalists feel irritated when neoconservative hawks piggyback on to the successes of our own approach, and take the credit for themselves? No, we should feel satisfied that they want to, for it is a kind of repentance. Their tantrums past and the damage obvious, we can be pretty confident that they will not repeat such mistakes. We can feel quiet pleasure in their implicit acceptance that liberal internationalism works, after all. There will be no more Iraqs — you may count on that. Towards Tripoli, towards Tehran, and hopefully towards Damascus too, détente is back in fashion, thank heaven. The important thing is that the firebrands in Washington

The Spectator

No guns on planes

When, at the insistence of the US Department of Homeland Security, the first armed ‘sky marshals’ take to British transatlantic flights, it is to be hoped that the in-flight movie won’t be Goldfinger. For anyone who has managed to avoid seeing any of the 40 years’ worth of repeat screenings, the Bond film concludes with the sight of Goldfinger’s portly frame being sucked through a plane window shattered in a gunfight with 007. It doesn’t take any great knowledge of aircraft pressurisation systems to realise that guns and planes do not mix. The pilots’ union, Balpa, has come to the same conclusion. Even former BOAC pilot Norman Tebbit, who supports

The Spectator

Portrait of the week

Police in plain clothes armed with guns are being put on international flights thought to be at risk from hijacking, according to Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, and Mr Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport. Pilots’ unions opposed the scheme; it had been urged by the United States. The Foreign Office said it believed terrorists were planning attacks in Saudi Arabia which ‘could be in the final stages of preparation’. A man who said he came from Canada shot dead a policeman, injured another and fired at a third when he was arrested in Leeds. Dr John Reid, the Secretary of State for Health, proposed charging foreign

Theodore Dalrymple

Escape from barbarity

This year is the centenary year of the Entente Cordiale, and I intend to celebrate it by buying a house in France (the acte authentique, the final signing, takes place later this month) and, in the not very distant future, by living there. Whether this will improve Anglo–French relations remains to be seen. France is no terrestrial paradise, but I know from experience of living abroad that other country’s blemishes do not affect you in the same way as your own country’s blemishes, which weigh heavily on your soul. You can observe the failings of foreign politicians with amusement and the intractability of foreign social problems with detachment. It is

Saturday

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 27 December 2003

Dear Mary… Q. My wife and I have been blessed with the arrival of a delightful baby boy. We have been inundated with soft toys from doting family and friends. We would like to do a cull and send many off to charities but don’t wish to offend the original donors, who may notice the absence of their expensive gift when next they visit. What do you suggest?Q.R.F., Maitland, NSW A. Cuddly toys nearly always need to be culled, since today most houses with children have an excess. Too many love objects can be a dangerous thing in the impressionable early years of life, as they will breed a Hugh

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 27 December 2003

January. Two young black women, Letisha Shakespear and Charlene Ellis, were shot dead during a party at a hairdresser’s at Aston, Birmingham. Eli Hall, a gunman surrounded by police for 15 days at a house in Hackney, was found dead after a fire. The Fire Brigades Union planned strikes. An Underground train was derailed at Chancery Lane. The FT-SE index fell to a seven-year low. Lord Jenkins of Hillhead died, aged 82; Lord Dacre, aged 89; Gianni Agnelli, aged 81; General Leopoldo Galtieri, aged 76. The Pope said: ‘War cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option.’

Michael Howard

Diary – 27 December 2003

Last Wednesday I went straight from Prime Minister’s Questions to RAF Brize Norton to catch a VC10 to Iraq. I wanted to thank some of the British troops facing Christmas far from home and also meet as many people as I could in Baghdad to gain a better understanding of the challenges facing the Coalition Provisional Authority. The VC10 was full of a mixture of regulars and reservists. Some were on their first trip to the region. There were also several police officers on their way to train the Iraqi police. They were all pretty cheerful. After less than six hours we landed in Basra, headquarters of the Multinational Division

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 27 December 2003

I’ve just looked up foxglove in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, not because I expected it to tell me the word’s origin, but because I hoped it would give a false origin. I love Brewer, but it tells the reader not the facts of history and etymology but what the widely educated High Victorian thought were the facts. This is very useful in understanding references in 19th-century books. To me it also means that an edition from the lifetime of E. Cobham Brewer (1810’97) is more valuable than a modern revision. One never knows with what shockingly correct facts the reviser has displaced former baseless myths and popular etymologies.

Taki

A hell of a coup

New York And now for Rosebud, the single childhood incident that will illuminate us as to why Saddam did what he did. His was the kind of life Freudian complexes are made of, except for the fact old Saddy had no complexes. If I were to guess, I imagine some North American Man Boy Love Association member abused him when he was tiny in Tikrit. If I were Saddy I’d use that defence in a jiffy. It’s got everyone else off the hook, so why not him. Mind you, I haven’t seen such chest-banging over his capture since Uncle Sam victoriously invaded the Grenadines, or was it Grenada? Let’s face

Charles Saumarez-Smith

Temples of culture under siege

A couple of years ago, I was walking up Quincy Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts with Ivan Gaskell, a curator at the Fogg Art Museum, when he asked if I had ever met Jim Cuno, the director of the Fogg. I hadn’t, so we knocked on his door and left three hours later, having embarked on a long conversation which I have continued, at intervals, ever since. Cuno was meditating about some of the implications of 11 September 2001: the sense that the public was beginning, once again, to seek out the therapeutic value of great museums; the hubris attached to the decline in the number of visitors to the Guggenheim;