Society

Saturday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Banned Wagon | 9 August 2003

The council estates of King’s Lynn, Harriet Sergeant recently revealed, are groaning with Chinese migrant workers, 50 to a house. The Daily Mail, naturally enough, is outraged by this threat to society and house prices, playing on rumours that workers are controlled by Triad gangs. Equally upset is the Guardian, which complains that many workers are illegal, they are being paid less than the national minimum wage and their gang masters won’t even let them join the Transport and General Workers’ Union. Why is it that migrant workers have to be received so negatively? The Daily Mail has made an art of attacking ‘welfare scroungers’ over the years; now it

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 8 August 2003

The MP John Redwood has hired a London PR firm to raise his profile. The firm is keen for him to feature in lifestyle articles, when he will talk about his great love of windsurfing, films and theatre. ‘John is happy to talk about a wide range of subjects,’ we are told, including ‘his favourite restaurant/food and his passion for motoring.’ It sounds an exciting prospect – how one longs to hear about why he loves going vroom – and all too horribly typical of Plato’s democratic man. In his Republic, Plato analyses the way in which societies degenerate over time and mutate from one type of political system to

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 2 August 2003

Those trained train staff have come up with a new one. Until now it has been ‘Peterborough is the next station stop with this train.’ That is a Babylonish dialect, to be sure. But today it was: ‘We shall shortly be arriving into Peterborough.’ Arriving into? As it happens, Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall in a sermon for Palm Sunday 1539 used the phrase ‘into what howse or place so ever ye shall arrive’, but I can scarcely suppose that this homiletic obiter dictum influenced the choice of preposition adopted by the conductor or train captain of the 16.32 (delayed). If it comes to that, arrive used to be a transitive verb

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 2 August 2003

Mr Alastair Campbell was expected to resign as the director of communications and strategy at the Prime Minister’s office before the Labour party conference at the end of September. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, let it be known through friends including Lord Falconer of Thoroton that he intends to complete a third term. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service proposed that women up to nine weeks pregnant should be allowed to induce abortions with drugs at home; the foetus would be thrown down the lavatory. As part of investigations into the murder of a young boy whose torso was found floating in the Thames, 200 police arrested 21 people in

Boris Johnson

Diary – 2 August 2003

As I was staggering round Highbury Fields in a pair of shorts, I saw one I knew and hailed him crying, ‘Tom!’, because it was Tom Baldwin, the political reporter of the Times and arch-friend of Alastair Campbell. To my surprise, there was not a flicker on those Shelleyesque features. He continued his stride. ‘Tom!’ I shouted again. Had he somehow failed to recognise me, at a distance of a few feet? Could it be, even at 8 a.m., that he was under the influence of some stimulant? It was only when I started jumping up and down in front of him, sticking both thumbs up, way up, and shouting

The Spectator

Feedback | 2 August 2003

Comment on Sword of honour by Paul Robinson (26/07/2003) National honour is a valid reason to go to war, but in the current case, there is also the principle of self-defence. When someone announces he’s going to do you serious or fatal harm, it is not required to give him one free blow before initiating defensive measures. In my state, (Colorado), if someone announces he’s going to kill you, and you believe the threat credible, and you have no other immediate recourse, you may use deadly force pre-emptively. In the current world case, we actually gave the enemy several free swings at us before deciding to hit back. In the

Taki

Special qualities

Athens The city of Pallas Athena is in the midst of a great rebirth, as if Zeus himself had decreed it. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have bet my last euro against Athens meeting the Olympic challenge, and I would have lost. Big time. The place is bustling and busy, sunny as hell but easy on the humidity, and the girls – yes, young Greek women – are suddenly among the most attractive in Europe. I kid you not. Greek girls were always among the sexiest in the world – there was no such thing as a Greek female who was lousy in bed

Jeremy Clarke

Missing the point

We’ve moved up from a Festival 30 to a Willerby Bermuda. Or rather my philanthropic aunt has. We knew she was thinking of upgrading this year, but we thought she was going to go for a Festival Super maybe, or at a push an Atlas Fanfare Super 35. Not in our wildest dreams did we imagine she’d get a Willerby Bermuda. When me and the boy and the boy’s half brother arrived on Saturday for our annual free holiday in north Cornwall and we were confronted with this spanking new Willerby Bermuda in place of the old Festival 30, our feelings were mixed though. We were sentimentally attached to the

Petronella Wyatt

No hiding place

I looked out of the window the other day and noticed that there was something funny looking about the car (a red Honda, if anyone is interested). The car is always parked overnight in the garage driveway, the entrance to which is strongly secured by a bolted green gate. Nonetheless, there was something funny looking about the car. The fact was inescapable. You will probably have guessed that vandals had climbed over the gate and either slashed the tyres or scratched the sides. You have, in which case, guessed wrong. One side of the car had indeed been completely disfigured – but by the addition of a huge yellow carbuncle.

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 2 August 2003

Dear Mary… Q. A few days ago I was in a flat belonging to one of my sister’s friends, whom I do not know very well. On visiting the bathroom, I discovered a lavatory, no paper, a bidet and a neat pile of clean fluffy towels. Never mind what I actually did; what would have been the proper course of action?Name withheld, London SW8 A. As a female, you were correct to be wary. This situation was less straightforward than it seemed. The first course of action open to you was to use the bidet and a clean fluffy towel, but the result would have been a ‘used’ towel with

Stephen Glover

We may snigger at Richard Desmond, but we should not underestimate him

Is Richard Desmond the new Murdoch? Many lips were curled when he acquired Express Newspapers in November 2000. People said that he had borrowed too much money. It was suggested that as a man whose fortune was built on pornography he knew next to nothing about running national newspapers. In some quarters he was dismissed as a foul-mouthed vulgarian who would be unable to halt the long decline of the Daily and Sunday Express. Nearly three years later Mr Desmond is taken more seriously. Largely as a result of ferocious cost-cutting, he has increased the profits of Express Newspapers, last year pocketing nearly £21 million for himself. The Daily Express

The Spectator

Pre-emptive force

It is a sad sign of the times that a man who shot a burglar dead and wounded another should have become a national hero. The frustration that millions of householders feel about the inability or unwillingness of the British state to perform its one indispensable function – namely to protect the person and property of its citizens, despite its consumption of nearly half the country’s economic product – has turned Tony Martin, who was released this week, into a symbol of decency, common sense and middle-class revolt. The fact is that many a law-abiding person rejoiced to hear that Mr Martin shot his intruder dead, and wished only that

Sebastian Smee

Giving something back

In the past, great benefactors to the visual arts have generally doubled as tastemakers. Their success, as the US critic Jed Perl recently noted, is often best judged by the extent to which their avidities become what the culture takes for granted. But how does taste, which is private, become public in this way? It’s a complicated question, and in answering it one can never hope to filter out sheer force of personality as a decisive factor. In curmudgeonly cases such as Grenville L. Winthrop, whose spectacular collection is showing at the National Gallery, and Albert Barnes, as well as more effervescent personalities such as William Beckford or Peggy Guggenheim,

Simon Nixon

Bring back Beeching

Simon Nixon says that we must build more motorways – and scrap railway lines Perhaps the most important discovery I have made over the last few years is that the way to stay sane in Britain is never to use public transport. The Department of Health tells us to eat five portions of fruit a day and to give up booze and fags. But what it dare not tell us is that the best way to reduce the risk of a heart attack and a host of other stress-related ailments is never to use the bus, Tube or train when you can drive a car or ride a bicycle instead.

David Gardner

Plain Hinglish

A n early-morning phone call the other day alerted me to the news that my midday appointment in New Delhi had been ‘pre-poned’. Could I ‘do the needful’, the voice said, and ‘get my skates on’. A few months ago, I received an invitation from an Indian ministry. First they sent a fax giving me ‘advance intimation’ of the event, then two more faxes advising me of a ‘formal intimation’. After this, an invitation card arrived with the preamble: ‘Sir, we would like to confirm our intimation….’ Welcome to the wonderful world of Hinglish, a Hindu-inspired dialect that pulsates with energy, invention and humour – not all of it intended.

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 1 August 2003

Dr David Kelly was a government expert but, in his desire to put the record straight about Iraqi arms, found himself crushed between the grindstones of government determination to impose it own views about the weapons of mass destruction, whatever the truth, and the sense of duty he had to ensure that the public was properly informed. The issue boils down to one of morality, as the opening of Plato’s Republic shows. Socrates and his friends are trying to define ‘morality’, and Thrasymachus asserts that morality is ‘acting to the advantage of the stronger party’. His reason is that the government defines what is right and moral for citizens to

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 26 July 2003

Dr David Kelly, a Ministry of Defence scientific expert on Iraqi weapons, was found dead near his home in Oxfordshire with a cut wrist and a container of pain-killers. Hours earlier he had appeared before the Commons foreign affairs select committee and, when asked if he was the main source for an article by Mr Andrew Gilligan that blamed Downing Street for ‘sexing up’ the government dossier on Iraq last September, he said, ‘My belief is that I am not the main source.’ Mr Andrew Mackinlay MP had said to him in a rough manner, ‘I reckon you’re chaff. You’ve been thrown up to divert our probing. Have you ever

Dylan Jones

Diary – 26 July 2003

I am invited to the Oxford Union to speak in the last debate of the term. I had originally been invited to speak on the death of feminism earlier in the year, but as I couldn’t go they kindly invited me back. The motion is less onerous – ‘Life is too short to drink cheap wine’ – and I am speaking for, along with Peter Stringfellow, among others. I have been preparing for weeks, soliciting everyone I meet for jokes and anecdotes, and obsessively honing my speech. Two days before I’m due to speak I make the mistake of running the final draft past three of my friends at dinner.

The Spectator

Feedback | 26 July 2003

Comment on No flies on Bush by Mark Steyn (19/07/2003) I read Mark Steyn’s article on the harmlessness of the lies told by the USA and the UK on the world stage and tried to be reassured by his joviality. After all, I thought, what’s a few thousand dead people when, as your poll showed, the people ‘liberated’ by us, know that we are really after their oil. Who else is going to notice a few lies (about Saddam Hussein’s links to al-Qaida, promises that Iraqi oil money is controlled by Iraqis and the creation of democracy (shouldn’t this happen before the country is privatised?) except mad anti-war activists and