Society

Saturday

Stephen Glover

The NoW is bad news, but the police were just as bad in the Posh ‘kidnap’ case

Almost everyone dislikes the News of the World, including many of its readers. It is coarse, intrusive, hypocritical and sanctimonious. It frequently puts itself above or outside the law – perhaps most famously when it so whipped up public hysteria over paedophilia that the mobs took to the streets, in one case mistaking a paediatrician for a paedophile and driving her out of her house. The editor of the newspaper at the time was Rebekah Wade – now editor of the Sun – who invariably refuses to talk to the press or to be interviewed even when she sets Britain ablaze. A more disagreeable example of the new media aristocracy

The Spectator

Free Jeffrey Archer now

Jeffrey Archer, the disgraced peer, should be let out of prison as soon as he would be if he were Joe Bloggs, the disgraced dustman. In July 2001 Archer was given a four-year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice, so in a few weeks’ time he will become eligible for parole. It could be said it is absurd that prisoners should be eligible for release after serving only half their sentences, but the fact that prison has become a devalued currency cannot reasonably be blamed on Archer. If he satisfies the Parole Board’s conditions for early release, he should be set free. Within the past few days

Felicity Owen

Under the influence

HRH the Prince of Wales’s two charities bearing his name rightly enjoy wide approval. Yet their work and the distinction between them is less than clear. The Prince’s Foundation, a remarkably influential minnow, its turnover around £3 million, promotes improvement in the quality of urban life, the regeneration of cities and the teaching of traditional skills, some Islamic in origin. With human values in mind, it also plays a positive role in changing attitudes to education and the environment, many of the Prince’s crusades now finding wide acceptance. Less complex, the Prince’s Trust, with an impressive turnover of some £30 million and over 11,000 volunteers, offers support to disadvantaged young

Stephen Kalonzo-Musyoka

Bad for business

Travel warnings are bad for business The Kenyan foreign minister, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, says that thousands are being laid off as a result of Britain’s ban on flights to Nairobi Nairobi About four months ago I was invited as Kenya’s new foreign minister to give a talk on the aims and goals of the new Kenyan government at Chatham House. My speech was an upbeat assessment of our future following one of the most peaceful and democratic elections in our continent’s history. It was also an implicit appeal to our British, European and American friends to acknowledge that achievement and to recognise that Kenya has always been an unswerving friend

Mark Steyn

Iraq: what must be done now

New Hampshire On the face of it, Jordan’s election this month would seem to be a lively affair. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve driven the length and breadth of the country. Well, not the length, but the breadth – from the Allenby Bridge across from the ghastly Arafat squat on the West Bank over to the eastern desert and the Iraqi border post at Trebil. And in every town you pass through there are handmade banners strung across the streets proclaiming the merits of a zillion candidates. Nothing fancy, just dense text on white sheets. But lots of them, everywhere. As I was heading into Amman from the

Nick Butt

Why I quit teaching

I was on holiday when I read about my resignation as headmaster of St Edmund’s. ‘Head quits over Labour policies’ read the headline. It came as quite a surprise. I knew I had resigned, but didn’t think anyone would be interested. Then the story was mentioned on breakfast TV. A national paper took up the tale. Questions were asked in the House, and on Radio Norfolk. I began to wonder whether my obscure act of self-immolation might conceivably be noticed by the government. ‘A very brave decision,’ I was told time and again. It seemed to me, as Margaret Thatcher used to say, that there was no alternative. The spat

Peter Oborne

The great pretender

Later this summer, on 2 August, Tony Blair’s government will reach its most significant milestone yet. It will become the longest-serving Labour government in history, surpassing the record of six years and three months held by Clem Attlee between July 1945 and October 1951. There is no denying the magnitude of the achievement. Tony Blair has demonstrated that Labour can indeed be the natural party of government. He is already the first Labour leader to win two consecutive full terms, and there is little reason why he should not go on to a third. Blair has secured his electoral triumphs by creating a coalition around New Labour. His particular talent

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 6 June 2003

Nearly 75 per cent of university lecturers think the current intake of students is the worst they can remember. Plato may help us decide what ‘worst’ means; and an important conclusion follows. In his Euthydemus, Plato portrays two clever-clogs sophists, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, toying verbally with a young man, Cleinias. First Euthydemus asks him who learns – the wise or the ignorant? Cleinias answers, ‘The wise’. Euthydemus now points out that, when Cleinias was learning (for example) how to play the lute or to write, he had a teacher; and the teacher taught him because Cleinias did not know how to do either of those things. Cleinias assents, and Euthydemus

Saturday

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 31 May 2003

Dear Mary… Q. A friend of mine has a maddening habit. She rings me from her mobile saying urgently, ‘Can you ring me straight back?’ then hangs up. Clearly she believes that it is much cheaper for me to ring her mobile from my landline than vice versa. This may or may not be the case – who has the time to read leaflets from the telephone companies and work it out? – but if she wants to talk to me, usually just idle chatter, then my feeling is that she should pay. Am I right, Mary? Or have I gone quite mad?P. de Z., London NW3 A. Why not

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 31 May 2003

Mr Peter Hain, the Secretary of State for Wales, who is the government’s representative to the convention that has published a draft constitution for the European Union, said, ‘If people don’t like what they get, they can vote against the government in the European elections next year’ (on 10 June). But the government shied away from Mr Hain’s remarks, lest they seemed an endorsement of a popular right to ratify the constitution. The opposition called for a referendum. The constitution provides for direct election of a president and foreign minister for the European Union, and takes central control of economic policy, employment, foreign affairs, defence, trade, agriculture, fisheries, transport, energy,

Stuart Reid

Diary – 31 May 2003

To Paris to attend a convivium on the Continuing Revolution, presided over by Dr Thomas Fleming. Dr Who? Tom Fleming is editor of the monthly magazine Chronicles, based in Rockford, Illinois, and big chief of the palaeoconservative movement – though movement may be too grand a word to describe an engagingly barmy political army that has perhaps 20,000 followers in the US and fewer than 20 here. The reactionary and pacific – but not pacifist – palaeoconservatives (palaeos) are the sworn enemies of the hawkish and progressive neoconservatives (neocons). Shortly after Jacques Chirac declared that he would not support an American war against Iraq, Fleming wrote, ‘I respect and admire

The Spectator

Feedback | 31 May 2003

Comment on Are whites cleverer than blacks? by Sean Thomas (24/05/2003) Sean Thomas is right to condemn left-wingers for dishonestly shouting down discussion of IQ and race (article, 24 May 2003), but despite their bad faith, ‘The Left’ has a point. I studied at several institutions where we all had high IQs, and the more kinds of intelligence I see in life, the less sure I get. The appearance of creativity tests in corporate recruitment in the 1960s showed that many in the private sector (never mind politically correct socialists) were already dissatisfied forty years ago with what IQ tests test. The difficult grammars of many African languages, notorious among

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 31 May 2003

‘Of course Gladstone was 20 times cleverer than you,’ said my husband. ‘Much more, most likely. Why should anyone think different?’ ‘”Differently”, darling. Anyway, they don’t mind my saying “cleverer than you”. It’s “cleverer than me” they don’t like.’ My husband is easily defeated and went back to his Famous Grouse and his Herwig’s Art of Curing Sympathetically. Some chance. Yes, I had written ‘cleverer than me’ (5 April), not of conscious purpose, but because the construction must have entered my mental syntax replication machinery. It all hinges on whether than is a conjunction or a preposition. If it can be the latter, I’m in the clear. It did not

Taki

In decline

New York One more week in the Bagel and then on to good old London for two balls, a wedding and a cricket match. The latter will be a rout, as Zac Goldsmith’s Eleven are bound to do a good imitation of Iraq’s Republican Guard when up against Tim Hanbury’s supermen. Although I do not know the rules and cannot keep score, I was man of the match last year – not out – despite my captain’s decision to substitute me in the middle of my heroics. (Goldsmith moolah obviously got to him.) This year I plan a repeat as I am one year older and as a result much

Petronella Wyatt

Gnasher obsession

I was interested to read in one of the newspapers that my old friend Robert Hardman had had his teeth surgically whitened for an article. Frankly, in all the years I have known him, I have never paid any attention to Robert’s teeth. This is no slight. It is merely that, when I saw the name Hardman, the immediate word association was not ivories. At least not the ones in his mouth, for he does play a mean theme tune on the upright piano. This indicates one of two things. Either that Robert’s teeth always appeared perfectly acceptable. Or that I am not a teeth person. The truth is a

Stephen Glover

Don’t assume that Conrad Black is about to meet his Waterloo

Before I start this piece, which is about the future of the Daily Telegraph, I should make clear that it is written by me. When I last wrote at length about the Telegraph – rather controversially, perhaps – I appear to have caused palpitations in the heart of at least one banker. The Spectator is owned by the same company as the Daily Telegraph, namely Hollinger International. And this banker, who may have been a somewhat unsophisticated individual, formed the view that anything appearing in The Spectator about the Telegraph must carry some sort of proprietorial stamp of approval, and reflect in some way the thinking of its higher management.

The Spectator

When rights are wrong

When the European Union drafted its Charter of Fundamental Rights at Nice three years ago, it wasn’t immediately obvious that among the first beneficiaries would be testosterone-charged male drivers bullying their way along the autobahn. But it is they, conclude lawyers working for British insurers, who have the most reason to celebrate the new diktats on sexual equality. A proposed European directive will, it seems, outlaw differential pricing of insurance policies according to sex. Women, in other words, will be denied the lower premiums they have long enjoyed in Britain and, in effect, be forced to subsidise male drivers. Is this really how the bra-burners of old intended the war

Laura Gascoigne

Figuration fights back

As art prizes go, the Jerwood Painting Prize is scrupulously even-handed: over the past nine years since its establishment, its shortlists have been models of inclusiveness. In particular, they have managed to strike a balance between figurative and abstract art, and this year’s shortlist of six is no exception. It’s split between three abstract painters in very different styles – John Hoyland, Marc Vaux and Suzanne Holtom – and three figurative painters ditto – Shani Rhys James, John Wonnacott and Alison Watt. As the UK’s most prestigious painting prize, with the biggest pot, the Jerwood is an interesting index to swings in fashion between abstraction and figuration. An analysis of

Peter Oborne

A victory for drug-pushers

This week Tony Blair was warned to brace himself for another huge increase in opium production in Afghanistan. Analysis of a harrowing United Nations report showed that the situation was catastrophically out of control. Inspectors surveyed 134 districts. They learnt that some 23 were planning to plant poppies for the first time in 2003, while another 50 were expecting to increase production. There were some successes for Afghan government-led attempts at elimination. In 28 districts, poppy eradication schemes had worked and production was falling. But these falls were minor compared with rises elsewhere. The report simply confirmed what UN officials have been saying privately for months. The Afghanistan poppy is