Society

Saturday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Banned Wagon | 13 September 2003

In spite of our late and grotty trains, it comes as a relief to return to work in Britain. A fortnight in France reveals a country that has been greatly affected by the obligatory 35-hour week since I last took the family on holiday there in 2001. It is peculiar to be driving through the middle of a holiday district, Brittany, in the middle of August to find restaurant after restaurant shut for business. When we do eventually find somewhere to eat – a pizzeria, a supposed ‘fast-food’ outlet – the food takes an age to come. After several days of this, we give up and eat at our rented

Leo McKinstry

I prefer the tub of lard

Just after David Hill’s appointment as the new Downing Street press chief, I wrote a profile of him for the Daily Mail. In this article, I revealed that Hill was a superb amateur rock vocalist, who had not only sung in several major venues across London, but had also appeared in the musical Hair. But, even in the face of such revelations, by far the most startling fact about Hill remains his 20 years of service as an aide to Roy Hattersley, the former deputy leader of the Labour party. Even murderers rarely have to endure sentences of more than 15 years, yet Hill was shackled to this charmless figure

Mark Steyn

We’re winning this war

New Hampshire The emergency dispatcher wasn’t quite sure she’d heard correctly. ‘Sir, you have what jumping from buildings?’ ‘People. Bodies are just coming from out of the sky….’ On a day like 11 September 2001, time is both accelerated and suspended. On the top floors of the World Trade Center, office workers who moments earlier had been scheduling lunch appointments and making plans for the weekend had a few seconds to determine the manner of their death – to stay and be burned alive, or to take one last gulp of fresh air as they plunged to the plaza below. For almost everybody else, time is halted: when you’re caught

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

I was 12, she was 13

According to a survey reported last weekend in the Independent on Sunday, almost all homosexuals are barking mad. I am using the politically correct term ‘barking mad’ so as not to incur the wrath of the mental-health pressure groups, all of which become psychotically incensed and even violent when they read of mad people being described as ‘nutters’ or ‘doolally’ or – an old favourite of mine purloined from the US demotic – ‘crazier than a shithouse rat’. So I’ll stick to ‘barking mad’ and thus forestall angry letters from Mind, et al. In this survey, two thirds of more than 2,000 gays and lesbians admitted to suffering from mental-health

Tom Utley

Madonna of the Pseuds

Leonardo’s ‘Madonna of the Yarnwinder’, stolen the other day from the Duke of Buccleuch, is the painting that changed my view of civilisation. I know it quite well, because one of my sisters-in-law used to live just up the road from Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, where it hung until it was pinched. Whenever I stayed with her and wanted to escape from the children, I would slope off to the castle to take the guided tour. There was no danger that my sons or nephews would want to come with me, because at that age they would almost rather have had an extra maths lesson than traipse around a stately

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 12 September 2003

The death of Dr David Kelly has raised questions about justifications for suicide. The ancient Greeks were equally interested in the issue. Greeks, like Romans, tended to take the view that humans were, for the most part, in full control of what they chose to do. The concepts of ‘mental imbalance’ or ‘unconscious motivation’ were not commonly applied. The main question, then, was ‘Why did X commit suicide?’, and the judgment about whether the suicide was to be applauded or condemned depended on the circumstances. In general, it was more favourable to commit suicide as a result of conscious deliberation than rash impulse: one must at all times be in

Saturday

Boris Johnson and Nicholas Farrell

Forza Berlusconi!

It is twilight in Sardinia. The sun has vanished behind the beetling crags. The crickets have momentarily stopped. The machine-gun-toting guards face out into the maquis of myrtle and olive, and the richest man in Europe is gripping me by the upper arm. His voice is excited. ‘Look’ he says, pointing his flashlight. ‘Look at the strength of that tree.’ It is indeed a suggestive sight. An olive of seemingly Jurassic antiquity has grown from a crack in the rock, and like some patient wooden python it has split the huge grey boulder in two. ‘Extraordinary,’ I murmur. My host and I stand lost in awe at olive power. If

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 6 September 2003

I can’t say that I care for the outbreak of ‘Mumbai’ that has been pouring from the telly since those terrible bombs in Bombay. Why should we suddenly call it Mumbai any more than we should now call Burma Myanmar? Twenty years ago there was a passing vogue for calling Cambodia Kampuchea. The dictionary that I referred to said that Mumbai should be pronounced ‘Moom-buy’, and that is usually what folk say. The funny thing is when broadcasters want to be more ethnic than the Indians and say ‘Poon-jab’, when every Punjabi pronounces the first vowel as in punch (or a little more towards the vowel ‘a’, but in the

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 6 September 2003

Mr Alastair Campbell confirmed that he was to resign as the Prime Minister’s director of com-munications and strategy. He is to be succeeded, at least in the first half of the title, by Mr David Hill, but there is to be a general musical-chairs in the department, about which Mr Peter Mandelson is said to have been consulted. The Hutton inquiry into the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, heard evidence from Mrs Janice Kelly his widow, who said, ‘He said several times over coffee, over lunch, over afternoon tea that he felt totally let down and betrayed’ – by the Ministry of

Simon Heffer

Diary – 6 September 2003

You will expect me to bore you about my holiday in France, where, like Joan Collins, we found things hideously expensive compared with a year ago. When the credit-card bill arrives, I shall console myself that the euro is now heading south, and that when we return next year everything will be 10 per cent cheaper – especially if M. Chirac sets about trying to bust the stability pact in the way he now threatens. We reached France at the height of la canicule, and noted the daily reports on the television news and in Le Figaro about how thousands of elderly people had died of the heat. When they

The Spectator

Feedback | 6 September 2003

Comment on Render unto the Pope… by Adrian Hilton (30/08/2003) Hiltons fear is not an irrational one. It is true that Europeans are threatening England’s sovereignty. However the EU is not a front for Rome. The existence of predominately protestant nations in the EU proves that. Many sovereign nations both inside and outside of Europe are predominantly Catholic. These nations maintain their sovereignty and individuality. There are catholic MP’s in England. To prevent the possibility that these MP’s may in fact be papist spies plotting against Queens Bess and the realm, Hilton should be appointed a modern day Francis Walsingham to weed them out. The English have proven themselves capable

Taki

The Qatar way

Gstaad Talk about dumbing down. Here’s a moron commenting on Sky following the Greek victory in the women’s javelin: ‘Oi didn’t know Greeks could speak English, not that oi can speak Greek….’ Miréla Manjani is an articulate young Greek woman who won the gold medal in the World Athletics Championships in Paris last week. She spoke in English briefly and gracefully after her victory and went on her way. The Murdoch moron was not even trying to be funny. He was just ignorant of the fact that most Greeks are bilingual, as no one speaks our language, especially Greek athletes who have travelled abroad like Miréla. What the moron should

Jeremy Clarke

Doctor in the house

There is very little in the way of conversation at home. Uncle Jack sometimes appears in the hall to ask someone where he is, what he is doing here, or what time of the year it is. The rest of us communicate so rarely we are rapidly losing the power of speech. Occasionally someone might attempt a comment at mealtimes, then forget the word for something, a crucial noun usually, and we all sit there waiting for it, as if we’re taking part in a séance. If my mother or my sister is present, exchanges take the form of a parlour game in which players take it in turns to

Petronella Wyatt

Putting on L-plates

It seems a bit odd, learning to drive in one’s thirties. Readers will wonder why I have put it off for so long. The answer is that, as Eliza Doolittle thought, it is jolly nice being driven around in the back of a taxi. The expense of the fares was justified by the cost of car insurance, petrol and Ken Livingstone’s road toll. In Italy where I spend my holidays it was oh so much easier driving a motor scooter, particularly as a motor scooter could take you to parts that other vehicles couldn’t reach, such as the marina or the old port where there is very little space to

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 6 September 2003

Dear Mary… Q. Our 15-year-old daughter was invited as a guest to accompany a schoolfriend on holiday with her friend’s father and stepmother (whom we have not met) as the elder sister did not wish to go. In a telephone conversation to discuss possible dates that would not conflict with our own family holiday, my wife offered to contribute towards the cost of the holiday, suggesting that we pay the airfare, as we have for our son when he has been invited to stay with friends abroad. Out of the blue we received a letter two months later informing us that they were booked into a five-star hotel for two

Andrew Gimson

Cat flap

We got word that our house in London was infested with fleas as we drove north on holiday in glorious weather through the borders into Scotland. Sid, who very kindly and conscientiously looks after our cats while we are away, sent a series of increasingly alarmed text messages, in which he informed us that he was suffering flea attacks of unbridled savagery on his ankles every time he went into the kitchen or sitting-room. He is not the kind of man to take that sort of thing lying down, and he requested an immediate transfer of funds so that he could buy a full suit of protective clothing and launch

Paul Michael-Wihbey

The end of the affair

America is disengaging from Saudi Arabia. To many observers this seems shocking, to others it is unthinkable, but all the evidence points to a dramatic change in relations. A few weeks ago, the last of America’s bases, Prince Sultan Air Base, was closed and the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing deactivated. This coincides with claims that there are direct links between the House of Saud and America’s arch enemy, Osama bin Laden. The current issue of Time magazine says that Abu Zubaidah, the leading al-Qa’eda terrorist captured in Pakistan last year, was supported by members of the Saudi royal family. While it lasted, the alliance worked well for the two countries.

Neil Barnett

Catch me if you can

Will Osama and Saddam ever be found? If they fare as well as the Bosnian Serb mass murderers Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, perhaps not. In July the desperate duo celebrated eight years on the run from indictments by The Hague Tribunal, and the smart money has them at large a while longer. Mladic seems to have vanished, but the hunt for Karadzic goes on. It goes without saying that no one is quite sure where the bouffant-haired psychiatrist and cod poet is, but best guesses have him roving the remoter parts of Republika Srpska (the Serbian bit of Bosnia) and Montenegro. The hunt drags on under the aegis of

Interconnect

The new imperial vision of Silvio Berlusconi

The Spectator began by asking Berlusconi whether he has mended fences with Chancellor Schröder, after he likened the German Social Democrat MEP, Martin Schulz, to a Nazi camp commandant? It was I who was offended, my government and my country. I replied with a joke. I wanted to be humorous. The whole of the parliament laughed. My reply was taken and exploited against me. But you know what? It was a reply that was virtually impossible for me to resist because I once broadcast 120 episodes of Hogan’s Heroes in which there was this Sergeant Schulz. You remember? I didn’t even think about it. Schulz was shouting at me –

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 30 August 2003

Some people who didn’t exist have entries in the Dictionary of National Biography and some words that don’t exist have entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. One such is primet, which was ‘erroneously stated by Prior to occur in the Grete Herball as the name of the primrose, and used by him to suggest an etymology for privet. No such word is there found.’ That Prior was Richard Prior, author of Popular Names of British Plants (1863). Some of this worries Mr Noel Petty, the great competition winner. He has sent me a couplet from a madrigal, ‘Trust not too much, fair youth, unto thy feature’, by Orlando Gibbons: Sweet