GM may be good for you
Ross Clark says we should ignore the eco-brigade’s hysteria over genetically modified food After years of trampling crops, the anti-GM food lobby believes that it has finally drawn sap. Its b
Features
Saturday
The mystery of the missing links
A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend, a man who has more postgraduate degrees than I have GCSEs. The subject of Darwinism came up. ‘Actually,’ he said, raising his eyebrows, ‘I don’t believe in evolution.’ I reacted with incredulity: ‘Don’t be so bloody daft.’ ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘Many scientists admit that
Saturday
SPECTATOR CITY AND FINANCE
Since it has become clear that the Great Bubble of 1999–2000 is dead and not subject to resurrection, information technology has become boring. The limitless promise of a New Internet-Enabled Web-Architected Economy where Everything Is Different appears to have failed. In the United States, the voices that now command media attention range from that of
Gothic’s crowning glory
Annabel Ricketts enjoys a visual feast at the V&A but takes issue with the show’s lack of rigour The V&A’s exhibition Gothic: Art for England 1400–1547 brings together a magnificent array of objects drawn from all over Europe, and the organisers have achieved a sumptuous display. To make it digestible, the arrangement is thematic rather
Why do politicians lie? Because they have to
Tony is fighting Gordon while fending off Robin and Clare and trying to shaft Geoff while Jack beats him up about David. Iain is being knifed by Michael and Vanessa, egged on by MPs who are furious that he hasn’t laid a glove on Tony and has made them vulnerable to Charlie, so that instead
Terminal depression
In all its long history, the parliamentary Tory party has never been so depressed. If a doctor were to observe its current behaviour, he would put the patient on suicide watch. When I spoke to Conservative MPs this week it was hard to find any spark of optimism, breath of hope or relish for the
My fight is for the British people
Iain Duncan Smith defends himself — and his wife — against the plotters and the smear campaign, and calls on the Tories to get on with the work of promoting freedom and choice In the early years of the New Labour government, it was widely believed that the Conservative party was finished. Confined, apparently, to
Saturday
Is this the end of painting?
Some arty readers may have been concerned by the recent news about Monet and Rolf Harris. A substantial section of the population, it seems, is unable to tell the difference between them — some thinking that the Australian entertainer depicted the waterlilies at Giverny. Admittedly, both have or had grizzled beards, but even so the
The road to revival
Iain Duncan Smith is fatter and pinker in the face these days, perhaps the result of too many dinners. He is more assertive. Media training over the summer has given him a certain bravado and made him more tactile. He looks people in the eye more often. His handlers were pleased by the way he
Saturday
The Georgian way of death
The last days of the great essayist and dictionary-maker Dr Johnson were recorded in vivid detail by his biographer, James Boswell. Breathless and in pain, Johnson, aged 75, prepared himself for death with admirable courage. He had been plagued all his life by a fear of the dark, by the insomniac’s dread of not waking
A party split from top to toe
No power on earth can sustain an idea whose time has gone. Can we all please stop pretending that the Conservative party is worth saving or keeping, or that it can ever win another election? This delusion is an obstacle to the creation of a proper pro-British movement, neither bigoted nor politically correct, which is
Saturday
An English composer in Ireland
In the basement of the Boole Library at University College Cork, I find myself face-to-face with a death mask. Slightly collapsed cheeks give it a look of the elderly Churchill. It is actually Sir Arnold Bax, the Romantic composer from Streatham, in south London, who briefly became one of the more unusual advocates for the
Code comfort
The influential American journalist Robert Kaplan recently commented that the real shapers of his country’s foreign policy are junior and middle-ranking military officers. When an engineer captain in Afghanistan mobilises his men to de-mine a road, or a major in Baghdad oversees the training of competent new policemen, the ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWOT) moves
First, weigh your nanny
This being the time of year when people are hiring new nannies and au pairs, I would like to offer some words of caution: do not hire a fatty. Although it is no doubt offensive and quite possibly illegal to say so, my considerable experience of the fat ones is that they are not very
Honest Tony
Tony Blair told us the truth. There, said it. Shocking, isn’t it? Something you would never dream of reading in a family publication. Especially The Spectator – the paper that supports Andrew Gilligan. Everyone knows, after all, that Mr Blair is a liar. We wouldn’t believe him, would we, if he told us the time.
Never glad confident morning again
Washington The process is drearily familiar from the plots of countless tawdry novels. Opposites attract: two unlikely people begin a passionate affair. Friends all warn them that it cannot last. The friends are ignored as the lovers stand magnificently alone against an uncomprehending world. Then the first trace of an unfamiliar lipstick is found on
Saturday
When revenge is sweet
The Elizabethans must have had a completely different attitude to physical violence. For a start, it was an inherent part of their system of justice. Even when we had the death penalty, killing someone in the name of justice was expected to be as quick and painless as possible. The hangman’s craft was to assess
Information superhighwaymen
I occasionally worry that future scholars will be unable to write my biography because of my failure to keep a diary. But it seems I need not be too bothered. There came a moment last week when I realised there will be more than enough information for them to piece together my life in all
Tinker, tailor, soldier, stooge
THE conventions of secrecy were maintained. Only Richard Dearlove’s disembodied voice appeared in front of the Hutton inquiry. But, irrespective of the effect on individuals’ reputations, there are fears that recent events have compromised the Secret Intelligence Service. Its operating procedures have been subjected to too much daylight, and it has been used for purposes
The truth about meaning
There is a certain tradition in American philosophy that combines logical rigour and systematic thinking in a style so concise and self-contained as to offer little or no purchase to the critic. The tradition began with C.S. Peirce, found triumphant expression in Quine and Goodman, and lived again – just at the moment when everybody