Media

Tuesday

Steerpike

William Hague’s beery legacy

Po-faced Labour MP Grahame Morris has been crying into his bitter this morning at young Tories up at York University who hold an annual ‘Hagueathon’ in honour of the fourteen pints the Foreign Secretary necked when he was a student. The game is very simple: right-wing students try to drink fourteen ales, with varying degrees of success. ‘I suspect William Hague’s capacity for 14 pints of Yorkshire bitter was a figment of his imagination,’ moans Morris to the Mirror. ‘In the current climate when the Government is supposed to be doing something about the alcohol crisis, this sets a bad example.’ Steerpike hears that Barrel Scrapper Morris has missed a

Thursday

Taki

High life | 28 February 2013

‘I was distressed to learn of some of your current problems and wanted to send you a word of encouragement. Since the time Bob Tyrrell introduced us a few years ago, I have been one of your admirers…’ This letter, dated 23 January 1985, was addressed to me and was signed by Richard Nixon. I had it framed and it hangs in my office. The only other letter hanging next to it is from Sir Denis Thatcher, after he and the Lady visited me in Switzerland. Nixon and Thatcher, two vastly misunderstood leaders who one day will be seen rightly as giants among the midgets who preceded and followed them.

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 28 February 2013

Eight years ago I was in Rome for The Spectator to write a piece about the election of a new pope after the death of John-Paul II. Within two days, and after only four ballots, some wispy white smoke emerged from the little chimney on the roof of the Sistine chapel. The College of Cardinals had made its decision and chosen the German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to be the 265th occupant of the throne of St Peter. He was already 78 years old and said to be longing for speedy retirement from his taxing job as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the oldest of the

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 28 February 2013

On the BBC television news on Monday night, the first three items concerned alleged misbehaviour by the famous — Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Lord Rennard and Vicky Pryce, the ex-wife of the ex-Cabinet minister, Chris Huhne. I begin to wonder if an accidental revolution is in progress. There is no revolutionary political doctrine, just a wish to believe that anyone in any position of power or fame is corrupt and should be exposed. Sexual misbehaviour is probably the most fun way of doing this, but stuff about money or lying works too. In theory, we should welcome this. The accusations often turn out to be true. Power corrupts. But actually there

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Stop shouting at Hilary Mantel – there are real outrages to address

It started the other week, when David Cameron was in India. Although it started like a bout of malaria starts, so I suppose the more precise term would be ‘recurred’. There he is in Amritsar, touring the site of a massacre, possibly in that hat. And all Britain wants to know is what he thinks about what Hilary Mantel thinks about the Duchess of Cambridge. What, I thought to myself, the hell is wrong with us? It’s a pretty expansive ‘us’, this, and it includes Cameron himself. ‘Actually, I haven’t read it,’ he should have said when asked, thousands of miles away, about an essay in the London Review of Books,

Kate Chisholm

Nick Robinson’s Battle for the Airwaves

Deep within the BBC’s inquiry into the Newsnight and Jimmy Savile affair is a comment by Jeremy Paxman so inflammatory as to demand its own investigation (lasting months and costing squillions). The trouble, he said, with BBC News is that it has become dominated by ‘radio people’. This was not, it seems, intended as a compliment. It’s as if, in Paxman’s view, the whole dreadful, dreary, demeaning muddle was the fault of those ‘radio people’, because according to Paxman they ‘belong to a different kind of culture’. You might think it’s of little importance that Paxman thinks himself cast from a different mould to, say, John Humphrys or Eddie Mair.

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

What Pippa did next

It seems that Pippa Middleton has developed a taste for column writing. After an excellent outing in this magazine’s Christmas double issue, the world’s most famous younger sister has signed up for Waitrose’s inhouse food periodical. ‘Pippa’s Friday Night Feasts’ will begin in April’s edition of Waitrose Kitchen magazine. The column will make up for the fact that Ms. Middleton’s planned follow-ups to her book, Celebrate, were scrapped for some strange reason. Panic over for the ever entrepreneurial Middleton family.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

The battle for credibility: David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Hilary Mantel edition

Why can’t politicians resist the temptation to comment? Hilary Mantel’s piece in the LRB is about as political as the pasta I was eating when David Cameron stopped darkening Indian doors for a moment to make what political strategists and pundits term “an intervention” on the matter. What possessed him (and Ed Miliband, who followed him into the mad breach)? The question is best answered, I think, by Peter Oborne in The Rise of Political Lying and much of his other writing. Oborne describes how political reality has changed. There was a time, at least in theory, when politics was determined by arguments over a verifiable truth; but this has

Monday

Matthew Sinclair

Why no conservative should support a mansion tax

The Government is expected to raise around £550 billion in tax revenue this financial year. The Centre for Policy Studies estimates that a mansion tax (of £20,000 on properties of £2 million), would raise at most £1 billion, less than 0.2 per cent of revenue. The tax is, however, likely to weaken the market and reduce prices – reducing receipts from other taxes; so even the CPS’s static analysis is probably optimistic. This proposed tax would be a huge burden on those forced to pay. The rate is not 1 per cent of the property’s value. The standard lifetime of a lease on a new build is 125 years, over

David Blackburn

Stop blaming judges, Ms May, and repeal the Human Rights Act

The latest session in May versus Judges over foreign criminals’ right to family life (Article 8 of the European Convention) is running as prescribed. Theresa May used the Sunday papers to demand that judges follow the wishes of parliament and deport more foreign criminals. A gaggle of retired judges and eminent lawyers told (£) her where to get off. In terms of the PR and the politics, it is game, set and match to Ms May. As Trevor Kavanagh notes in The Sun, the Eastleigh by-election, where immigration may play as an issue, is an important backdrop for the Home Secretary, particularly given the imminent arrival of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants. But, as for the validity of the arguments, the judges

Thursday

Douglas Murray

An interview with Lars Hedegaard

A couple of days ago I managed to interview Lars Hedegaard – the Danish journalist currently at an undisclosed location under police protection after an assassination attempt at his home in Copenhagen. The results are in this week’s magazine. Lars was his usual calm, eloquent and forthright self. If anybody thought they could silence him, they’ve got another thing coming.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

More nonsense in the newspapers

There’s another one of those fatuous “studies” in the papers today, based upon that favourite newspaper device, the false correlation. This time it’s about marriage; if you want to make your marriage work, move to Dorset, because part of it has the highest number of married couples in the country and they are more likely to stay married. The implication is that there must be something magical about Dorset, and that if you moved to, say, Wimborne, or Curry Rivel, any marital problems you might have had would immediately evaporate. Of course the reason more people are married in Dorset is that the average age of the population there is

Tuesday

Steerpike

Lord Heseltine is ‘Golden Oldie of the Year’

To Simpson’s-in-the-Strand this afternoon for The Oldie of the Year Awards (the ‘Tootys’ for short), which were presented by Sir Terry Wogan. The guest list read like a Tatler bash in the late 70s. Debonair Peter Bowles charmed anything that walked by him. Naughty Jilly Cooper chatted amiably to all and sundry about nothing and everything. Eileen Aitkens and Geoffrey Palmer rubbed shoulders with Joan Bakewell. Barry Cryer’s dirty laugh could be heard over the gentle conversation of Dennis Norden, Tony Blackburn, Simon Hoggart and Richard Ingrams. A boozy lunch passed without incident, and then it was time to stay awake for Wogan. He began by saying that Ingrams, the

Steerpike Steerpike

The Fleet Street fox hunt

One of London’s worst kept secrets has finally been revealed in an explosion of PR and TV appearances for Susie Boniface, the hack behind the Fleet Street Fox mask. Whilst anonymous, the former Sunday Mirror journalist managed to bring the unlikely bedfellows of Nadine Dorries and Jemima Khan together into an angry pact of hatred toward the acerbic blogger. Now that Foxy’s long awaited book is out, a new guessing game has begun: who are the charmingly-named characters based upon? The true identities of ‘TwatFace’, ‘Fatty’ and ‘Princess Flashy Knickers’ should be cringing in newsrooms across Fleet Street, as their cigarette paper thin disguises unravel. Snappy ‘Tania Banks’, a rival

Douglas Murray

George Galloway, The Great Dictator

The video (below) of Galloway really does have to be seen. It is best with the sound off (for what it is worth he is lambasting a student for asking a question which is critical of Hugo Chavez). It is best from about 3 mins 40 seconds in. As well as something innately comic, there is also something slightly unsettling about this video. The court-looking background (in fact the Oxford Union), the field-marshal at ease attire of the man, his gait, gestures and manner of speaking: what does it remind you of? Personally, it reminds me of how lucky we are to have been born in an age when voters

Monday

Rod Liddle

The metro left turns on Julian ‘L. Ron Hubbard’ Assange

Ah, at last the scales have fallen from Jemima Khan’s lovely fluttery little doe eyes. Having forked out £20,000 towards Julian Assange’s bail, the pouting metro-lefty socialite has come to the conclusion that the bloke is a bit of a rum chap, all things considered. She has even compared him to the barking charlatan who founded Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard and described Assange as demanding from his followers ‘blinkered, cultish, devotion.’ Well, sure – we tried to tell you that at the time, poppet. But you’re still not getting your money back. I wonder if the Ecuadoreans are sick of Assange yet, sitting in the basement of their embassy, referring

Friday

Douglas Murray

The cowardly and hypocritical media abandons Lars Hedegaard

It is now three days since a European journalist was visited at his door by an assassin. For three days I have waited for any response to this. The BBC reported the story in brief, as did the Mail and the Guardian posted the Associated Press story. But where are all the free-speech defenders? Where are all those brave blogs, papers and journals who like to talk about press freedom, human rights, freedom of expression, anti-extremism and so on? Where are all the campaigners? I have been scouring the internet and apart from Mark Steyn at National Review and Bruce Bawer at Frontpage, and a few other US conservative blogs,

Monday

Steerpike

Those who can’t do, teach

Journalist Iain Overton is back, in a way. The former head of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism is due to cash in at journalism luvvies’ favourite haunt, the Frontline Club. Overton, who resigned following the Lord McAlpine affair at the end of last year, will be sharing his tips of the trade for a bargain sum of just £150. ‘Investigative Journalism with Iain Overton’ is a one day course that ‘will introduce you to life as an investigative journalist.’ Now you too can learn golden rules like ‘showing the victim pictures of the subject’ and ‘calling up the person you are about to smear on national TV before you go on

Friday

Luke Smolinski

Every tabloid’s worst nightmare

What would George Orwell write about today? asked the Guardian. Here’s our nomination: an EU report that recommends giving the EU more powers to sack hacks, regulate the press and dole out subsidies to ‘good’ journalists, a pan-European press and failing newspapers. The report is called ‘A free and pluralistic media to sustain European democracy’. Be very afraid. Its preamble cites the misconduct of certain British journalists, before the report recommends a set of EU-sanctioned media regulations. All EU countries should have ‘independent media councils’ set up to investigate complaints, it says, and these media councils should police newspapers to make sure they have strict codes of conduct, prominently displayed