Society

Wednesday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 10 May 2006

Q. At a sumptuously catered private view, a well-known London art gallery director bounced up with very expressive congratulations about my latest book. My initial delight soon turned to numb shock when I realised she had confused me with Peter York, an older man. Of course I said nothing, but took the earliest opportunity to back away and rejoin the giggling, champagne-fuelled throng. What might I have said at the time? How can I most thoroughly avenge myself?S.B., London SE11 A. I am surprised you (born 1951) wanted to punish the galleriste for confusing you with the style guru Peter York (born 1942). Peter York, né Wallis, has kept his

Frank Keating

Se

Romantics as well as purists will be lucky if today’s FA Cup final in Cardiff riddles the cockles and stirs the spirits. Romantics as well as purists will be lucky if today’s FA Cup final in Cardiff riddles the cockles and stirs the spirits. The knockout rounds might have been compelling enough, but for some time now succeeding finals have been limpidly predictable. Perhaps the event itself yearns too longingly for a return to its natural home at Wembley. That chaotic building site in London must surely be up and running by next May (precisely the forecast of 12 months ago). For neutrals, Liverpool vs West Ham this afternoon whets

Alan Judd

The Aston challenge

We don’t often get second chances. Education, the direction of your career, first love, life itself — they’re none of them dress rehearsals, unless you’re lucky with the first two. And if they were, would we do any better? Best not ask. That’s one reason why it’s always so much more cheering to think about cars. They’re repeatable, easily obtained and easily disposed of provided you don’t dwell upon the loss. If you can’t quite recall what it felt like to drift-slide your first Hispano-Suiza out of a tight right-hander, you can simply borrow, buy or pinch another. Or sometimes even get the old one back (that beats most first

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Who needs UFOs when you can play Sudoku?

Your chances of being abducted by a grey-skinned, blank-eyed alien creature have receded very greatly over the last decade or so. If you haven’t already been abducted, bad luck — it might never happen. Your chance has probably gone. Last week a report into UFO activity over Britain was made public by the Ministry of Defence (because it was forced to do so under the Freedom of Information Act). It seems that the whole subject of flying saucers had, for a while, been taken very seriously by our defence intelligence chiefs; the report took four years to prepare. It came to the conclusion that there were indeed such things as

Jaspistos

Bouts rimés | 10 May 2006

Bouts rimés In Competition No. 2442 you were asked for a poem with certain rhyme words to be used in a given order.The rhymes were taken from a poem by J.B. Morton (

Saturday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 6 May 2006

As I write, no one knows what the result of the local elections will be, but it seems safe to predict that the turnout will not be high. Politically minded people tend to worry about low turnout because they find it hard to understand that someone might just not care very much who represents him or her in Parliament or council. Yet, in a reasonably well-run society, it is rational to conclude that it doesn’t greatly matter who wins, and leave it at that. The right to vote, which is essential, only translates into a duty to vote in extreme circumstances (hence the traditionally high turnout in Fermanagh and South

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 6 May 2006

On BBC television’s Newsnight they have got one of their reporters to live for a year ‘ethically’. By this they do not mean that he must remain faithful to his wife, eschew false expenses claims, be patient with his children and observe a strict adherence to the truth, though no doubt these virtues already come second-nature to him. They mean he should be green. This ethicality entails low-energy lightbulbs, cycling, recycling and the forswearing of aeroplane travel. What Aristotle’s opinion would be of this notion of ethics I leave to my neighbour Dr Jones, but it was certainly to the Greek philosopher that we owe the term. Aristotle’s book Ethics,

Jeremy Clarke

In at the deep end

On Saturday morning I woke early. I was in a strange bed, in an unfamiliar bedroom, fully clothed, with my shoes on. Curled up beside me was a woman I didn’t recognise. I lifted the covers and peeked underneath to see if she had anything on. She was wearing a blue dress. Tilting my head gave me an excruciating pain just behind my eyeballs. I’d fallen off the wagon again. Why am I so powerless against alcohol? I’d left the house the night before brimming with health and optimism. Now I felt as if I was actually dying. What had caused the capitulation? I tried to piece things together. Party. One drink had led

Taki

Warrior writer

New York I’m in the middle of rereading Storm of Steel, Ernst Jünger’s account of his first world war experience, which was published in 1920 and immediately made him famous. No writer has ever claimed to have had Jünger’s experience of warfare, and no soldier has ever written with such sincerity, nobility and grace about the business of war. ‘Jünger experienced, acted out, articulated, and then attempted to remedy the destruction of chivalry and the arrival of totalitarian violence in Germany,’ wrote William Pfaff. In other words, Jünger tried to re-establish the chivalric ethic of his ancestors and German knights of old, believing in a new aristocracy of warriors whose

Robin Oakley

Pipe dream

‘The unexpected ones are always the sweetest,’ said J.P. McManus ‘The unexpected ones are always the sweetest,’ said J.P. McManus after his Hasty Prince had followed half a dozen duck eggs by running out the 14–1 winner of the first at Sandown last Saturday. Following the extra-marital cavortings of deputy prime minister John Prescott, built more like a manatee than a matinée idol, I’m not sure that Tony Blair would agree with that, but the £12,526 McManus picked up for first prize helped cement his position as champion owner as the jumps season ended. The biggest surprise, though, was Martin Pipe’s announcement on the day Paul Nicholls became champion trainer

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 6 May 2006

Prepare for coalition From William MacDougall Sir: I hope Fraser Nelson is mistaken in his talk of a ‘Lib Dem Test’ for Tory policies (‘Cameron’s secret plan’, 29 April). Of course the party should not be frightened of coalition; after all, it has been in coalition for much of its history (with Irish parties, or Liberal and Labour splinter groups). But the way to prepare is to have stronger, not weaker, policies. If we are already voting to ban parental interviews, where would we compromise on education — on banning the remaining grammar schools? No, to prepare for coalition with the Lib Dems (or Labour) we should have more extreme

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

My fantasy Cabinet would be a ministry of all the failures

Most of us know what it is to finish a task undertaken for the first time, having made every mistake in the book, and regret we are unlikely ever to have to do this job again. We would know the ropes next time: the pitfalls, the useful little short-cuts. The job would be a doddle second time round. Were I ever again to need to cut three round holes in a wooden faceplate, to offer nesting access to small birds while excluding jackdaws, I would know that a determined jackdaw can slip through a tiny hole: much smaller than you would guess by looking at the jackdaw. But I have

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Galbraith versus Friedman: the great debate is not over yet

I would love to have been a fly on the wall — or a butler — at the US embassy I would love to have been a fly on the wall — or a butler — at the US embassy in New Delhi in March 1963 when Milton Friedman, champion of laissez-faire, came to lunch with J.K. Galbraith, high priest of higher welfare spending and at that time President Kennedy’s ambassador to India. Not only were the two economists lifelong intellectual opponents who found each other’s core beliefs morally reprehensible, but the magisterial Galbraith stood some 20 inches taller than the bantam-cock Friedman. Despite their differences they had in fact

The Spectator

System? What system?

The foreign prisoners scandal has revealed nothing less than a crisis of governance: the fundamental incapacity of what ministers feebly call ‘the system’ to respond to a series of urgent contemporary problems. This is a modern disaster in the making. It requires modern solutions. On the BBC’s Ten O’Clock News last Monday, the first three items concerned immigration and population mobility: the prisoners scandal, the immigrant protest in the United States and the migration of workers around the expanded European Union. The movement of people around the world — legal and illegal — is now prodigious and in many respects to be welcomed as an engine of economic growth. But

Frank Keating

Testing times

Blossom by blossom, the season changes. So should the headlines. Fat chance. Weird times: roll up, roll up for a Lord’s cricket Test even before the mudlarks of winter have picked the teams for their end-of-term deciders. The hanging-baskets and bunting (and the boaters and blazers) might be in colourful place for the opening overs at Lord’s on Thursday morning, but both soccer and rugby still have an awesome amount of unfinished business. There has not been an earlier Lord’s Test in my lifetime. More than likely, alas, all will be grey and monochrome as an ‘unsettled’ weather system lumpenly sits over Marylebone to make the poor, palely shivering Sri

Friday

Peter Oborne

Diary – 5 May 2006

Ndjamena Third-world airports are more satisfactory than ours in every department. They are more efficiently run. There is no need to walk several miles to your departure gate. They tend not to be disgustingly overcrowded like Heathrow or Gatwick. They smell much nicer, and the food is incomparably better. Furthermore the scene is more interesting. Large colourful insects fly around. Enormous lizards run up and down the walls. As we waited in Ndjamena to follow President Idris Deby for a day’s campaigning in southern Chad, an owl surveyed the scene from the top of the aircraft hangar while rabbits and exquisite little gazelles danced around the airfield. The dilemma facing

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody – 5 May 2006

The government is in ‘meltdown’ THURSDAY The government is in ‘meltdown’ and we are marking the occasion with lots of glacier jokes (Steve not amused) and by gazing at our collective navel. Much argument about who should ‘be in the lead’, and whether letting prisoners out is worse than sleeping with your secretary. Or, indeed, sleeping with prisoners. Still, at least one good thing has come from the ‘lags and shags’ debacle, as Nigel likes to call it: Poppy is ecstatic. DD is finally ringing her in the middle of the night. Thank heavens. It was becoming painful to listen to her whining on about the lack of intrusive phone

Wednesday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 3 May 2006

Q. While staying at a house party in Norfolk I lost a much loved and very expensive Georgina von Etzdorf scarf. And I’m afraid that when I couldn’t find it I suspected one of the other guests â” who’d admired it and who was in the bedroom next to mine â” of taking it. My suspicion became a conviction and I accused her, behind her back, to anyone who knew her, of being a thief. Of course, the scarf has now turned up â” discovered by the cleaning lady under my bed. I am now feeling rather ashamed of myself. What should I do to scotch the rumours I have

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 29 April 2006

BNP is party of the Left From Lord Tebbit Sir: Oh dear! Oh dear! How can we expect the Guardian and the BBC to get it right when the Telegraph and even The Spectator (Leading article, 22 April) fall into the trap of calling the BNP an extreme right-wing party. In my book it is left-wing, not right-wing, to oppose both capitalism and free trade, and to promote a ‘significant direction of the commanding heights of the economy’ as well as workers’ co-operatives and programmes of nationalisation including, of all things, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, all of which are part of the BNP manifesto. Of course the BBC/Guardian establishment

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 29 April 2006

There has been a dramatisation of some Jeeves stories on the wireless. The great flaw has been presenting them as slapstick, which hardly works without pictures and ill serves Wodehouse’s writing, which depends so much on playing with language. In what must have been additional dialogue, I heard some annoying anachronisms. Wodehouse’s books have acquired a period flavour that is part of their attraction. They were always old-fashioned, for their author’s fictional world drew on the days of his boyhood, or even upon those before his birth in 1881. But in the broadcast version a little rhyme about the newt included the word dinner-suit. I doubt that Wodehouse would have