Society

Saturday

Frank Keating

Refreshing all parts

If the English Premiership’s round-ball autumn has been imbued with a generally browned-off languor, it has at least been far more civil than the bad-blooded rancour of their ‘oval’ cousins. The Rugby Football Union spits more viperishly by the week at what it perceives as the derisive impertinence of the leading clubs. This month marks 10 years of professional rugby union, although in most of its world the bigtime game had been furtively (or not so furtively) shamateur long before 1995. That year itself was a nicely apt anniversary, falling a century after the northern clubs had broken away to play a 13-a-side game which allowed payment to players. Driven

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 22 October 2005

Dear Mary… Q. I am an artist and will shortly be showing my latest works in a one-man show. I beg your advice on how I can circumvent the social difficulty which blights many private views — namely, what to do about having something to eat after the show? Clearly a two-tier system of those who are invited to go on to a restaurant and those who are not would be invidious, so I would like everyone to feel welcome. The problem is not only the fluid numbers but also the nightmare of trying to get dawdlers out of the gallery and into the restaurant in the first place, let

Sarah Bradford

A heart of gold — and steel

By the morning of Tuesday 9 April 2002 some 200,000 people of all ages had filed past the lying in state of the coffin containing the mortal remains of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. By the time she died, aged 101, Queen Elizabeth was a figure as familiar in the national consciousness as Winston Churchill. This is the first full- length biography — and who better to write it than Hugo Vickers, whose fascinated gaze has been riveted on the royal family since he was a schoolboy at Eton? Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as she was when she married Albert, Duke of York, later King George VI, in 1923 was not

Gary Dexter

Surprising literary ventures | 22 October 2005

David Cameron (1950) by George Frederick Clarke David Cameron is what one might call a hatchet job. Written by one G. F. Clarke, it’s the tale of a simple Scottish lad sold into slavery in the New World, who escapes and leads a life of adventure in the wild fighting of the various tribes, finally becoming a chief. Among the big beasts he has to slay are the bloodhounds that follow him as he attempts to throw off his pursuers (see picture). Clarke is particularly vivid in his descriptions of Cameron’s early experiences of tribal initiation: Now I was handed a pipe … I glanced at Tomah. He nodded encouragingly,

Jaspistos

Tittle-tattle

In Competition No. 2414 you were invited to supply some typically trivial twaddle from a gossip column. All my life, from the days of ‘Jennifer’s’ vapid chatter in the Tatler to the more toxic and intrusive modern muck-rakers, I have regarded gossip columnists, along with the paparazzi, as one of the lower forms of life. A son of mine, in search of journalistic experience, was taken on as one. In my eyes he responded admirably by being sacked for ‘unsuitability’ a few weeks later. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Thomas Loughborough. Enjoy. What’s Millie short for? Because she’s got short legs, of

Stephen Glover

The Cameronians are wrong if they think they have humbled the Daily Mail

North Oxford is not one of the most deprived areas of Great Britain. When its generally quite large houses come on to the market — which is not often — they tend to be snapped up by computer millionaires or bankers from London rather than by dons. The ‘Tory turncoat’ Shaun Woodward has just paid squillions for a not particularly beautiful neo-gothic semi-detached just around the corner from me. You might expect that this would be solid Tory territory, but it is not. In fact, being a Tory in North Oxford has not been entirely plain sailing these past few years. At election time Lib Dem and Green and a

The Spectator

Surrender to the unions

When Edward Heath was held to ransom by the unions in 1974, he called an election with the stirring question, ‘Who governs Britain?’, to which the answer was ‘not you, chum’. It is incredible that after more than 30 years, when so much is meant to have changed, the unions have just rolled over a New Labour government, with disastrous consequences for the public finances. Over the past year the Trade and Industry Secretary Alan Johnson has made a series of bold interviews and speeches on the need to reform public sector pensions, whose over-generous provisions promise to bankrupt future governments. Mr Johnson’s determination and common sense made him a

Peter Jones

Round 3

Eheu, the long, hot summer idyll proved too much for the classical scholars among you. The entries for Round 2, therefore, will be held over to Round 3 (or new entries may be submitted). Rules for the final round to decide the Cup Winners are as usual: 1. Only one entry, in only one section, allowed per person. 2. Prizes are awarded for the best entries in each section. 3. Cups are awarded at the end of the year to the best entries over the year. 4. Each entry must be marked ‘Spectator Classics Cup Round 3’ and must identify the appropriate section. 5. Entrants for the Open section must

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Is homeopathy really hogwash?

It didn’t occur to me until a few weeks ago to question homeopathy. Of course it worked. I grew up with it; my aunt Liz was and still is a homeopathic practitioner and for us — my mother, father, aunts, uncles, brother, cousins — calling Liz was the natural reaction to the slightest swollen gland. We weren’t loopy: if things got dangerous, a trained doctor would be summoned but as he tapped and tutted, the aunts would hover, a copy of First Aid Homeopathy in Accidents and Ailments by Dr D.M. Gibson to hand. My childhood memories are full of the taste of little sugary pills — ‘There, open wide,

Ian Birrell

The hell I share with David Cameron

My daughter suffered two seizures the other night. One was shortly after midnight, the other a couple of hours later. Having been away on business the previous night, it was my turn to get up to comfort her, to check that the fits were not life-threatening and, afterwards, to settle her back to sleep. Five hours later the alarm went off and, as my teenage son stomped into the shower, I popped back into her bedroom to check that she was still asleep — and still alive. This was a typical night in our house, and it was followed by a typical day of attempting to balance work and family

Tom Gross

Dead Jews aren’t news

British newspapers care greatly about some victims of the Israel army, says Tom Gross, but not the Jewish victims of Palestinian terror — even if they are British Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers on 16 February 2002. Even though Thaler was a British citizen, born in London, where her grandparents still live, her death has never been mentioned in a British newspaper. Rachel Corrie, on the other hand, an American radical who died in 2003 while acting as a human shield during

Friday

Michael Heath

Diary – 21 October 2005

At home I work in a cupboard under the stairs just to keep me grounded, so you won’t hear me talking about my ‘studio’ — unlike some cartoonists I could name. My cupboard has in it, apart from old clothes, a cat litter tray and a collection of hundreds of jazz CDs. Do I put them back in their cases when I’ve finished playing them? I do not; anyway, I now have an iPod with all my music downloaded on to it. Fancy that! All those wonderful CDs on a machine the size of a packet of five Woodbines. Now I can have music wherever I go, so don’t even

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 15 October 2005

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said that the government had ‘got to make sure that the police have the powers they can to deal with people who are drug dealing in the street’. Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said that the government had abandoned plans to introduce a new offence of ‘glorifying terrorism’. Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the new Lord Chief Justice, said, ‘Occasionally one does feel that an individual politician is trying to browbeat the judiciary.’ Britain’s Assets Recovery Agency and the Irish Republic’s Criminal Assets Bureau looked into the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s link to a £30 million property portfolio in Manchester. The government put

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 15 October 2005

The Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, currently before Parliament, is often discussed in terms of absolute morality. It can never be right to take a life, says one side. The right to choose extends to the right to choose to die, says the other. I wish more attention focused on a prudential argument about an underlying tendency of human nature. People have a very strong desire for the old to hurry up and die. Sometimes this is straightforward greed for their money and possessions; sometimes the Darwinian impatience of the young to get more power and destroy what is unproductive; sometimes our selfish, though natural, dislike of caring

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 15 October 2005

You know how you can tell a Frenchwoman or a Spaniard in a crowd without hearing them speak a word? Well, a friend of my husband’s who is interested in anthropology refers to that bundle of cultural characteristics as the jizz. It was not a word with which I was familiar outside a fairly grubby slang meaning familiar to Veronica’s generation. But I gather that it is widely used in ornithological practice, with reference to recognition of a species in action by its special behaviour and appearance. The word appeared no earlier than 1922, in the work of T.A. Coward (1867–1933). He was a Cheshire man, the son of a

Frank Keating

A sumptuous summer

Quaintly, you could say that what the BBC in its heyday used to call ‘this great summer of sport’ finally ends this weekend in Shanghai. It may be two weeks until we adjust the clocks to signal the closing-in of winter, but 2005’s summer calendar snaps shut tomorrow with the running of the final round in China of the Formula 1 motor-racing season. Or nearer home, if you prefer — and even more cockeyed for old timers, seeing as it was traditionally the most mud-slurped and frost-bitten of wintery games — with the final whistle of today’s rugby league Grand Final at Old Trafford. The air-raid siren squeal of Formula

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 15 October 2005

Dear Mary… Q. Your child of not super-rich parents (8 October) needs to be aware that, if his parents hand ownership of their house to him, for the transfer to be valid for tax purposes they would then have to pay a full rent to him, and they might not want or be able to do this. T.W.A., Surrey A. Yes my correspondent might well have found that this was the case and it might well not suit the parents to shell out the full rent. However, the point was to prompt the parents into confronting the issue of legal tax avoidance in the first place so that they can

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 15 October 2005

Appeasing evil Israeli policy in the occupied territories, says John Denham (‘Israel’s actions affect our security’, 24 September) ‘is not simply a matter of foreign policy, it is a matter for British domestic security policy too’. His logic seems to run as follows: the Palestinians suffer from their conflict with Israel, their plight is heeded by ‘young Muslims [who] very much identify with Palestinians’, some of whom express their dissatisfaction by self-immolation in locations chosen to ensure the maximum death toll among British civilians. Therefore, if only we could appease the Muslim extremists by adopting a more hostile attitude towards Israel, the global jihadists groups would lose their cause célèbre

Deborah Ross

Restaurants | 15 October 2005

The newly released Zagat survey has just named the top ten most popular London restaurants and put Wagamama, a cheap noodle bar restaurant, at number one. So how come I’ve never been? Especially when you consider there are now 50 of them worldwide, 24 of which are in London, and a new one appears to open every ten minutes. Go and answer your door and there’ll probably be one in your living-room by the time you get back. I think it’s possibly because I have always equated Japanese food with sushi and, while I know sushi is very fashionable and an art form and all that, I’m afraid I just

Simon Courtauld

Terrific turbot

You don’t often see a large turbot these days. My guess is that the big ones, like most of the lobsters and crabs caught in our waters, go to Spain or France. The specimen which I saw in Paris earlier this year was being cut into fat steaks for sale at 90 euros per kilo, or about £27.50 per pound. Perhaps there is no market in Britain for the king of white fish at this sort of price. I have in the larder a long, oval fish kettle suitable for salmon, but I wonder whether anyone still uses the diamond-shaped kettle which was designed, probably in the 19th century, to