Spectator

Just to ring the changes, I’ve written about the BBC and political correctness for the mag this week. Yeah, yeah, I know – you haven’t heard enough about that subject. But one of the writers of the 1970s situation comedy It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum has complained that aunty isn’t showing the series any more as a consequence of political correctness. My suspicion is that it isn’t being reshown because it was humourless unmitigated crap, but there we are. The bigger issue, though, is the one raised by the excellent (for a Blairite) Dan Hodges. As it happens, I was invited onto this show and now wish I had accepted.

A year ago, a relatively unknown Argentine cardinal, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope. A few days later he announced he would take the name Francis, after Saint Francis of Assisi, because, he said, he had particular concern for the poor. In the 1880s, Pope Leo XIII also drew the attention of his clergy to St Francis’s teachings on poverty. The Spectator approved, and recommended it to Protestants as well as Catholics, but it took issue with the Pope’s argument that the spectacle of rich people joyfully embracing holy poverty would be enough to encourage the poor not to mind being poor. ‘It seems very doubtful whether the foundation of

When the idea of a modern Olympic Games began to be discussed, Spectator writers couldn’t really see the point. ‘Beyond a certain waste of money, there will be no harm in the new whim,’ the magazine ruled in 1894, but the notion that the competition would bind nations together didn’t seem very convincing: Why? Is it because they will all for a few days be recalling the Greeks and their achievements, and their short-lived superiority in all the arts? They cultivated of all Europe once studied Latin; but they cut one anothers’ throats for all that with a singular unanimity of brutality.  The diplomat Harold Nicolson agreed in 1948 that

I wonder if we should start our own Spectator Blog NekNominations? Open to bloggers and readers. I nominate Daniel Maris to drink a small glass of Pinot Noir while watching the early evening news. And Alex Massie to drink a flagon of Teachers while standing on the up line somewhere between Edinburgh and Alnmouth. Maybe on that big bridge over the Tweed. No need to post any photos or film. I’ve written about this latest internet craze for the mag this week: it is the usual carefully and copiously researched investigation, devoid of bigotry and offensiveness. At least five people have died so far taking part in Neknominations and there

Talking to Barbara Taylor about her new madness memoir this week, it’s clear that Britain does not have a glorious history when it comes to dealing with mad people. But The Spectator has always stood up for them, arguing in 1844, for example, that ‘the custody of lunatics ought to be like that of children – of sick children; and the guardians, who stand to those adult in body but infantile in mind in the place of parents, should be at all times open to their applications, ready to aid, comfort, and sooth.’ The magazine has often made a point of reporting on the horrors that have gone on behind

If the Faroe Islanders want to eat whale, let them. So says Tim Ecott in today’s Spectator. He argues that the Faroese – who live on dramatic and remote islands in the North Atlantic – shouldn’t be victimised for killing less than 0.1% of the pilot whale population annually for food. There are far more pressing marine issues that we should be concerned about – for example the 100 million sharks slaughtered for shark fin soup, or how the EU has allowed tuna stocks to be decimated. The problem is, many people don’t agree with him. We’ve all heard that whales are highly intelligent, social and family orientated creatures, and that

It’s a real pleasure looking through the first few editions of the Spectator from 1828, where the police reports and brief news items conjure up the England of Dickens and Trollope. There’s a man who comes before the court for throwing his wooden leg at people and is reprimanded by the judge. In a riotous atmosphere in court, the pauper explains that he can’t very well work with a leg that’s a foot and a half too short. Eventually, the Lord Mayor intercedes: ‘Defendant, I have prevailed upon the parish to put you once more upon your legs properly; and let me entreat you never to throw away an old

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_January_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Vernon Bogdanor discuss Iain Macleod’s ‘What Happened’ article” startat=1460] Listen [/audioplayer]Fifty years ago this week, a cover story in The Spectator helped to bring down a Conservative government. It was called ‘The Tory Leadership’ and was written by the editor, Iain Macleod, who had been a senior minister in Harold Macmillan’s government. Purporting to be the review of a book by Randolph Churchill on how Lord Home had ‘emerged’ in October 1963 as Macmillan’s successor, it claimed that Macmillan had fixed the succession so as to scupper the chances of the natural candidate, R.A. Butler, who had been deputy prime minister in all but name. In those days,

Mao Tse-tung was by far the greatest therapist of drug addiction in world history. He threatened to execute opium addicts if they didn’t give up. Threats to murder were about the only utterances of Mao’s that could be believed, and 20 million addicts duly gave up. I hope you don’t think that I am advocating Mao’s methods, but it does seem to me that his success tells us something very important about addiction. Mao didn’t say, nor would it have made sense for him to say, I will execute anyone who suffers from hypothyroidism, say, or rheumatoid arthritis; and therefore there must be a category difference between illness and addiction.

The motion ‘Addiction is not a Disease’ received overwhelming support from a lively crowd at last night’s Spectator debate. Despite moving speeches from recovering addicts, Dominic Ruffy (of the Amy Winehouse Foundation) and fashion designer Trinny Woodall, the audience came out strongly in favour of Damian Thompson’s insistence that addicts are fundamentally people who ‘like something too much for their own good and crave its rewards’. Theodore Dalrymple opened the debate for the motion by asserting that Mao Tse Tung was the greatest therapist of drug addiction: ‘Mao Tse Tung was by far the best therapist of drug addiction in world history,’ he said, ‘for he threatened to execute opium addicts if they didn’t give

Tonight, the Spectator will host a debate on the motion: ‘Addiction is not a disease’.  Damian Thompson, Theodore Dalrymple and Dr Aric Sigman will lock horns with Trinny Woodall, Dominic Ruffy and Vic Watts to decide whether addiction is a medical condition or a pattern of immoderate behaviour. The extraordinary story of Reverend Flowers is likely to feature in the discussions. As Melanie Phillips writes in this week’s Spectator cover piece: ‘So what about all those drugs and orgies? The behaviour which even his former rent boy described as ‘debauched’? How could a man with such predilections have got away with being a Methodist minister for 40 years? Flowers claims the

I hate drivers. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate all of them, just a considerably larger proportion than I hate of the population as a whole. And, like most cyclists, I drive myself, having been bullied into it by my then girlfriend who bought me lessons for my 27th birthday. But generally speaking I feel the same way about them as Rod Liddle feels about cyclists. Although I agree with Rod on almost all things, it would be weird and awkward if I agreed with him on everything, and this is the slither outside the bubble on the Venn diagram. I don’t object to his characterisation of cyclists as