Society

Thursday

11 Jun 2015

Portrait of the week | 11 June 2015

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said of the EU referendum: ‘If you want to be part of the government, you have to take the view that we are engaged in an exercise of renegotiation to have a referendum and that will lead to a successful outcome.’ This caused a certain amount of uproar, with newspaper headlines saying things like ‘PM: Back me or I will sack you.’ Mr Cameron the next day said: ‘It’s clear to me that what I said yesterday was misinterpreted.’ His remarks followed the launch of a grouping called Conservatives for Britain (run by Steve Baker, the MP for Wycombe), which boasted the support of

Jan Moir

Diary – 11 June 2015

Down here in west Cornwall, the days are long and summer is on the wing. Like the Tories in Scotland, the tiny population of Cornish choughs continue to defy extinction, clinging on like crazy with their little red feet, simply refusing to die out. Six nests with chicks have been monitored this year, while the birds themselves enjoy a higher level of security and protection than a Russian mafioso. I am dying to see one, forever scanning the cliffs with my binoculars, trying and failing not to be a holiday cliché. Middle-aged woman in Breton top, bakes her own bread and stares at the sea for hours on end. Chough

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 11 June 2015

Two beautiful volumes in a cloth-bound case reach me. They are Speeches and Articles by HRH The Prince of Wales 1968-2012, published by University of Wales Press. The explanatory list of abbreviations and acronyms alone gives a charming sense of the range of subjects covered — ‘Foot and Mouth Disease, Foreign Press Association, Forest Stewardship Council … Myalgic Encephalopathy, Member of Parliament … Non-Commissioned Officer … Not In My Back Yard! … Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil’. Among the many speeches on the environment, however, I cannot find his speech in Rio de Janeiro in March 2009, entitled ‘Less Than 100 Months To Act’. There Prince Charles warned that if

Doc

2215: IVOs

The unclued lights (one hyphened and another a novel which is listed in Chambers Crossword Dictionary) display a similar feature — a few of the clued solutions do so too, though to a lesser extent. Elsewhere, ignore an apostrophe. Across 1 Slim, young, lithe person – hot! Just tops! (5) 6 Hosting is problematic as soon as possible (7, two words) 11 Boastful coward showing Cliff a sponge (10) 15 Accumulate stakes (4) 17 Letter about smell of savoury snacks (7) 18 Some shirker twisted marginal reading (3) 19 Dictator books shrubs for TVs (10, two words) 21 Performance by dancing

Doc

To 2212: : Plus Ça Change

The unclued Across lights (15, 23/21, 38 and 39) are LITERAL anagrams of the unclued Down lights (3, 19, 32/37, 2) First prize Anthony Harker, Oxford Runners-up E.A. Wright, Fleetwood, Lancs; K.J. Williams, Kings Worthy, Hants

Douglas Murray

Rape culture, Rotherham and double standards

Freddy’s blog on the so-called ‘rape culture’ that we in Western democracies are all meant to be struggling under reminds me of an unwittingly important moment on BBC3 last year. It was provided by our colleague James Delingpole when he appeared on something called ‘Free Speech.’ This is an almost comically appalling ‘yoof’ programme which I did once from an ice rink in Doncaster alongside a Page 3 model and Owen Jones. Anyway, on the occasion that poor James appeared one of the subjects that came up was ‘rape culture’. James – displaying a form which any sane viewer couldn’t have helped but watch with noises of admiration like ‘coo’

Jonathan Portes

Right to reply – Jonathan Portes on Niall Ferguson

Two weeks ago I was too ‘obscure to bother with‘ for Professor Niall Ferguson. He’s changed his mind, dedicating an entire article in The Spectator to me. In particular, he is very upset that, after I complained, the FT was obliged to correct his recent article about the UK economy. Professor Ferguson’s article contained one undisputed factual error (about UK business confidence) and one statement which the FT’s independent complaints commissioner found to be misleading, but which Professor Ferguson argues is composed of two ‘true statements’. This was: ‘Weekly earnings are up by more than 8 per cent; in the private sector, the figure is above 10 per cent. Inflation is

Lara Prendergast

We really are screwed if we believe that social media can curse us

More bad news for Malaysia, I’m afraid, where a group of tourists have apparently managed to trigger an earthquake simply by taking their clothes off. Last Friday, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Sabah, Malaysia’s easternmost state, triggering landslides on Mount Kinabalu which killed 18 people. Tragic, and quite clearly the blame must fall on the ten tourists who reportedly posed naked for a photograph on the mountain, which is considered by locals to be a sacred site. Malaysian officials have arrested the tourists for indecent exposure and have also suggested that they angered the mountain spirits. Now it’s easy to scoff at the voodoo mindset of these funny foreigners. In the enlightened

Freddy Gray

We don’t have a rape culture, we have a victim culture

It takes courage to tell a bunch of Canadian feminists marching against ‘rape culture’ that they are talking rubbish. And courage is something Lauren Southern, a reporter for The Rebel, has in spades. She had the guts to go to a ‘SlutWalk’ in Vancouver holding a sign that said: ‘There is no rape culture in the west’. You can see her video above. Lauren makes a good point. Canada is hardly a rapist’s paradise. ‘Rapists go to prison here,’ she says. ‘Rapists are actually hated here. Rapists are fired from their jobs. Men who make rape jokes are fired from their jobs.’ But it is lost on the SlutWalkers, who are so

Niall Ferguson

Pedant’s revolt

It used to be that the most annoying thing in academic life was political correctness. But a new irritant now threatens to supplant it: the scourge of correct politicalness. The essence of correct politicalness is to seek to undermine an irrefutable argument by claiming loudly and repetitively to have found an error in it. As with political correctness, which seeks to undermine arguments by declaring the person making them a bigot, correct politicalness originated in the US. But it now has its exponents here, too. Foremost among them is Jonathan Portes. Portes’s career recalls that of the character Kenneth Widmerpool in Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time. Widmerpool

James Forsyth

Cameron’s dark evening of the soul

At 6.30 p.m. on 7 May, the Camerons invited guests at their home in Oxfordshire into the garden for a drink. Everyone stood on the patio, wrapped up in coats and shawls and drinking wine. They were understandably nervous. The Prime Minister had prepared a resignation statement and read it out to the assembled gathering. The group that huddled together on the patio that day tells us a lot about the qualities which Cameron values in people. Most of them were close to him long before he entered No. 10. Ed Llewellyn, his chief of staff, worked with him at the Conservative Research Department more than 30 years ago. Kate Fall,

Julie Burchill

Tel Aviv

Just so you don’t get it confused with the City That Never Sleeps, Tel Aviv — my favovurite place on earth — now markets itself as the Non-Stop City and, indeed, it never lets up for a moment. We like to refer to the Blitz Spirit; Israel has it. Any of the lovely youngsters playing matkot on the beach (an American journalist once used the bat-and-ball game as a metaphor for Middle Eastern conflict — ‘No rules, no winners and it never ends’) could be called up to fight and die for their country that evening. And life during wartime leads to living for today. At the beach bar every

Jonathan Ray

June Wine Club I | 11 June 2015

Pol Roger is The Speccie’s favourite fizz and no event here is complete without it. In fact, judging by the heroic amounts we get through — notably at the summer party — I’d say we could almost be Pol’s best customer. This is The Spectator after all, not the New Statesman. Of course, Pol Roger’s most famous customer was Sir Winston Churchill who, the company estimates, got through more than 500 cases in the last ten years of his life. Of his titanic consumption of Pol Roger, Churchill’s daughter, Lady Soames, memorably remarked, ‘I saw him many times the better for it, but never the worse.’ It’s the 50th anniversary

Roger Alton

The Kiwi tourists are a living lesson

A rather desultory Test series is taking place in the Caribbean where Australia are marmalising the West Indies, with a one-time Bournemouth club cricketer called Adam Voges scoring his maiden Test century at the near-pensionable age of 35 (the oldest ever as it happens: bodes well for the Ashes, doesn’t it?). During lunch the other day Sky showed clips of the 2003 Test in St John’s, Antigua, between the same sides. That was when Sarwan and Chanderpaul both scored centuries in the second innings to steer the West Indies to their historic winning fourth innings total of 418–7. At one point Glenn McGrath, yes the great McGrath, advances on little

The Spectator

Against profiteering

From ‘The Essential Need’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915: Just as wages must be ‘stabilised’ for the men at existing rates, so all additional profits due to war contracts must be credited, not to the individual employer, but to the state. The principle of no war rise in wages must be strictly applied to profits. Upon this foundation we could build up a sound organisation for the increased production of shell and other munitions, and build it up without unfairness either to masters or men. Both would become the agents of the government, and both would be fairly remunerated, but during the war neither would be able to take advantage of

Stuart Wheeler

A warrant for exit

On the 12th of January, 500 of the great and good, or at any rate the well-heeled, sat down to a sumptuous dinner at the Guildhall at a cost of £500 a head. This was to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, widely regarded as one of the most important documents in the world. Celebrate? A funeral procession would have been more appropriate. Clause 38 provided, ‘No judicial officer shall initiate legal proceedings against anyone on his own mere say-so, without reliable witnesses brought for that purpose.’ Yet the British government had given away, less than three months earlier, the protection provided by that clause. It voluntarily ‘opted in’ to

Cressida Connolly

A noble undertaking

I adore undertakers. Unlike dentists or buses or boyfriends, they’re always there when you need them: even if you call in the middle of the night you will be answered by a human, not an answer-phone message. Funeral directors (as they prefer to be called) are surely the only businesses in Britain never to greet a customer with the words: ‘Sorry love, we’re just closing.’ They are unfailingly courteous and full of good sense. They listen reverently while you recite your woes; like a therapist, but without the side effect of making you hate your family. In an age when even consultant surgeons dress in trainers, there is a pleasing

Rod Liddle

My time of the month

I have spent the last few days posing with a tampon as part of an international campaign to demystify the important issue of menstruation. I do not usually menstruate myself, although out of a wish to show solidarity with those who do I set aside five or six days each month to behave in a grotesquely irrational and bad-tempered manner, snapping at people for no reason and moaning a lot. As a man this seems to be the very least that I can do, an attempt at empathy which still recognises my privileged position as a male. The campaign which I mentioned — and I would urge you all to

Hugo Rifkind

Why does no one blame Cameron for Libya?

Call me petulant, but I’m not sure Britain is getting enough credit for our fine, fine work in Libya. The Islamic State, so recently present only in the semi-mythical lands of Syria and Iraq — places you see on the news, but don’t really have to believe in — has now set up residence a short hop away from Italy, in the Libyan town of Sirte. Which is, just to be clear, a hell of a lot closer to Italy than we are. Maybe one-and-a-half times the stretch of a Hull– Zeebrugge ferry. We did that. Well done everybody. Top marks all around. Also, Derna. That’s another town they’ve got.

Lucy Vickery

Pylon poetry

In Competition No. 2901 you were invited to write a poem in praise of a modern-day blot on the landscape. Stephen Spender wasn’t praising pylons on aesthetic grounds in his notorious poem but celebrating the progress that these non-human structures embody: ‘There runs the quick/perspective of the future’. The spirit of the 1930s poets — applied to those 21st-century gods technology and consumerism — was very much alive in what was a large and accomplished entry. It was tricky to single out just six prizewinners. Catherine Chandler, Tim Raikes, Bill Greenwell and Alanna Blake shone, but were narrowly pipped to the post by those printed below, who are rewarded with