Society

One of the most warmly received wines we offered in cahoots with The Wine Company last year was the 2011 Domaine de la Jasse Vieilles Vignes, a beautifully structured, Bordeaux-style red from the Languedoc. Readers, and no few Speccie staff and contributors (including your humble correspondent), lapped it up – so I’m delighted that Mark Cronshaw, the Wine Co’s operations director, has nabbed a special parcel of 2012 Domaine de la Jasse Tête de Cuvée Rouge on our behalf, making this a very enticing offer indeed, at a one-off, Spectator-readers-only price. Domaine de la Jasse lies some 15 km from Montpellier in the heart of the Languedoc – one of

Something incredible happened today: the Twitterati – used to passing mob justice on telly, celebs and politics – turned their attention to poetry. More specifically a poem in the London Review of Books by Craig Raine. How Mr S’s heart leapt as he saw Raine’s name trending up there with Andy Coulson and #NationalRunningDay, could it be that an English poet was proving more popular than the Kardashians? Alas not. There had not been a significant boost in the cultural tastes of the keyboard warriors. Instead they were raging after poetry critic Charles Whalley tweeted Raine’s poem ‘Gatwick’, describing it as ‘grim’. The poem describes his attraction to a young woman. It includes

So Sepp Blatter has substituted himself hardly 30 seconds into the second half, or rather the fifth half. But his rhinoceros skin still doesn’t seem to have been breached. His parting shot contained a bewildering statement: ‘We need a limitation on mandates and terms of office. I have fought for these changes but my efforts have been counteracted.’ If so, then why didn’t he take a lead by the simple expedient of not standing for a fifth term as Fifa president last week? It is a bit rich insisting on standing for an office and then claiming that you had spent your previous term fighting to abolish your right to

Every few years, Action on Smoking and Health draws up a wish list of all the policies it would introduce if it was king for the day. It then spends the next few years lobbying ferociously and watches with a satisfied smirk as every single one of their brainwaves becomes the law of the land. The manifesto of this tiny pressure group is, in effect, the manifesto of whichever party is in power. The only difference is that governments often ignore their own manifesto commitments (such as Labour’s 2005 pledge to exempt private members clubs from the smoking ban) whereas the ASH manifesto is always implemented to the letter. ASH’s