Society

Thursday

Mark Forsyth

What rhetoric can do for you – and what you can do for rhetoric

Listen to Mark Forsyth discuss what makes a political sound bite: [audioboo url=”http://audioboo.fm/boos/1746136-mark-forsyth-inkyfool-on-the-importance-of-political-sound-bites”/] In December 2011, there was a major reversal of American policy and ideology. Barack Obama told a crowd of veterans: ‘You stood up for America. Now America must stand up for you.’ A U-turn! A flop-flip! Because, if you think about it, Obama was saying the exact opposite of JFK: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ And nobody noticed. Obama was still the heir to Kennedy, because he used the same rhetoric. Technically, it’s called chiasmus. The press and the public hate rhetoric. The convention is

Melanie Phillips

The Revd Paul Flowers ticked all the right ‘progressive’ boxes — that’s why he could get away with anything

Listen to Melanie Phillips and Jesse Norman discuss Paul Flowers: [audioboo url=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/1746120-melanie-phillips-vs-jesse-norman-on-revd-paul-flowers”/] Yet again, one particular question has formed on lips up and down the land. How in heaven’s name could so many people have failed to spot such a spectacular abuse of a public position? We heard it first in the Jimmy Savile scandal, when the posthumous discovery of half a century of predation left people incredulous that so many had known about but done nothing to stop his serial depravities. Now a similar question needs to be asked about the Revd Paul Flowers, the disgraced Methodist minister and former chairman of the Co-op Bank who was filmed apparently

Lucy Vickery

Sporting double

In Competition 2824 you were invited to submit double clerihews about a well-known sporting figure past or present.   The clerihew was invented by Edmund  Clerihew Bentley as a bored schoolboy. His  son Nicolas subsequently came up with the double clerihew and trebles have been recorded. Other noted practitioners include Chesterton and Auden — and, of course, James Michie, who contributed many stellar examples to this magazine.   The rules governing the form are not iron-clad, as I see it. After all, Bentley himself bent them from time to time, as in this example. The art of Biography Is different from Geography. Geography is about maps, But Biography is about

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Rory Sutherland: The one issue where we accept the idea of genetic determinism

Some people are gay. Get over it’ — this was the slogan for a campaign against homophobia. A series of YouTube videos follows the same approach: a cameraman asks people on the street, ‘When did you choose to be straight?’ The subtext — that sexual orientation is innate, not chosen — has undoubtedly succeeded in promoting tolerance. The only strange thing here is that the argument leans heavily on genetic determinism which in almost any other field of debate is anathema to most liberal opinion. Imagine putting up a poster with the legend ‘Some children are brighter than others. #Truth.’ Or ‘Women are crap at parallel parking. Just live with it.’ A more principled argument

Bruce Anderson

Mineral reserves

St James’s Street is a repository of urban comfort. It contains majestic clubs, a gunsmith, a boot-maker, a barber, a cigar shop and a hatter. There are also restaurants, although the doyen is just round a corner in Jermyn Street: Wilton’s. Few if any establishments can match the quality of its seafood. It is as if the ghost of old Marks, its founder, was still on duty, to ensure no backsliding. In his day, a young aristocrat once enquired whether the smoked salmon was up to snuff. Marks looked pained. ‘I don’t know ’ow you can ask that question, my Lord. The smoked salmon ’ere is always the best that

The Spectator

The 2013 Michael Heath Award for cartooning  — shortlist (part I)

Nine cartoonists are shortlisted for the first ever Michael Heath Award for cartooning. The theme of the contest, sponsored by John Lobb, is ‘Man in Motion’. Work by four of the shortlisted artists is below. We’ll print four more next week, and the winner on 7 December. Thanks to all who entered — and congratulations to those on the shortlist. Sponsored by  

Sarah Reynolds

Notes on…London galleries

Everybody knows that the London art scene is thriving, and so of course the big international commercial galleries have set up here: Gagosian, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth and Pace. This global razzmatazz puts pressure on the city’s home-grown independent galleries — especially those in Cork Street in Mayfair. Cork Street has been at the heart of London’s art scene for more than 90 years, and helped launch some of the most famous artists of modern times. It is now closing for redevelopment by international landlords, so let’s hope they appreciate the street’s cultural importance and welcome the galleries back. But we don’t have to lament too long for Cork

Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite: I can no longer find knickers small enough to fit me

Barely a week goes by when a female Lib Dem minister doesn’t pledge some new coalition initiative on ‘female body confidence’. The junior equalities minister Jo Swinson was at it again when she congratulated Debenhams for becoming the first high-street retailer to introduce size 16 mannequins. Ms Swinson said: ‘The images we see in the world of fashion are all pretty much the same. It’s as if there’s only one way of being beautiful. Yet nine in ten people say they would like to see a broader range of body shapes shown in advertising and the media.’ For broader range of body shapes, read fat, by the way. For nine

Christopher Booker

Profumo. Chatterley. The Beatles. 1963 was the year old England died

Shortly before his death, David Frost rang to ask me to take part in a radio series he was making to mark the 50th anniversary of ‘the year, Chris, that I know is closest to your heart, 1963’. This was not because 1963 was the year when he and I worked together on the BBC satire show That Was The Week That Was (TW3), which overnight made Frost a television superstar. It was because he remembered the importance I had given to the events of that year in The Neophiliacs, a book I wrote long ago analysing the tidal wave of change which swept through British life in the 1950s

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Hugo Rifkind: From porn to Bitcoin, governments can’t control the web — so why is Cameron trying? 

What people don’t seem to realise is that the geeks are winning. Actually, scratch that. They’ve all but won. The world just hasn’t realised yet. So, when the likes of David Cameron talk of, say, blocking regular porn, or eradicating child porn, people take him seriously, as though this might actually be a thing in his power to do. Rather than what it truly is, which is something between a cynical gimmick and a last, desperate, deluded grasp at a dissolving straw. I mean, look, it might work a bit. Aspiring nonces, I suppose, will be set back by a week or two. People who just stumble upon kiddie porn

Daniel Hannan

How Britain invented freedom – and why we need to save it now

The single most common reaction I get from Americans when they learn that we’re placing our newspapers under our politicians is: ‘Y’all need a Bill of Rights’. You can see their point. Absolute freedom of expression used to distinguish the English-speaking peoples from the run of nations. The restrictions which even other western democracies applied — prohibitions on Nazi symbols, for example — were inconceivable in the Anglosphere. Over the past quarter of a century, that has changed. Anglophone democracies now regularly prosecute people for saying the wrong thing, usually on grounds of putative insult to some minority group. We have become accustomed, in Britain, to people being arrested for

Eliza Filby

The death of Tory Anglicanism

This week the General Synod edged one step closer towards permitting the ordination of female bishops. The final outcome is likely to be some kind of compromise to appease traditionalists similar to that in 1992 when the ordination of female priests was passed. But unlike that occasion, one crucial voice will not be heard nor probably venture an opinion — the Conservative party, which has distanced itself from ecclesiastical affairs over the past 20 years. This was not the case back in 1992 when a band of Conservative MPs joined Anglican traditionalists in opposing female ordination. Enoch Powell considered it a ‘blasphemous pantomime’, Ann Widdecombe spoke of her ‘utter grief

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Which female media star wrote the right-wing Revolt? It says a lot that we can’t think of many candidates

I am still trying to get some sort of closure. For almost three weeks now I have been tormented by memories of Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark dancing to the song ‘Thriller’ at the close of her programme, something presumably intended as a light-hearted Halloween treat for the eight or nine remaining viewers. It was not a light-hearted treat for me. I have always harboured the suspicion that Ms Wark is indeed a zombie, an innocent cadaver disinterred by shadowy persons within the left-wing Scottish establishment — the Baron McSamedis — and subjected to some awful supernatural process before being released into the world to do their vile bidding. Watching Kirsty lumber

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer: The Reverend is just a funny sideshow — here’s who to blame for the Co-op mess

The naughty Reverend Flowers will be a comic footnote in the history of the financial crisis — but no more than that. In terms of making ministry relevant to modern congregations, you’ve got to take your hat off to a man of the cloth who knows his ‘Charlie’ from his ‘ket’ (for the uninitiated that’s a horse tranquilliser) and likes to unwind after a tough select committee hearing with a ‘two-day, drug-fuelled gay orgy’. But it must be obvious that neither the FSA nor his own colleagues thought him anything other than a figurehead when he emerged through the Co-operative hierarchy to become a director of the Co-op Bank in

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

Would you trust this man?

In Geneva, America and her allies are limbering up for another round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear project. In a sign of the thaw Barack Obama and our own Prime Minister seem desperate to declare, David Cameron has spoken directly with President Rouhani for the first time. According to a Downing Street spokesman, the two men ‘agreed to continue efforts to improve the relationship’. Meantime, ahead of the Geneva talks, the man with the power in Iran, the Supreme Leader, has just given a speech to 50,000 Baseejis (government militia).  Here is some of what he said: ‘Is the Islamic regime after war with others? This is the statement that

Sebastian Payne

British households are still overwhelmed by debt

Despite ‘the age of austerity’, Britain still has a debt problem. That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Centre for Social Justice. It suggests that personal debt in the UK has reached a record high of £1.4 trillion, or 90 per cent of the UK’s economic output last year. That’s not happened overnight; but the debt level has increased steadily over the last decade: Breaking this down, the CSJ says that the average household debt is now £54,000 (nearly double what it was a decade ago). Thanks to the increase in borrowing, 5,000 people were made homeless last year due to mortgage and rent arrears. Christian Guy, director

Tuesday

Ed West Ed West

The CofE doomed? Only because it’s surrendered to phony soullessness

The Church of England is doomed, Lord Carey has said, warning that Anglicanism is just ‘one generation away from extinction’. To be fair people have been saying this for a long time; in the mid-19th century the Church decided to make a survey of churchgoing, and were stunned to find out that only a quarter of people in England attended Anglican services and a similar number to non-Conformist services. Half the population wasn’t going at all. Now you’d be lucky to get that many at Christmas. The Church faces the same problem as all churches, namely that religious belief continues to decline across Europe, and that those religions that do

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Here’s a thought about child care: what about giving parents some choice?

George Bernard Shaw made no bones about the merits of schooling: it was, he felt, a way for parents to offload the care of their children onto other people, and he was right. The rich do this systematically, of course, in delegating their children to boarding schools, but for the rest of us, Ed Miliband’s plan to extend childcare provision by obliging primary schools to take in our children from eight in the morning to six in the evening will have a good deal of appeal. At least for parents it will; if I were a teacher, I’d take a dim view of having babysitting added to my other duties. But