Society

Tuesday

Matthew Dancona

The verdict is in

A must-read this morning is Anatole Kaletsky’s damning assessment of the yesterday’s developments in the Northern Rock saga. Kaletsky is one of the most respected economic commentators in the world and – as a former colleague – I know that he does not make such sweeping statements lightly. He was, moreover, well disposed to Gordon Brown from the start, and certainly has no ideological axe to grind. His verdict – that the Prime Minister’s economic competence is shot to pieces – will send a chill through the already glacial corridors of Number Ten.

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Descent into recession?

Global stock-markets have plummeted today, with the FTSE 100 share index suffering its largest one-day drop since September 11th, 2001; losing more than 5% of its value.  The falls – which are being mirrored by rapid price drops for commodities such as oil – are being spurred by a fear of a recession in the US. Clearly, George W. Bush’s $140 billion tax-relief package for the American economy has failed to reassure financiers; even though its explicit aim is to catalyse continued growth (but “at a slower rate”) for 2008.  These tax relief measures appear to have come too late in the day to persuade American consumers – who are

Peter Hoskin

Reforming the Lib Dems

Over the weekend, Nick Clegg had a piece in the Telegraph in which he extolled the virtues of NHS reform.  He wrote: “As it approaches its 60th Birthday, the NHS is at a crossroads. As with all our public services under Labour, good intentions have gone awry under the iron fist of central control.  Money has been poured in, but it hasn’t delivered the first-class health service Britain deserves ….  So what next? There are no more bucketloads of cash to pour in. Instead of only asking “how much” we spend, it’s time to focus on “how” we spend it ….  A People’s NHS would replace top-down targets with personal

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

We have a front-runner

John McCain’s victory in the South Carolina primary makes him the Republican front-runner. It is an amazing turn-around for a man whose campaign was left for dead last summer but this new designation carries with it dangers for McCain. First, it puts a bulls-eye on his back. Rudy Giuliani, who must beat McCain in Florida, is already dinging him on taxes and the worry for McCain is that the other candidates all go after him on issues where he is vulnerable with the Republican base. Secondly, McCain has never seemed comfortable as the front-runner preferring to fight as the scrappy underdog.  Next Tuesday’s contest in Florida is crucial for McCain.

Saturday

Taki

Short stories

Gstaad The row over Indonesian ‘hobbits’ has split this beautiful alpine village in half. Alas, it began when I wrote something about the Olden, one of Gstaad’s oldest and most beautiful inns and its owner Bernie Ecclestone, of Formula I fame. The Olden had orginally been owned by the Mullener family, since the turn of the last century, and was run by Heidi Mullener for close to 50 years. Her cousin Rudy instructed the greatest Greek skier ever, and, while he was at it, he also turned Sir Roger Moore into an Alberto Tomba double. Now for the hobbits. When Heidi sold the Olden to Bernie Ecclestone ten years or

Anne Mcelvoy

Diary – 19 January 2008

In the month of back to basics, I no longer hanker for parties or cut-price cashmere, just the long, deep bath of my dreams. We spent New Year with friends in Cameron country: lovely Oxfordshire farmhouses, big fires and buttock-honing walks. My husband emerged glowing from his bath and said very sweetly that he would run me a fresh one. Nooooo! Any fule kno you never get more than one tankful at a time in a country house, however well appointed. But he is a city boy so I said, ‘Thank you, darling,’ raced for the plug and sat in the remaining five inches, covered in gooseflesh from the navel

Jeremy Clarke

Ex files

The only comfortable place to sit in my local pub is at this one particular table that is closeted on three sides by high-backed pine pews. Last Saturday lunchtime, when I popped in for a quick one, this cosy nook was bathed in winter sunshine. Trevor was there with his feet under the table, his right arm wrapped tightly around a girl of about 18 — not bad going, I reckon, for an overweight, balding 46-year-old. He was serious about this one because instead of the lascivious smirk one normally expects from Trev when he’s pulled a child, he was gazing with apparent sincerity into her eyes. Next to these

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 19 January 2008

The news that the circulation of the Sun sank below three million in December, its lowest since the early Seventies, is a landmark. The moment that the Sun’s circulation overtook that of the Mirror, in May 1978, revealed a big shift in the political and social history of this country. No longer were the aspirations of the working class linked umbilically to the Labour movement, as, since 1945, they had appeared to be. In a conversation I once had with Rupert Murdoch, who has owned the Sun since 1969, he explained the trend. The Sun rose, he said, because, with post-war recovery, working people wanted more freedom and more fun.

The Spectator

Letters | 19 January 2008

Too cosy with the KGB Sir: Denis MacShane (‘Welcome to the Vlad and Dave show’, 12 January) is right to imply that the attitude of the Conservative party to the Russian KGB state is reminiscent of the attitude of the same party to Germany in 1938. Only about a year ago the Russian services brought illegally a forceful radioactive material to this country, and then killed a British citizen. I can’t remember the Conservative party actively protesting against it in the European and other international bodies, particularly in the Nato. With such foreign policy, that party will never shine on the international arena. Oleg Gordievsky London WC1 Sir: Denis MacShane’s

Toby Young Toby Young

In which Mrs Young reveals some very bad news that turns out to be very good

In the newspaper business there’s a name for a story that makes your jaw hit the floor and your eyes pop out of your skull: ‘a marmalade dropper’. For instance, the disclosure that HM Revenue and Customs had misplaced the personal records of 25 million people was ‘a marmalade dropper’, as was the revelation that Lembit Opik was going out with one of the Cheeky Girls. However, I have always thought of this as a figure of speech rather than a literal description of the effect a particular piece of news produces. Until now, that is. ‘Darling,’ said my wife as I sat at the breakfast table munching a piece

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 19 January 2008

I caught my husband perusing a menswear catalogue. I don’t know where he got it. It can’t have been sent to him. It was the kind that leans towards nightshirts and Barathea blazers. The language used was extraordinary. The ‘striking set of gentleman’s pure silk-club ties’ — ones with thin stripes — would be, it assured the purchaser, ‘sure to receive the nod from the doorman’. If by chance it matched the real tie of the club in question, perhaps more than a nod. Can men really think they’ll be taken for clubmen and gents by sending a cheque for £30? The market envisaged has clearly been around a bit:

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 19 January 2008

Q. Now that eco-issues are so fashionable my husband has come out as a militant meanie on energy conservation. Meanwhile our three teenage daughters use absurd amounts of hot water each day and leave their laptops and televisions on. They also prance about in the skimpiest clothes imaginable, which means they always want the heating on full blast. Mary, how can I tackle these incompatibilities so that I can conserve some of my own energy and not have to dissipate it all on resolving domestic disputes? A.B., Pencaitland, East Lothian A. Stimulate your daughters’ own interest in conserving energy with the purchase of a Wattson O1 energy monitor. (£149.50 from

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 19 January 2008

‘Change’ is the latest buzzword of contemporary politics. Change is, of course, quite meaningless until one knows what (precisely) is being changed and to (precisely) what; and, for a government in power for ten years, it leaves hanging in the air the objection, ‘If you want to keep on changing things, it rather suggests that you have kept on getting things wrong.’ The Romans had a terror of change. ‘Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque’, /intoned the epic poet Ennius — ‘Rome’s foundations are its tried and tested values and its men’ — and even when the going was at its roughest, Romans went out of their way to deny

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody – 19 January 2008

Monday Got back to complete chaos after my winter spa break with mummy. Any de-stress and/or slimming benefit from seaweed and salt wraps entirely lost in first three minutes in this place. When I left, Labour was embroiled in sleaze. Now Gids — of all people! — is accidentally forgetting to declare donations because Commons officials said he might not have to. A lot of other shadow cabinet members who will remain nameless here seem to have made the same silly oversight. Of course, our sleaze is a lot cleaner than Labour sleaze. That goes without saying. But it’s all jolly inconvenient. Instead of being able to get on with

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The right kind of bulb?

Both The Sun and The Daily Mail are today offering low-energy light bulbs for free. Neither newspaper mentions that they contain mercury, and neither reprints the advice which Defra gives to anyone who breaks these lights: “Vacate the room and ventilate it for at least 15 minutes. Do not use a vacuum cleaner, but clean up using rubber gloves and aim to avoid creating and inhaling airborne dust. Sweep up all particles and glass fragments and place in a plastic bag. Wipe the area with a damp cloth, then add that to the bag and seal it. Mercury is hazardous waste and the bag should not be disposed of in

Lucy Vickery

You and yours

No. 2530: Show me the child You are invited to submit an extract from the school report of a well-known public figure, past or present (150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2530’ by 31 January or email lucy@spectator.co.uk. In Competition No. 2527 you were invited to submit an extract from a Christmas round robin sent by a well-known historical figure. Dr Hugh de Glanville and Mrs E. Emerk pulled me up on the use of ‘round robin’ to mean a circular letter but my edition of Chambers allows it, as does Wikipedia, which is not everyone’s idea of an authoritative source. These annual exercises in self-aggrandisement tend to be a

Richard Northedge

The FSA is not fit for purpose

‘It is somewhat ironical,’ the chairman of the Financial Services Authority told the Treasury select committee investigating the Northern Rock crisis, ‘that one of the responses is to try to seek from the rating agencies even more work and even more assessment.’ The paradox intriguing Sir Callum McCarthy was the suggestion that credit-rating agencies, having failed to predict Rock’s troubles, should now also produce liquidity reports on banks. MPs on the select committee — about to produce a report that will be highly critical of the financial regulator — may themselves think it ironical that, having equally failed to foresee Rock’s fate, the FSA is being rewarded with an expanded

Paul Johnson

And another thing | 19 January 2008

Charles Lamb, writing to Joseph Hume at Christmas 1807 on the subject of ‘a certain turkey and a contingent plumb-pudding’, added, ‘I always spell plumb-pudding with a b, I think it reads fatter and more suetty’. As it happens, the big OED has found the same suetty spelling in a cookery book published in 1726. As Lamb says, one of the delights of the English language is the existence of words which have almost physical properties, a propensity to conjure up succulence or flavour, warmth or cosiness, sounds and magic, powerful images and sheer solid matter. The word spelt with a ‘b’ has nothing to do with ‘plum’, which is

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Europe returns to the Commons — and, this time, nobody is safe

Both Brown and Cameron face separate backbench mutinies as the revived EU Constitution — now called the Lisbon Treaty — comes before the Commons, says Fraser Nelson. Which of them will end up looking like John Major in the ghastly Maastricht era? Only one thought has consoled Gordon Brown throughout the horrors of the European Union Reform Treaty. He had always expected a mauling for agreeing it, and had no choice but to sign the wretched document in Lisbon. He could not hold a referendum he was certain to lose. So the Prime Minister knew he would have to put his head in a pillory and wait for Fleet Street’s

Peter Phillips

Beyond words | 19 January 2008

By the time you read this I shall have watched two days of the 3rd Test between India and Australia at the WACA in Perth, and given a paper on how important good Church music is in the context of modern worship. Both events will not be without their political sides: the novelty of an Indian being penalised for racist comments about an Australian, however mixed-race, has not escaped the attention of cartoonists in the local media; and my lecture topic is designed to rebut the pronouncements of the current Dean of Sydney, whose extreme evangelical views have been making waves throughout the global Anglican communion for some years now.