Recently added articles from The Spectator:
Not up to the job
Mar 07, 2009 ...'Nobody rings a bell at the bottom of the market, ' says an old adage in the investment world -- and anyone who thought they had already heard a distant peal signalling the low point of the current financial crisis has been proved woefully mistaken this week. Some stock-market ...
Heroes and villains
Mar 07, 2009; ...THE SPICE OF LIFE by John Jolliffe Brunton Books, Brunton House, Embleton, Alnwick, NE 66 3 HQ, £15.95, pp. 191 This book falls into two distinct parts. The first is the author's account of his own life until he left Oxford in disgrace. John Jolliffe, the son of Lord Hylton, passed his ...
Mr Brown has become an irrelevance: the battle to be next Labour is underway
Mar 07, 2009; ...If there is anything that can bring Gordon Brown a shred of comfort, it is that almost no one in the Labour party is now speculating about his future. There is no shortage of plotting in the bars, tearooms, corridors and urinals of the House of Commons. But what happens to the Prime Minister ...
THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES
Mar 07, 2009; ...There is talk once again of Tony Blair becoming 'President of Europe'. This grand title is unofficial. The job in question is formally called President of the European Council, and it will be created if the Lisbon Treaty ever comes into force. More Europhiles now see Mr Blair as having the fame ...
Obama could be a great ally to a prime minister -- but not this one
Mar 07, 2009; ...The 'legacy' might be an extremely touchy subject in Downing Street these days, but the speech reflected how Gordon Brown wanted history to remember him: a consequential prime minister who helped steer the world through one of its great crises. When the senators and congressmen rose to ...
DIARY
Mar 07, 2009; ...Scotland has finally grasped the nettle (or the thistle) and decided to do something about the massive alcohol problem that the country suffers. No doubt it will be unpopular and there will be accusations from every quarter. But legislators had no choice. Scotland estimates that it spends £2 ...
Keith Joseph's lesson to today's political pygmies
Mar 07, 2009; ...Thirty-five years ago Sir Keith Joseph was the first politician to provide a coherent response to the collapse of the postwar economic settlement. Our ruling elite continued to analyse the financial and social catastrophe of the mid-1970s in traditional terms. But Sir Keith -- in an act of ...
Beware the new axis of evangelicals and Islamists
Mar 07, 2009; ...Last weekend the Revd Stephen Sizer, vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water appeared at an anti-Israel meeting with an Islamist called Ismail Patel. Patel has not only accused Israel of 'genocide' and 'war crimes' but considers Disney to be a Jewish plot and supports Hamas, Iran and ...
Don't go Dutch
Mar 07, 2009 ...Sir: The Dutch postal service was privatised, you say, 'with no perceived damage to the services they offer' (Leading article, 28 February). You would not say that if you lived here. Firstly, deliveries: there is one a day, which arrives at absolutely random times but is usually around 3 p. m ....
On the wrong track
Mar 07, 2009 ...Sir: Ross Clark's article 'Big bonuses in the public sector' (21 February) contained several inaccuracies. Firstly, Railtrack ceased to exist over six years ago. Network Rail has been the sole owner and manager of Britain's railway network and infrastructure since 3 October ...
History isn't just about bodice-ripping, you know
Mar 07, 2009; ...'Utterly gorgeous', declares the advertising for the new film The Young Victoria. Queen Victoria ruled a quarter of the world's souls, and saw the world change immeasurably during her 64-year reign. As a biographer of Victoria's young life, I relished the film's investigation of the power ...
Heads it is
Mar 07, 2009 ...Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator's Notes, 21 February) quotes a headline 'Bishops back Christian in school religion row'. This reminds me of a tabloid ...
A cigarette and a chat with Joe the Plumber
Mar 07, 2009; ...In the basement of Washington D.C.'s Omni Shoreham hotel, a friendly young Korean-American is showing off his 'Enoch Powell was right' lapel pin. 'People are like: "Oh, is that the British National Party?" ' he says. 'And I'm, like, duh -- it's Enoch Powell.' He is trying to recruit like-minded ...
Sack the Scots
Mar 07, 2009 ...Sir: If anyone has written a better rant than Jeremy Clarke's Low Life column (21 February) please show me. Having read Clarke's masterpiece, I felt calmer, knowing that there is at least one other person in the country who feels similarly depressed about the outcome of the last 11 years. In ...
STANDING ROOM
Mar 07, 2009; ...I think I may have unearthed a new strain of the disease Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Munchausen on its own is a psychological disorder in which a person makes him or herself appear ill in order to get attention or nurturing. Munchausen by proxy is when a person fabricates or induces ...
Ancient & modern
Mar 07, 2009; ...Whatever views we may hold on the subject of Jade Goody, Romans would have found it grimly appropriate that a woman 'famous' for appearing on Big Brother should choose to die in the arms of a PR consultant. But the Stoics would have been baffled why she and her unhappy demise were thought ...
Neglected composers
Mar 07, 2009 ...Sir: Congratulations to Robin Holloway for drawing our attention to the neglected English composers of the 18th and 19th centuries (Music, 28 February). However, I would like to suggest that they were not merely 'charming wayside bloom[s]'. To give a few examples: Charles Dibdin was the first ...
From extreme to extreme
Mar 07, 2009 ...Sir: Tim Shipman writes that 'The US believes that if there is to be a repeat of 9/11, it is most likely to be carried out by British Muslim terrorists' ('The CIA now has to spy on Britain', 28 February). There is an historic precedent for the current British free rein to extremism, as well as ...
Imagine the decisions Harriet Harman's Court of Public Opinion would actually take
Mar 07, 2009; ...So now at least we know what Britain will gain on that golden day when Harriet Harman rules over us all and Ed Balls doesn't. A dual court system. Or possibly a triple court system, depending on how all those advocates of sharia get on, although sharia is quite irrelevant to this ...
No sex please, we're credit-crunched bankers
Mar 07, 2009; ...There's no doubting the trauma in today's City: redundancy is rife and those who still have jobs are struggling to cope with an utterly changed financial world. No wonder a spate of banking suicides has made headlines. But stress is also showing itself in a more private way: in the ...