Spectator articles from February 2004

Spectator archives from February 2004

Portrait of the week.
February 7, 2004... The government announced a committee of inquiry into the accuracy of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war last year; it will be chaired by Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former Cabinet Secretary; the other members...

Right war. Wrong reason.
February 7, 2004... Every so often there is an event which confuses the usual prejudices of political folk. One such event was the rise of the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, who combined gay liberation with a dislike of immigrants, thereby scattering in all...

Diary.
February 7, 2004... One of the perks of being a director of a hotel is visiting and eating at the competition. The idea is to taste, look and learn. On this mission, and on the instructions of our chairman, the managing director of the Devonshire Arms Country...

There is a strong chance that the new inquiry will finish Mr Blair.(Politics)
February 7, 2004... I am not an expert on the sleeping habits of adolescents. But I have consulted a number of authorities, viz parents. Their conclusions were unanimous. Cherie Blair's claim that anxieties over Hutton had disrupted her teenage/student children's...

The Spectator's notes.
February 7, 2004... An old and semi-apocryphal story lumbers in to seek shelter from the bitter February cold. It concerns negotiations between Sir Peter Tapsell, the 74-year-old Conservative member for Louth and Horncastle, and his constituency association, ahead...

How to lose the battle for Britain: never in the field of human conflict has so much money been wasted by so many on so little.(Cover Story)
February 7, 2004... NOW that Mr Geoff Hoon has put his Hutton embarrassments behind him and emerged shining like a new pin, some of us hope that he will address his day job. Britain's defence planning is in a dreadful mess. Unless the Secretary of State acts...

Mind your language.
February 7, 2004... I asked Veronica what the difference was between a pikey and a char. 'A pikey is like a prom-face, really rubbish, eats economy burgers and oven chips and watches telly all day. A chav dresses in sportswear, with white trainers and wears a fake...

The death of the Establishment: Simon Heffer says that Lord Hutton does not understand the twisters and fixers who now run this country.
February 7, 2004... If we have managed to carry this far into the 21st century an idea of what we think the Establishment ought to look like we might well have settled on someone who looked remarkably like Lord Hutton. Grey-haired, grey-suited, precise and...

Chuckers make me sick: Rachel Johnson names the people who never turn up to parties (and those who always do).
February 7, 2004... Is it just me, or has there been a perceptible rise in social autism recently? Not just couples walking down the street shouting into their mobiles, people texting at table, not thanking, and so on, but also this endemic lack of compunction...

The Blairs.
February 7, 2004... THIS IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME! I CAN SEE QUITE CLEARLY WITHOUT GLASSES, THANK YOU!

Ancient & modern.
February 7, 2004... How would the ancient Athenians have handled the Hutton inquiry? They would not have needed one. Real democracies get to the nub with indecent haste. In the first place, the decision to go to war had to be agreed by the people's Assembly...

I am ready to serve: Jonathan Aitken reveals that he is seeking selection for his old seat, South Thanet.
February 7, 2004... Moved. Amazed. Humbled. These were my emotions when earlier this week I was handed a copy of a petition, addressed to the head of the candidates' department of Conservative Central Office. It began: 'We the undersigned loyal members and...

Cigarette lady: Andrew Gimson talks to Lady Trumpington about the pleasures of passive smoking.
February 7, 2004... Lady Trumpington is on the warpath. At the age of 81, the author of the tremendous dictum 'I'd rather be common than middle-class will deploy her formidable rhetorical powers to condemn a wretched piece of legislation. The 'Bill to prohibit the...

Sex and violence begin at 12: Rod Liddle says that children in care are out of control and social workers can do nothing about it.
February 7, 2004... When they speak, it is with the lilting cadences of Jamaican street slang. And the vocabulary, too: bling, baad, bitch, ras, ho and, of course, inevitably, motherf***er. This would be understandable if they were Jamaican street children, or...

Globophobia: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.
February 7, 2004... The great food terror is upon us again. On Friday, 23 January the EU Commission banned all imports of chickens and chicken products from Thailand in response to fears over 'Avian flu', which two Thais have contracted from the birds: 'Although...

Skull and bones, the Porcellian and the literary society.(And Another Thing)
February 7, 2004... Beneath the upper crust of Anglo-Saxon society lies the club system. It is not as important as its members think, or as sinister as excitable but ignorant journalists suppose. But sometimes it matters. The French have nothing like it. There is...

Here's my plan for a BBC that you would allow your wives and servants to watch.(Shared Opinion)
February 7, 2004... Mr Charles Moore, the former Daily Telegraph editor, denouncing the BBC in that paper last week in the light of the Hutton report, observed: 'It seems to me that the BBC today is the enemy of conservative culture in Britain.' The 'It seems to...

Tripe.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 7, 2004... From Barbara Amiel Black Sir: So much tripe about my husband and myself has been written lately that it seems selective to reply to Peter Oborne's column alone. But my association with The Spectator makes it necessary. For the record...

Hutton fallout.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 7, 2004... From Judith Bell Sir: Mr Blair has graciously accepted apologies from the BBC for an erroneous report made by one of its journalists. Perhaps Mr Blair would now apologise to those bereaved by the ever mounting death toll of soldiers in...

Gender bender.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 7, 2004... Sir: In his article 'Straight and narrow' (31 January) Leo McKinstry listed some outlandish examples of projects undertaken by the sexual discrimination industry. Perhaps I could list just two more from my experience in the former Lord...

Portrait of a president.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 7, 2004... From Richard Dean Sir: Philip Guston's retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy certainly deserves all the nice things your critic says about it (Arts, 24 January), but he and your readers might be interested to know that the 'cruel...

An inducement to learn.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 7, 2004... From Andrew Walters Sir: Freddie Sayers has missed two key differences between the UK and the US when it comes to expecting undergraduates to pay their own way through higher education ('Fee choice', 31 January). Firstly, graduate salaries...

Funding Fiona.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 7, 2004... From Crawford Macdonald Sir: I won't be availing myself of Fiona Millar's invitation to send my children to join a war zone where a 'tough and inspiring head [is] determined to drag [a] school out of the league-table gutter' (Diary, 31...

Smalls defence.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 7, 2004... From Mick James Sir: Dot Wordsworth recently referred to 'shreddies' as a slang term for underpants. When I joined the RAF in 1959, the term was already in common usage. It referred specifically to those garments issued under the official...

Neologistic note.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 7, 2004... From Barry Cawdron Sir: Tom Livingstone inquires about the meaning of 'hemiocentenary' (Letters, 31 January). My New English Dictionary of March 1932 defines 'hemi' as a Greek prefix meaning half, as in hemisphere; which suggests that a...

Why Andrew Neil would make a better editor than chief executive.(Media Studies)
February 7, 2004... A few weeks ago BBC television news announced that the Barclay brothers were the new owners of the Daily Telegraph. It has since become plain that they may not be. They hope to acquire Conrad Black's 30 per cent stake in Hollinger International...

An early search for WMD.(Book Review)
February 7, 2004... DUEL IN THE SNOWS: THE TRUE STORY OF THE YOUNG HUSBAND MISSION TO LHASA by Charles Allen John Murray, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 350, ISBN 0719554276 Any author who subtitles his book 'The true story of...' this, that or the other inspires...

High jinks and slaughter.(Book Review)
February 7, 2004... THE LAST CROSSING by Guy Vanderhaeghe Little, Brown, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 470, ISBN 0316726176 Whatever else may be said of Guy Vanderhaeghe, author of The English Boy, he does at least have one serious fan. The admirer in question...

A hymn to Hellenic culture.(Book Review)
February 7, 2004... BY THE IONIAN SEA by George Gissing Signal Books, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 159, ISBN 1902669673, Tel: 01865 724 856 In the prosperous north of Italy, southerners are reckoned a dishonest lot. A Neapolitan gambling manual advises: 'Rule...

Charting a minefield.(Book Review)
February 7, 2004... BROTHER AND SISTER by Joanna Trollope Bloomsbury, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 320, ISBN 0747570434 The title of Joanna Trollope's new novel--Brother and Sister--arouses interesting Jacobean expectations. Is there a whiff of incest here to...

Composing for dear life.(Book Review)
February 7, 2004... MEMORIES OF SHOSTAKOVICH: INTERVIEWS WITH THE COMPOSER'S CHILDREN by the Reverend Michael Ardov, translated by Rosanna Kelly and Michael Meylae Short Books, 11.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 192, ISBN 190409564X Ever since the posthumous...

Snapshots of the city.(Audiobook Review)
February 7, 2004... DUBLINERS by James Joyce, read by T. P. McKenna CSA Word, six CDs, 75 minutes each, 19.99 [pounds sterling], www.csaword.co.uk Lying stock-still with a bandage over your eyes for several weeks has its bonuses. In the bookshelves downstairs...

A love of God and the ballet.(Book Review)
February 7, 2004... STUART HEADLAM'S RADICAL ANGLICANISM by John Richard Orens University of Illinois Press, 22 [pounds sterling], pp. 184, ISBN 0252028244 There was a time when the Catholic party of the Church of England was not consumed by the latest...

A heist too far.(Book Review)
February 7, 2004... THE ART OF ARMED ROBBERY by Terry Smith Blake, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 319, ISBN 1904034993 When I first met Terry Smith ten years ago, in the library of Long Lartin top security prison in Worcestershire, he was part of a cockney...

Fated and enchanted love.(Book Review)
February 7, 2004... DEATH-DEVOTED HEART: SEX AND THE SACRED IN WAGNER'S 'TRISTAN AND ISOLDE' by Roger Scruton OUP, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 238, ISBN 0195166914 Wagner's masterpiece, Tristan, has now a considerable literature of its own, with books...

A ghastly crew.(Book Review)
February 7, 2004... OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD: MAGELLAN'S TERRIFYING CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE by Laurence Bergreen HarperCollins, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 456, ISBN 0007118317 In September 1519 the Armada de Molucca of five ships and 250 sailors had...

'Use it or lose it': museums should not forget their primary role.(Arts)
February 7, 2004... The future of thousands of artefacts sitting in the basements of museums across the country is under threat. A senior museum professional recently floated a policy entitled 'Use it or lose it' at a major conference. The institution would be...

Master of atmosphere.
February 7, 2004... Vuillard" From Post-Impressionist to Modern Master Royal Academy, until 18 April There has never been a major exhibition devoted to the work "of Edouard Vuillard (1868 1940) in Britain. In recent years I've seen small commercial shows, but...

Current obsessions.(Pop music)
February 7, 2004... I love this time of year: the music industry has gone to sleep, and the rest of us can get going with the piles of CDs we were given for Christmas by obliging relatives. As I am writing a book at the moment I need a fairly constant supply of...

Undisputed genius.(Dance Review)
February 7, 2004... Balanchine 100: A celebration Royal Opera House Centenary celebrations are always a good opportunity for taking the pulse of a choreographer's legacy. The Royal Ballet's new triple-bill, Balanchine 100: A celebration, is no exception, even...

Blooming marvellous.(Gardens)
February 7, 2004... On 7 March 1804, John Wedgwood, son of Josiah, and a rich banker, met six like-minded friends, including Sir Joseph Banks, at Hatchard's bookshop in Piccadilly. They founded the Horticultural Society of London 'for the improvement of...

Merry banter.(Theater Review)
February 7, 2004... The Country Wife Courtyard Round the Horne Revisited The Venue Slava's Snowshow Hackney Empire Acting. A profession or a disease? The question occurred to me as I sat on a damp bench in a converted archway near King's Cross...

Moments to treasure.(Opera Review)
February 7, 2004... Die Walkure Barbican Concert performances of operas or large parts of them are becoming ever more common, a good thing since staged performances, at any rate in the opera houses, are becoming increasingly rare. When I think back over the...

Scholar's dilemma.(Music)
February 7, 2004... I wonder what relationship you maintain with your old school (or is it Old School?). Was it the kind of place you are still proud to mention decades after you left, that is proud to mention you as one of its alumni, to which you give money...

Essential cutting.(Television)
February 7, 2004... Now that my insomnia has reached such epic proportions that sometimes I can lie there for a whole night without getting any sleep at all, I have become a lot more picky about the TV I watch. I've got it into my head that the only way I can...

Playing to win.(Radio)
February 7, 2004... So, Alastair Campbell's obsession with Andrew Gilligan cost the government two Labour supporters at the top of the BBC: Greg Dyke and the chairman of the governors, Gavyn Davies. No doubt a suitable candidate sympathetic to the government can...

In love with London.(High life)
February 7, 2004... To HMS Belfast, Europe's last big-gun armoured warship, anchored off Tooley Street, London. The occasion is a fund-raising dinner and a speech by yours truly for readers of Right Now, the bimonthly for those who would rather be ruled by...

I was there.(Low life)
February 7, 2004... During the Queen's speech last Christmas Day the dazzlingly beautiful, inarticulate little girl who was acting as Father Christmas presented me with a parcel from under the tree. Keeping one eye on Her Majesty, I unwrapped it. It was a...

Faking it.(Singular life)
February 7, 2004... The other day some newspaper or another reported the actress Joely Richardson as turning up to promote her role in the TV series Nip/Tuck in a 'vintage' jacket. It seems modish for celebs from the dreary Gwyneth Paltrow to Julia Roberts to...

Textbook squeeze.(Bridge)
February 7, 2004... IT'S all change at TGR's bridge club. After five years as manager, Unal Durmus has decided to move on--which is sad for me as he's both a close friend and my bridge mentor. The good news, however, is that Phil King is taking over. Phil is not...

Things to come.(Chess)
February 7, 2004... I must say that I find it hard to shed any tears over Greg Dyke's demise at the BBC. For decades the BBC regularly covered the World Chess Championship, but when it arrived on their very doorstep, at Hammersmith in London in 2000, the BBC, as...

Tie or open shirt?(Competition)
February 7, 2004... In Competition No. 2326 you were invited to write a poem either in free verse mocking rhymed, metrical verse or in conventional verse mocking free verse. It's Larkin's team versus Hughes's. On one side stand Frost ('Writing free verse is...

1650: well, I never!(Crossword)
February 7, 2004... The unclued lights (four of two or more words), as three trios, are of a kind. ACROSS 1 RNLI craft remove one from bad cruise on torpedo-vessels (11, two words) 11 Hound black bird (6) 13 Youth returns embracing some new girl...

Reptonian reptiles.(Spectator Sport)
February 7, 2004... Oh, where are those snows of yesteryear? The Times ran a series of features last month in which they sought to identify the coming men and women in different fields--politics, the media and so on. And blow me down with a feather if one of the...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
February 7, 2004... Q. I was brought up always to write thank-you letters for gifts [sic]. In recent years I have found that I am usually far too busy, especially as I would have to write them on behalf of my young children (who receive far too many presents...

Portrait of the week.
February 14, 2004... Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, announced plans to set up a Serious Organised Crime Agency, which was likened to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, to replace the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad,...

Make them legal.
February 14, 2004... There could be no clearer example of human exploitation and its tragic consequences than the recent events in Morecambe Bay. Nineteen Chinese workers, who had paid a small fortune to agents in order to come to Britain for a better life, were...

Diary.
February 14, 2004... It is hard to define qualifications for the new chairman and director-general of the BBC. Now that I am past being even a joke candidate, I will confess that I once told my old friend Christopher Bland I regretted not having been D-G. He...

Michael Howard sounds like a man who wants to dump traditional Conservatism.(Politics)
February 14, 2004... This year's dominant theme has been the domestic legacy of the war against Iraq. It has hung over British politics like a cloud of mustard gas, foul-smelling and ubiquitous. This week the cloud at last lifted, and it became possible to survey...

The Spectator's notes.
February 14, 2004... Far from the most popular of the BBC's governors, just at the moment, is Lord Ryder, the former Tory chief whip who--not, apparently, content with seeing both chairman and director-general toppled and the systematically mendacious Alastair...

Why blue is the new black: depressives are one of the largest special interest groups in Britain, says Jeremy Clarke, a depressive, and their numbers are growing by the day.(Cover Story)
February 14, 2004... Last Monday afternoon Professor Lewis Wolpert CBE, FRSL and I sat in his chaotic study in the Anatomy department at University College, London, quietly regarding each other. Professor Wolpert seemed to me to be superior to myself in every way...

Globophobia: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.
February 14, 2004... A question for students of European Union studies at the University of Neasden: why did the ten new members who will join the Union on 1 May decide to do so? Was it: a) that they believe their economies will benefit from being part of a single...

Job of the week.
February 14, 2004... Pursuing Perfection Project Manager The Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust Salary: c. 35,000 [pounds sterling] The role will enable you to tend the local development of this international initiative in order to deliver dramatic...

Mind your language.
February 14, 2004... 'We need closure,' said Mr Greg Dyke after resigning as director-general of the BBC. 'Not for you or me but for the benefit of everyone out there.' Over the past couple of months the newspapers have reported the closure of more than one of...

Way to go: Brian Walden on why resignations tell us a lot about politics--but little about why politicians quit.
February 14, 2004... Resignations and demands for resignations are dominating the news. That's fine it" you enjoy seeing a head on a platter. But I wouldn't want anybody to think resignations solve problems. The history of resignations is one of confusion,...

Second opinion.
February 14, 2004... It is natural (and flattering) for doctors to suppose that even a single encounter with them is of such importance in their patients' lives that, once consulted, they are never forgotten. This, unhappily, is not so: it is pure illusion. As...

Equal rites: Mary Wakefield attends a service to mark the tenth anniversary of the ordination of women, and has a sudden attack of Doubt.
February 14, 2004... Last Saturday must have been a difficult day for St Paul. His cathedral, still covered in patches of scaffolding like pins supporting badly broken legs, was teeming, inside and out, with women in dog collars. In the crypt, an hour before the...

The customer is always a nuisance: private enterprise is all very well, says Theodore Dalrymple, but big banking is an even greater menace than public service.
February 14, 2004... Everyone knows that private enterprise gives better service to the customer, client, patient or whomsoever, than any government department. The explanation is simple enough, though profound in its implications: as Adam Smith observed, it is not...

The man in Whitehall knows best: Edward Heathcoat Amory says forget devolution: the market, supervised by central government, can best provide local services.
February 14, 2004... After a fortnight in which the Establishment has hardly covered itself with glory over the Hutton report, one of the few certainties about British public life is that if all three political parties agree on anything, they are virtually certain...

The Blairs.
February 14, 2004... THEN IT'S TOMMY THIS AN' TOMMY THAT, AND 'TOMMY 'OW'S YER SOUL? BUT IT'S, THIN RED LINE OF 'EROES' WHEN THE DRUMS BEGIN TO ROLL FOR IT'S TOMMY THIS AN' TOMMY THAT AN' 'CHUCK HIM OUT THE BRUTE!' BUT IT'S 'SAVIOUR OF 'IS COUNTRY' WHEN THE GUNS...

Ancient & modern.
February 14, 2004... The law on the oldest profession is to be liberalised. This is a tricky one, because the feeling that it poses an intolerable threat to that vital civic institution, the family, is very deep-rooted. In his final dialogue Laws (c. 350 BC),...

Emily Bronte had it, but Jane Austen didn't.(And Another Thing)
February 14, 2004... When a smart German photographer died recently, all the obits referred to him as a 'genius'. So far as I could see he had the usual talent of his kind for picturing female models in suggestive settings. Genius, my foot! The word is overused...

Russian bear.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 14, 2004... From Nicolas Groffman Sir: Max Hastings ('How to lose the battle for Britain', 7 February) mentioned the threat of Russia, saying that 'Whitehall apologists' suggest we need to worry about a resurgence of Russian aggression. This is not a...

Painting by nightmares.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 14, 2004... From Andrew Lambirth Sir: I am grateful for your correspondent's remarks about the imagery of Philip Guston (Letters, 7 February), for it allows me to stress a point which I had been making more subtly. It is the quality of Guston's...

Barclays' banking.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 14, 2004... Front Andrew Neil Sir: Stephen Glover's entirely speculative article (Media studies, 7 February) about what might happen to the Daily Telegraph under the Barclays was remarkably bereft of facts even by his normal fact-free standards--and...

How I left.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 14, 2004... From Eleanor Mills Sir: I read with surprise Barbara Black's account of my eviction from her house, where I had been invited to dine but was asked to 'skedaddle' by Conrad before the scallops were served (Letters, 7 February). It...

Smoking guns.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 14, 2004... From Dave Johnson Sir: The Trumpington woman you profiled ('Cigarette Lady', 7 February) is a prime example of how tobacco use damages the brains of the people who use it. Indeed, that is how tobacco addicts its users. Ambient tobacco...

Why this should be David Dimbleby's finest hour.(Another Voice)
February 14, 2004... The obvious can be so obvious that we discount it, supposing that other people must have thought of it already. There is an obvious candidate for chairman of the BBC governors. I have no idea whether he is going for it, but if not then he...

Why is Tony Blair being given such an easy ride over his WMD blunder?(Media Studies)
February 14, 2004... one of the most brilliant myths fostered by Alastair Campbell is the idea of our nihilistic media attacking the government morning, noon and night. It is utter bunkum. Until the Iraq war the BBC gave Tony Blair the benefit of the doubt in...

Mervyn's in goal, Gordon moves the posts and second-guesses the goalkeeper.(City And Suburban)
February 14, 2004... Poised on the Bank of England's line, Mervyn King, its Governor, stands ready to save us from the penalty goal of inflation. He has been heard to grumble that Gordon Brown has moved the goalposts. Inflation is now to be measured by a new index,...

Roller-coaster of a ride.(Book Review)
February 14, 2004... CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell Sceptre, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 529, ISBN 0340822775 David Mitchell has fast established himself as a novelist of considerable authority and power. His first novel, Ghostwritten, was published as...

A thoughtful trip to the seaside.(Book Review)
February 14, 2004... THE MAZE by Panos Karnezis Cape, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 364, ISBN X0224069764 Set in Anatolia in 1922, The Maze describes the retreat of a Greek brigade to the sea. Under the questionable guidance of a brigadier addicted to morphine...

A breeze with a hint of rain.(Book Review)
February 14, 2004... PAINFUL EXTRACTIONS by John Henniker Thornham Books, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 174, available from The Red House, Thornham Magna, Eye, Suffolk IP 23 8 HH Diplomat, soldier, diplomat again, humanitarian, enviromnentalist: you cannot plan a...

The war and a sprained ankle.(Book Review)
February 14, 2004... THE POEMS OF EDWARD THOMAS introduced by Peter Sacks Handsel Books, $17, pp. 180, ISBN 159051064X The story of the emergence of the poet from the prose writer Edward Thomas--not his emergence as an acknowledged poet, that took another 30...