Spectator articles from June 2008

Spectator archives from June 2008

Hail to the not-yet-chief.(Barack Obama)
June 7, 2008... The man who four short years ago addressed the Democratic party convention as a little-known state senator from Illinois will do so this August as his party's nominee for president. It is the most rapid rise in the history of the Republic: not...

Diary.
June 7, 2008... Last weekend I discovered what it is like to be a small furry animal in its burrow, when in an effort to catch up on some sleep and do some work, I had refused to go out and instead sat steadfast in my living-room. I was subsequently hissed at...

Welcome to Brownland, where everything that goes wrong is blamed on one man.(POLITICS)(Gordon Brown)
June 7, 2008... It's a funny old thing, the Labour party. For ten years it tolerated Tony Blair, hoping that if it put up with him long enough, it would get the leader it really wanted. Naturally, it also assumed that this would entail having the best bits of...

The Spectator's notes.
June 7, 2008... Never having watched Jonathan Ross, I have no opinion as to whether he is worth 18 [pounds sterling] million over three years, which is what the BBC is said to pay him. But the news that the BBC Trust had just reported that the BBC was not...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.
June 7, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MONDAY Jed has reassured us that he will still be working full-time for Dave once he moves to America. All those silly people claiming his physical whereabouts makes a difference to The Project are hysterical....

'If there's a vote of no confidence on 42 days, we'll win': in her only print interview, Jacqui Smith tells Matthew d'Anconathat her proposal for the detention of terror suspects does not undermine Magna Carta, that she is 'frustrated' by Lord Goldsmith, and that the 'West Midlands housewife' is a better judge of the threat than MPs.(Member of Parliament)(Interview)(Cover story)
June 7, 2008... In a government stuffed with malfunctioning robots, nervous wrecks and preening Fauntleroys, Jacqui Smith shows every sign of being a fully paid-up member of the human race. Which, as it happens, is the first lucky break Gordon Brown has had in...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
June 7, 2008... SOME DO IT WITH A KISS... SOME WITH A SMILE... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Naked commercial greed meets Stalinist control: when Leo McKinstry objected to his neighbours' plan to build two blocks of flats, he quickly discovered the limits of 'community empowerment' under New Labour.
June 7, 2008... There is an increasingly Orwellian tone about the language of the Labour government. The Ministry of Truth, the state propaganda machine in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, would have been only too pleased with the doublethink of the fashionable...

McCain is in for a terrible shock if he wins: Reihan Salam says that most Republicans have no idea how much the American social landscape has changed. They should learn from Obama's Google-like appeal.(John McCain, Barak Obama)
June 7, 2008... Britain's Conservatives might be plotting a triumphant return to power but America's Republicans are in a state of utter collapse. And it's not just because the tide is turning after two terms of George W. Bush. For better or for worse, the...

I have a basic human right to look at fag packets: Claire Fox says that plans to 'denormalise' smoking by removing cigarettes from display infantilises adults and imposes upon us a dubious official version of what is 'normal'.(Essay)
June 7, 2008... Has your personal life been 'denormalised' yet? Mine is about to be, and believe me it's not pleasant. The health ministries in Scotland and Westminster have just announced plans to make a perfectly legal habit seem as abnormal as possible. The...

Global warning.(on public structures)(Essay)
June 7, 2008... Staying recently in a handsome French provincial city, I could not help thinking, as I walked down its silent cobbled streets at night, what it would have been like if it had been in England. How restful is that deep, urban silence, which the...

I don't think my mum has much to fear from 'Emos' Henry Sands meets a group of 'Emos'--'emotional', blackclad teenagers--who claim to hate his mother for what she wrote about them in the Daily Mail. But they're not very scary.
June 7, 2008... I was walking through Hyde Park with a friend on Saturday when I noticed some people dressed in black gathering on the other side of Round Pond. At first I thought it might be a school trip having a picnic, but the eclectic mix of young...

An official no-go area for Christians? Excuse me: I need a drink: Rod Liddle is outraged by the community support officer in Birmingham who threatened two Christian evangelical ministers with arrest for handing out Gospel literature in a Muslim neighbourhood.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)(Naeem Naguthney, Arthur Cunningham, Joseph Abraham)
June 7, 2008... A week or so back, my two-year-old daughter said to me, apropos of nothing: 'You have been sad since you lost Jesus.' I didn't really know what to do, so I looked at her open-mouthed for a bit and then fixed myself a stiff drink. Best not to...

Poppy appeal.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 7, 2008... Sir: Fraser Nelson's article accurately outlines the urgent need to implement an alternative counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan ('The precarious peace in Helmand', 28 May). Helmand province now cultivates half of Afghanistan's opium in a...

The original Homer?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 7, 2008... Sir: Reading about Jeremy Clarke's Homer Simpson talking bottle opener (Low life, 31 May) has not quite made me rush out and buy one, but I am pleased to discover that Homer is heard yelling, 'Don't mind if I dooo!' That's almost exactly...

Bel canto.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 7, 2008... Sir: Stephen Pettitt laments the lack of 'dramatic cogency' in bel canto opera (Arts, 31 May). But dramatic cogency has never been the purpose of opera. Since singing is not the accepted manner of speaking, opera is, by definition, unrealistic....

Who's the worst PM?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 7, 2008... Sir: I should not dream of challenging so august a source as Christopher Fildes (Letters, 24 May). I can only state that I definitely remember first coming across the Harold Wilson being the worst prime minister since Lord North anecdote in an...

Self-justifying theology.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 7, 2008... Sir: Nigel Stone is brilliant in exposing Gene Robinson's self-justifying theology (Letters, 24 May), but the churches' traditional repudiation of homosexuality does not stand up either. First, there is the rather obvious fact that Jesus...

Bureaucratic nightmare.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 7, 2008... Sir: Dealing with the financial affairs of a deceased relative has made me wonder if standards in our service industries have declined. In correspondence with our major banks I have been beset by problems. Two made mistakes in the figures they...

There are no 'good' teachers: the teacher who is good for you may wreck another's prospects.(ANOTHER VOICE)(Essay)
June 7, 2008... The funny thing is that I'm not sure I ever knew her Christian name. No doubt she had one, and for no reason at all I think it might have been Jean, but to us she was so much, and so completely, Mrs McLeod that as a boy I probably imagined her...

'Mr Pont, may I introduce you to Miss Austen?'.(AND ANOTHER THING)(Graham Laidler, Jane Austen)
June 7, 2008... There is something infinitely touching about a creative artist who dies young, not before displaying sure evidence of a glorious gift but without having time to set up the arching parabola of developing genius. One thinks of that magic group at...

Will the wisdom of Warren Buffett translate into German? Matthew Lynn wonders whether the world's greatest investor will be able to pick winners in continental Europe the way he has for more than four decades in the US.(BUSINESS)
June 7, 2008... If Warren Buffett had not become famous as the world's richest man--a career choice that trumps most alternatives--he could still have carved out a niche for himself as a writer of homely lessons in economics and business. The Sage of Omaha, as...

The great box-ticker takes charge.(THE FSA'S NEW CHAIRMAN)(Adair Turner)
June 7, 2008... The Financial Services Authority has had only two chairmen since its creation in 1997, and as the Northern Rock debacle happened on the watch of the second incumbent, Sir Callum McCarthy, the model for his replacement is inevitably the original...

Painful birth of a new epoch of simplicity: Tony Curzon Price says the current surge in prices signals the beginning of a new 40-year economic cycle.(THE RETURN OF INFLATION)
June 7, 2008... An unpopular, costly war; a sliding dollar; high levels of US government debt; behind us, 20 years of growth; oil and commodity prices out of control... Remember the first oil shock of 1973? Or are we looking at 2008? Just as 1973 was the...

The autobiography of a fig leaf.(Prezza: My Story, Pulling No Punches)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... Prezza: My Story, Pulling no Punches by John Prescott Headline, [pounds sterling] 18.99, pp. 416, ISBN 9780755317752 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 There are going to be...

All the best tunes.(Devil May Care)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... DEVIL MAY CARE by Sebastian Faulks (writing as Ian Fleming) Penguin, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 320, ISBN 9780718153762 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On a damp spring evening in 1955, Ian Fleming returned home to find his...

A selection of recent paperbacks.(BOOKS)(List)
June 7, 2008... Non-fiction: Singled Out by Virginia Nicholson (Penguin, 8.99 [pounds sterling]) A Voyage Round John Mortimer by Valerie Grove (Penguin, 9.99 [pounds sterling]) A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr (Pan, 8.99 [pounds...

Drawing a blank.(The Story of Forgetting)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... THE STORY OF FORGETTING by Stefan Merrill Block Faber, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 313, ISBN 9780571237463 I can't remember. How many times have we all made a similar response and thought no more about it? But what if those three...

The intelligentsia head south.(The Standing Pool)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... THE STANDING POOL by Adam Thorpe Cape, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 423, ISBN 9780224079419 [telephone] 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Adam Thorpe set his...

Sound and fury, signifying nothing.(Napoleon's Cursed War)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... NAPOLEON'S CURSED WAR by Ronald Fraser Verso, 29.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 587, ISBN 9781844670826 [telephone] 23.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In exile...

Trouble and strife.(India: The Rise of an Asian Giant)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... India: The Rise of an Asian Giant by Dietmar Rothermund Yale, 20 [pounds sterling], pp.274, ISBN 9780300113099 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 If anybody knows about modern India, it's Dietmar...

Getting to the heart of the matter.(Bleeding Heart Square)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor Michael Joseph, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 480, ISBN 9780718153731 [telephone] 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

The decline of the West.(The Legend of Colton H. Bryant)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... The Legend of Colton H. Bryant by Alexandra Fuller Simon & Schuster, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 203, ISBN 9781847372758 [telephone] 10.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 'This is a...

The revolutionary, the president, the playwright.(To the Castle and Back)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... To the Castle and Back by Vaclav Havel Portobello Books, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 383, ISBN 9781846271373 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 A troika of heroic Slavic statesmen...

Miss Marella Mink.(Poem)(Brief article)
June 7, 2008... Miss Marella Mink She walks down the stairs descending into my eye with dark, crisp hair, freshly curled, her namesake's fur around her neck. She is mischievous in her goodness and knows how to laugh into...

A house and its history.(Madresfield: The Real Brideshead)(Book review)
June 7, 2008... Madresfield: The Real Brideshead by Jane Mulvagh Dovecote Press, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 384, ISBN 9781904349587 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

China's piano fever: Petroc Trelawny visits the world's largest piano factory in the country where under Mao it was dangerous to play the instrument.(ARTS)(Pearl River Piano Company, Mao Zedong)
June 7, 2008... As my plane makes its final approach into the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, the mountains give way briefly to green paddy fields, and then industry takes over. Beneath are hundreds of vast blue-roofed sheds and smoking red-brick chimney...

The savvy Mr Perry.(Grayson Perry's Unpopular Culture exhibit)
June 7, 2008... Unpopular Culture De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, until 6 July, then touring [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This is not a review, for I haven't yet seen the exhibition under discussion, it's an expression of mixed incredulity and...

Hip-hop hell.(Pop)(Critical essay)
June 7, 2008... I was on a number 43 bus the other afternoon, on a sparsely populated top deck, on my way to pick up my daughter from school, when three teenage boys came upstairs. If you travel on buses as much as I do (having never learnt to drive), you...

Replica idols.(Never Forget, Life Coach, The Common Pursuit)(Theater review)
June 7, 2008... Never Forget Savoy Life Coach Trafalgar Studio The Common Pursuit Menier [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A glimpse of the Dark Ages at the Take That musical. During its greediest and naughtiest days the Catholic Church...

Stifling the Egyptians.(Aida)(Opera review)
June 7, 2008... Aida Wales Millennium Centre Welsh National Opera's new Aida, directed by John Caird, is a moderate success, not more, and raises the question of why some operas survive falling into that category so much better than others--Aida is...

Saved by the horses.(Mongol)(Movie review)
June 7, 2008... Mongol 15, Nationwide [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Mongol traces the early years of the legendary warrior Genghis Khan and does not feature, at any point, the world's greatest adventurer/archaeologist or four fortysomething women living...

Confucian confusions.(Radio)(Chinese Vistas)(Radio program review)
June 7, 2008... The Reith Lectures have been going for 60 years, the acme of Radio Four's ambition to reflect the cultural heart of the nation, named after the man who believed British broadcasting should inform and educate the nation. They're something I've...

Top women.(Television)(Queen Victoria's Men, Florence Nightingale, How TV Changed Britain)(Television program review)
June 7, 2008... This weekend, by chance, brought us television biographies of the two most famous British women of the 19th century. They were very different programmes, for good reason. Queen Victoria's Men on Monday was made for Channel 4, so of course it...

Umbrian idyll.(High life)(Umbria, Italy)(Travel narrative)
June 7, 2008... Citta di Castello, Umbria A few years before the end of the 19th century, King Leopold of Belgium summoned his favourite banker, Baron Lambert, for an intimate chat over lunch. 'My dream is to have a little place in the sun,' said the...

Tree talk.(Low life)
June 7, 2008... All my life I've tried to acquaint myself with trees by learning which ones are which, but the task seems beyond me. Wouldn't it be praiseworthy, for example, to be able to recognise the 32 native species of broad-leafed tree--willow, oak,...

Cosmic codes.(Real life)
June 7, 2008... I am a great one for omens. So the arrival in my inbox of two emails, completely unconnected, from two different people called Dirk had to be interpreted as a sign. The chances of two people in Britain being called Dirk outside the pages of...

Saffron studies.(The table)
June 7, 2008... Recently I enticed my niece to a gastronome's dinner during the London Food Festival. She is about to enter university, and I thought it was about time she learnt to taste. The evening proved a disaster; after a lengthy discussion of saffron...

Shapes, not suits.(Bridge)(Brief article)
June 7, 2008... Nicky Haslam, easily the best connected man in the world, came to stay with me in France when disaster struck: we were one short for cards and he was busy answering invitations. Obviously I pulled rank and insisted the great man left his stack...

Women! Get back in the kitchen! That's the answer to the food-shortage crisis.(STYLE AND TRAVEL)
June 7, 2008... 'Must go, I have to cook dinner,' said my friend Robin, who had dropped in on his way home from work. Jumping on his bike, a fresh mallard and some curly kale in his rucksack, he pedalled off home to his young wife. It's the 'he' part of this...

Rock the kasbah: Mark Palmer discovers the lap of luxury in the Atlas mountains.(ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER)
June 7, 2008... Hats off to Richard Branson's mum. If it wasn't for the formidable Mrs B, most of us wouldn't be able to stay at Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco, and that would be a terrible shame. 'As soon as I saw it and realised it was for sale, I rang...

Dumbing-down time.(CHESS)
June 7, 2008... News from DENSA, the low IQ society. The Guinness Book Of World Records used to be packed overwhelmingly with interesting and useful facts. Recently however, alongside legitimate achievements, it seems to be catering for those inflicted by a...

Words and weapons.(COMPETITION)(Poem)
June 7, 2008... In Competition No 2547 you were invited to write a poem or some prose ending with 'The pen [or pun] is mightier than the sword'. The tag comes from a play, Richelieu, by Lord Lytton, the 19th-century politician and writer remembered today,...

1867: not speaking.(CROSSWORD)(Brief article)
June 7, 2008... Answers to clues in italics must become 10 (two words) to form grid entries (one of which is hyphened). Definitions of these entries are supplied by unclued lights. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Clarkson and Monbiot are the same: they are just being true to themselves.(STATUS ANXIETY)(Jeremy Clarkson, George Monbiot)
June 7, 2008... 'See that pot plant?' said Jeremy Clarkson. 'I could get a column out of that.' We were at a supper party in Hay and indulging in that parlour game often played by newspaper columnists whereby we try to outdo each other when it comes to the...

Mind your language.
June 7, 2008... 'Why,' asked my husband, looking up from his book, 'is Joseph Gillott a very bad man?' 'What?' I said. 'Because,' he replied, as if I had acknowledged defeat, 'he wishes to accustom the public to steel pens and then tries to persuade...

No Sky's the limit.(SPECTATOR SPORT)
June 7, 2008... As hard luck stories go, it might not be up there with Oliver Twist, but dammit last weekend my Sky went down. In that pathetic, fat-arsed nerdy way I had been planning the ideal weekend: bouncing happily from the climax to the 20/20 Indian...

Your problems solved.
June 7, 2008... Dear Mary Q. During a lavish lunch party last month, our host was insulting about my new boyfriend, whom I had brought along with his permission. His actual words were, 'He's not my particular cup of tea, darling.' He said this privately...

Zero tolerance for Tory sleaze.
June 14, 2008... 'What gets me,' said David Cameron in a speech to the CBI last November, 'is the deliberate extravagance committed by the people at the top of the government machine, the administrators and managers and quangocrats who administer public money.'...

Diary.(Personal account)
June 14, 2008... Another Ark fundraising dinner has come and gone and I can finally get back to running my business. More importantly I can focus on the programmes that the dinner paid for. The stress started in January as Ian Wace (my partner in Ark) and I...

The Blairites are making a comeback--at Conservative HQ.(POLITICS)(headquarters)
June 14, 2008... David Cameron really must do something about the quality of the Conservatives' leaked documents. Once they offered delicious details of the infighting and reprisals which occupied the party for more than a decade. Yet the leaked memo which...

The Spectator's notes.
June 14, 2008... It would be a lie to say that I feel sorry for the Tory MEPs who have been attacked for paying their staff allowances to companies of which they or members of their family are members, but they are not the most at fault. Giles Chichester, for...

The prime minister was going through a tough time ...(Cartoon)
June 14, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nothing I do seems to please anybody. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Have you got any ideas? It's 4 a.m.! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There seems to be no hope! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NEWS FLASH!!!...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.
June 14, 2008... MONDAY Fraught morning. Drew the short straw and had to take Mrs Spelperson her camomile tea but couldn't find her. Looked everywhere. Under the desk, in the filing cabinet. Nowhere. So I couldn't tick the chart confirming that she had...

Even middle-class children are suffering from neglect: Rachel Johnson says that working mothers, divorce, Polish nannies and an obsession with extra-curricular activities mean that our children are seeing less of their parents than at any time in the last 100 years.(Cover story)
June 14, 2008... And when did you last see your children? Before you both left at the crack for the office? When they were already in bed? Or do you only see them--let's be brutally realistic here, given our divorce rate--at alternate weekends? So we don't...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
June 14, 2008... Round 42! Come on Dave! Sock it to him! It's Toff v Clunking Fist! He's between a Northern Rock and a hard place! He's bee Poll-Axed [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

'If we die today, you will be responsible': David Bosco accompanies the UN Security Council on its visit to Darfur and finds that even meeting the victims of the conflict can't stiffen the Council's resolve.(United Nations; Darfur, Sudan)
June 14, 2008... Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem was holding court last Thursday in the VIP lounge at Khartoum International Airport. Sudan's voluble United Nations ambassador was accompanying the UN Security Council as it prepared for the short flight to northern...

Mind your language.(Column)
June 14, 2008... Does it matter when we lose battles as language changes? In Oxford the other day, I saw another piece of evidence that in the High Street has changed to on the High Street. A newsagent's near Teddy Hall has for some time been called Honey's of...

No child left behind: the Conservatives think that education is about selecting the lucky few, says Ed Balls. But there is no reason why excellence and opportunity shouldn't be for all.
June 14, 2008... It's just over a year since David Willetts made his thoughtful but ultimately fatal pronouncement: 'academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it'. Those nine words--anathema to most Conservatives--led to a civil war inside the...

Plumed hats, rapiers and heaving bosoms: Gerald Warner celebrates the unexpected appearance of one last 'swashbuckling novel', and mourns the loss of a genre that taught boys honour, courage and chivalry.(The Last Cavalier)
June 14, 2008... 'Do you have the new novel by Alexandre Dumas?' Who ever imagined going into the local branch of Waterstone's and asking that question, in the 21st century? Yet the unexpected--the impossible--has happened and an authentically new historical...

'Global warming is not our most urgent priority': Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial Danish economist, tells James Delingpole that it is better to spend our limited funds on saving lives than on saving the planet.(Interview)
June 14, 2008... Gosh, I do hope Bjorn Lomborg doesn't think I was trying to pick him up. I've only just learned from his Wikipedia entry that he's 'openly gay' which, with hindsight, probably made my dogged insistence that we conduct our interview in his...

Global warning.(Column)
June 14, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The image of women in Victorian times veered between that of madonna and whore, but nowadays in Britain it veers between harridan and slut. This is only natural in a country where vulgarity is not only triumphant,...

Grow up, girls--those stranded dolphins don't deserve your tears: Rod Liddle says that our unthinking, sentimental reaction to the plight of the dolphins is symptomatic of our dangerous confusion about animals in general.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)(Column)
June 14, 2008... A few years ago I had to take my pet rat, Heydrich, to the vet's after my youngest son threw him head first at the bedroom wall. After that, Heydrich walked oddly and began acting in an unpredictable manner, certainly not in a fit state to,...

42 days.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 14, 2008... Sir: Thank goodness for Matthew d'Ancona's clarity of mind on 42-day detention ('Jacqui Smith's vote of confidence', 7 June). People who want to be provoked will always find an excuse. If they are subtle, they will manufacture a grievance...

The other side of the desk.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 14, 2008... Sir: Those who presume to judge 'Who's the worst PM?' (Letters, 7 June) should reflect on President Kennedy's deep dissatisfaction with the glib way historians had rated some of his predecessors as 'below average' and some as 'failures'. He...

Blame Le Corbusier.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 14, 2008... Sir: Le Corbusier, whom Theodore Dalrymple accuses (Global warning, 7 June) of causing more damage to European cities than Genghis Khan, the Luftwaffe and Bomber Harris combined, uttered one of the most evil phrases of the 20th century. 'The...

Irony bypass.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 14, 2008... Sir: Is Paul Johnson (And Another Thing, 31 May) an American or has he merely had an irony bypass? Kingsley Amis's tongue was never more firmly in his cheek than in his bravura description of Dixon's hangover in Lucky Jim. To spell it out for...

Local empowerment denied.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 14, 2008... Sir: Leo McKinstry's experience of failing to prevent a wholly unsuitable planning application in a neighbour's garden ('Naked greed meets Stalinist control', 7 June) is sadly familiar. A few years ago a developer persuaded three neighbours of...

Apostrophic faith.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 14, 2008... Sir: Suffering from a condition verging on OCD when it comes to usage of the apostrophe, I am compelled to write in defence of St Thomas' Hospital to Dot Wordsworth's suggestion (Mind your language, 31 March) that it misuses this notoriously...

Not good, but outstanding.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 14, 2008... Sir: If, as Matthew Parris asserts, 'There are no "good" teachers' (Another voice, 7 June), then there can be no good practitioners of anything. To state that those teachers who are good for some children invariably 'wreck another's prospects'...

A brutish term.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 14, 2008... Sir: I cannot be the only reader to be dismayed by the tone all too frequently struck by some of your male contributors. The latest example came in Theodore Dalrymple's rant (Global warning, 7 June). He writes of 'shivering, drunken, scantily...

Rod's boy.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 14, 2008... Sir: Tyler Liddle (Letters, 31 May) sounds like a plea to get a reluctant builder back to work. Peter Fineman Warminster, Wiltshire

Gordon Brown's moral compass is more like a dodgy satnav.(SHARED OPINION)
June 14, 2008... I often miss the glaring messages in fiction, because I am a prosaic and feeble-minded moron. Take Lyra and her altheiometer, in Philip Pullman's Northern Lights trilogy. I read it ages ago, and it only clicked the other day. It's basically a...

Don't ask an African elephant to show you his cardiograms.(AND ANOTHER THING)(Column)
June 14, 2008... I can't help liking elephants, and I was delighted to receive from India a silk tie with a pattern of these huge and benevolent beasts, raising their trunks in the traditional gesture which means 'Good morning and good luck'. I once had a...