Spectator articles from March 2004

Spectator archives from March 2004

Portrait of the week.
March 6, 2004... Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said after the bombings in Iraq that there was 'a struggle between good and evil' going on there. Before the bombings, Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, said it was withdrawing support...

Gordon's great con.
March 6, 2004... Aspiring actors are, by tradition, advised by their mentors never to work with children or animals. Budding politicians, on the other hand, should be advised at all costs to avoid pensioners. They make lousy photo opportunities and they have a...

Diary.
March 6, 2004... June. My first day back in Britain after eight years in America and I couldn't be happier. The sun is shining and I have a large cheque in my pocket with which to conclude the purchase of a nice house in Norfolk. Things could not be better....

A bad summer in Iraq will open the way to new regimes in Britain and the US.(Politics)
March 6, 2004... The most significant purely domestic event in what has turned into a terrible week on the international stage was a speech by Jack McConnell to Labour's Scottish conference in an arctic Inverness. McConnell looked ahead to next year's general...

The Spectator's notes.
March 6, 2004... It is to Lady Morgan, the Prime Minister's political secretary, that the role of co-ordinating New Labour's proposed system of 'kangaroo courts' (or 'show trials', depending on whom you believe) for lapses in party discipline appears to fall....

Why did the Attorney General change his advice? Andrew Gilligan can confirm, for the first time, that five months before the invasion of Iraq the Attorney General's advice to the government was that regime change was illegal.(Cover Story)
March 6, 2004... Hasn't it been an exciting few months to be a lawyer? Once they just sat quietly in offices with stripey wallpaper and dado rails, sending out the bills. Now almost every couple of weeks, it seems, they hold the fate of the government in their...

The Blairs.
March 6, 2004... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: At least I'm not heartless, like some I could Mention!

Globophobia: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2004... What is the reward for a government which protects and subsidises a cherished national industry? Workers parading through the streets in gratitude? Like hell, it is. When an industry is advanced favours, it merely comes back and asks for more....

Christianity and Judaism cannot be reconciled: but, says Bruce Anderson, there's no reason for Jews to fear a revival of anti-Semitism as a result of Mel Gibson's The Passion.
March 6, 2004... One woman has already died of a heart attack while watching the film. No director since Leni Ricfenstahl has been so reviled. There have been widespread calls for Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ to be banned, or at least boycotted. He...

You have been warned, Mr Blair: Rachel Johnson talks to Vernon Coleman, the one-man publishing sensation who has now turned his sights on the 'lying little warmonger' in Downing Street.
March 6, 2004... If you're a Telegraph reader--as I do hope you are--you too will have seen those ads placed by a Dr Vernon Coleman, MB. Not the ones that ask 'Does Your Memory Fail You?' above the ink drawing of the man in a suit and specs, but the ones that...

Ancient & modern.
March 6, 2004... However one regards Mrs Gun after her betrayal of the Official Secrets Act--selfless heroine of Antigonean stature, or self-important, sanctimonious little twerp--her actions raise an important question: the security of the written word. ...

Green's pleasant land: Deborah Ross talks to the head of Migration Watch, and finds herself becoming a little unladylike.
March 6, 2004... So, off to meet Sir Andrew Green, retired Foreign Office mandarin, now founder and chairman of Migration Watch, which is either an 'independent think tank which has no links to any political party' (Migrationwatch.co.uk) or is a 'nasty little...

Nightmare in the Caribbean: in the 200 years since independence, Haiti has endured a vicious cycle of coups: Ian Thomson examines the background to the latest crisis.
March 6, 2004... Shortly after Christmas I went to Haiti for the first time in 13 years. The collapse of the Aristide regime was still two months away, but the Caribbean republic was already descending into chaos. At the airport of the capital, Port-au-Prince,...

Second opinion.
March 6, 2004... When I was 12 years old, I had an English teacher whom I admired to the point of hero-worship, one of whose aphorisms was that poetry was man's natural form of expression. It was prose, in his view, that was unnatural. I came to think this an...

Mind your language.
March 6, 2004... According to that very annoying programme Woman's Hour (one minute being militantly gynaecological, the next giving recipes for butternut-squash soup), a mother complained to a school that allowed her son to say toilet instead of lavatory. A...

One nation under Her Majesty: Ferdinand Mount says that the new citizenship ceremony signals the death of multiculturalism, and should be welcomed by the Tories.
March 6, 2004... As of last Thursday, multiculturalism was officially declared dead in this country. The funeral took place in Brent Town Hall in the presence of the Prince of Wales and the Home Secretary and was accompanied by the National Anthem and the theme...

Job of the week.
March 6, 2004... Assistant Director, Customer Focus London Borough of Islington Salary 61,272 [pounds sterling]-72,408 [pounds sterling] pro rata Do you relish the challenge of a high-profile senior role with a key strategic element, but with the...

Intellectuals, ski instructors and other militant riff-raff.(And Another Thing)
March 6, 2004... To read Le Monde, which I do every day, anyone would think that the French intelligentsia were about to stage a levee en masse against the government. Some 16,000 of them are said to have signed a petition accusing Monsieur Raffarin, the PM,...

The morality of war.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 6, 2004... From John Jenkins Sir: Correlli Barnett rests his case against Blair and Bush and the Iraq war partly on the grounds that 'only the Security Council can authorise armed action', that resolution 1441 did not authorise such action and that...

A blitz on culture.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 6, 2004... From David Woodhead Sir: If, as Noble Frankland argues in agreeing with the conclusions of Frederick Taylor's book Dresden (Books, 28 February), it was legitimate to destroy the city in February 1945 because it was a communications and...

Brit Ed is best.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 6, 2004... From Dan Lewis Sir: As a right-thinking Tory who went to the 86th-ranked university (out of 93) in the land, I agree with Walter Ellis and am sick of being told that my institution was worthless and my degree irrelevant ('Survival of the...

Wealth tax.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 6, 2004... From Robin Jenks Sir: Robin Harris ('Less means more', 28 February) fails to mention some of the benefits of a flat-rate tax. As it would be readily understood, we would all be able to pay it without help from accountants or civil servants. It...

Make war on drugs too.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 6, 2004... From Andrzej Wilski Sir: Bruce Anderson's article ('Make war on terror, not drugs', 21 February) is truly absurd, not to say stupid and dangerous. In the longer run it would be impossible to prevent or significantly reduce terrorism by...

Hooked on celebs.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 6, 2004... From Tim Grima Sir: Stephen Glover (Media studies, 28 February) seems to overlook what has happened with the cult of celebrity in the past decade. The Telegraph reader now needs to know about celebrities because of the hold and effect they have...

Malcolm Rifkind may be the last non-Cockney to capture the Royal Borough.(Shared Opinion)
March 6, 2004... It was reported that Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, the son of Lord and Lady Rees-Mogg, was told that he could not be Kensington and Chelsea's prospective Conservative candidate because he lacked 'the common touch'. This must be a rare instance of anyone...

There are more ways than one to decommission a cat.(Thought For The Day)
March 6, 2004... There is one pressing and even crucial issue which successive governments have refused to address, perhaps through a failure of political will, or simply out of cowardice. And yet not a day goes by without all of us asking the same question:...

The most important thing now is that the Telegraph should be sold soon.(Media Studies)
March 6, 2004... So the Barclay brothers' bid for Conrad Black's controlling share in Hollinger International has been vetoed by an American judge. We are back to square one. A lot of time has been wasted. Meanwhile the patient itself--i.e., the Daily...

The Treasury trots out its Budget bogey--this time, we're right to be scared.(City And Suburban)
March 6, 2004... This is the time of year when the Treasury puts out scare stories. Beware of the Budget, they say. Just look at all the things we may be planning to tax. Land, for example, or fuel for aircraft, or chocolate chip cookies, because they make you...

A land without tourists: Serbia is the ideal place for crowd-haters.(Travel)
March 6, 2004... The trouble with this country is that nobody gets shot' said Srdjan, the tubby 39-year-old music promoter, as we piled into his ramshackle Citroen and headed to an air-conditioned bar. 'Not the right people, anyway.' He meant the 'Slobbo' men...

See Sydney and fry.(Australia)
March 6, 2004... When l arrived in Sydney it was raining. Throughout the 23-hour flight from London, where it was also raining, I had fantasised about walking off the plane into a wall of heat and heading for the beach. Just my bloody luck, I reflected, as I...

Dunkirk spirits.(France)
March 6, 2004... Dunkirk, February 2004. In the seafront restaurant L'Equipage I linger over the last of the Muscadet sur Lie that accompanied my moules a la mariniere and remember a photograph I saw yesterday, which was dated 5 June 1940. Not 20 paces from my...

I don't do holidays.(Staying put)
March 6, 2004... I hate holidays--Summer holidays are what I mean: hate them, hate them. And every single year, round about now, everywhere you look it's the same old story--the papers and television are awash with all this bogus and sun-bleached fevered...

An enchanted forest of family trees.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... MOSAIC by Michael Holroyd Little, Brown, 17.99 [pound sterling], pp. 304, ISBN 0316725056 Michael Holroyd describes the first copy of his last book of memoirs plopping through the letterbox, the kind of moment that might have called for...

God's expeditionary force.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... THE JESUITS by Jonathan Wright HarperCollins, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 334, ISBN 0002571803 In the 16th century Montaigne voiced the fear that missionary endeavour--the white man's "contagion--would hasten the ruin of the New World....

A selection or recent paperbacks.(Books)
March 6, 2004... Non-fiction: Hilaire Belloc by A. N. Wilson, Gibson Square Books, 9.99 [pounds sterling] Overlord by Max Hastings, Pan, 7.99 [pounds sterling] Even As We Speak: New Essays, 1993-2001 by Clive James, Picador, 7.99 [pounds sterling]...

Glories of the silver screen.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... THIN-ICE SKATER by David Storey Cape, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 268, ISBN 0224064495 The anchoring memories of this novel go back to the second world war. That is where crucial people in the plot received their opportunities and their...

From education to catastrophe.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... A ROPE OF SAND by Elsie Burch Donald Doubleday, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 270, ISBN 03856070 'I do feel the strongest urge to talk,' confides the narrator when a chance meeting with the beautiful Olivia after more than 30 years brings...

Fame was the spur.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... LOVE ME by Garrison Keillor Faber, 10.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 272, ISBN 0571217222 Larry Wyler is a man in conflict. He knows what makes him Happy--the St Matthew Passion, sex, a beef sirloin 'slightly charred on the outside and reddish...

Full, frank and fraternal.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... AT WELLINGTON'S RIGHT HAND: THE LETTERS OF LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SIR ALEXANDER GORDON, 1808-1815 edited by Rory Muir Army Records Society/ Sutton Publishing, 50 [pounds sterling], pp. 475. ISBN 075093380I The Army Records Society was rounded...

The pardoner's tale.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... MY FATHER'S WAR by Adriaan Van Dis Heinemann, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 324, ISBN 00434010472 Books about wartime experiences are thick enough on the ground to make one wonder if it is really worth the trauma of reading yet another, but...

Patent medicine for mankind.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... THE BUBBLE OF AMERICAN SUPREMACY: CORRECTING THE MISUSE OF AMERICAN POWER by George Soros Weidenfeld, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 207, ISBN 0297849069 Judging from his publications, since semi-retiring from his hedge fund empire George...

When Hollywood trembled.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... REVOLUTION!: THE EXPLOSION OF WORLD CINEMA IN THE SIXTIES by Peter Cowie Faber, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 286, ISBN 0571209033 In its brief, action-filled history of 109 years the cinema has recapitulated the history of art from cave...

No tendency to corrupt here.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... ALBERT MOORE by Robyn Asleson Phaidon, 19.95 [pounds sterling], lip. 240, 0714838462 Two things about this book--the first on the artist for over a century--are immediately off-putting: intermittent mustard-coloured pages, which make it...

Spain through true blue eyes.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... RICHARD FORD, 1796-1858 by Ian Robertson Michael Russell, 28 [pounds sterling], pp. 381, ISBN 0859552853 Richard Ford is now a forgotten figure and we must be grateful to Ian Robertson for bringing him to life in this scholarly biography....

The lure of the far horizon.(Book Review)
March 6, 2004... CONQUERORS OF TIME by Trevor Fishlock John Murray, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 444, ISBN 0719555175 In 1795, John Evans, the son of a Methodist preacher, set out from St Louis across the unchartered plains of North America in search of a...

A quantum leap: Stephen Pettitt says that rock musicians who compose classical music are out of their depth.(Arts)
March 6, 2004... Stephen Pettitt says that rock musicians who compose classical music are out of their depth A couple of weeks ago a press release arrived in my electronic in-tray. It was from Naxos, the record company much admired for its bargain...

Elemental vision.
March 6, 2004... Karl Weschke--Beneath a Black Sky: Paintings and Drawings 1953-2004 Tate St Ives, until 9 May Karl Weschke has been living in an isolated house on the tip of Cape Cornwall (locally held to be slightly more westerly than Land's End itself)...

Heat and clangour.
March 6, 2004... Shipbuilding: Stanley Spencer and Patricia McKinnon-Day Imperial War Museum North, until 7 June The cavernous aluminium-clad concrete shell of Daniel Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North is an unlikely setting for a show of paintings by...

Wet socks in St Mark's.(Music)
March 6, 2004... It has been uncommon weather in Venice these last two weeks. The water has been high, which can happen at this time of the year, but not usually in conjunction with torrential snow and above-freezing temperatures on the ground. The result has...

Verdi's gloomy vision.(Concert Review)
March 6, 2004... Simon Boccanegra Royal Opera House Simon Boccanegra is an opera which rises ever higher in critical esteem, and the Royal Opera's production from 1991 has surely done its part in this process. It is a model of unfussy and uncluttered...

Maori mystery.(Theater Review)
March 6, 2004... The Sons of Charlie Paora Royal Court Age, Sex, Location Riverside When Harry Met Sally Theatre Royal, Haymarket Some mysteries have answers, some not. At the press night of The Sons of Charlie Paora I couldn't understand why the...

A villain too villainous?(Theater Review)
March 6, 2004... Othello Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon This is going to be a pretty testing year for the RSC's new artistic director, Michael Boyd. He's just released three of last year's best shows on the West End and will shortly announce a new...

Spud worship.(Gardens)
March 6, 2004... The future for the potato seems brighter this month than last, since the opening of the film Sex Lives of the Potato Men. This is an account, apparently (for I have not yet seen it), of the degraded lives of four vacuous and foul-mouthed young...

Re-inventing the Swan.(Dance Review)
March 6, 2004... Swan Lake Northern Ballet Theatre, Grand Theatre, Leeds The dramatic weakness and the basic metaphorical narrative of Swan Lake have resulted in countless different readings of the old ballet. Still, most balletgoers, critics and dance...

American hegemony.(Radio)
March 6, 2004... Opponents of the United States, for whatever reason, like to describe that country as an empire, suggesting that it controls and dominates large parts of the world in the manner of the Roman, French and British empires. Even the BBC World...

Self addressed.(Television)
March 6, 2004... One of my many favourite bits in Alain de Botton's characteristically brilliant and thought-provoking documentary on Status Anxiety (Channel 4, Saturday) was the scene where a middle-aged, effervescent American restaurant manager called Blaise...

Title deeds.(High life)
March 6, 2004... Gstaad Twenty-five years or so ago Jeffrey Bernard wrote in these here pages that 'By and large I've met a better class of person in the gutter than I have in the drawingroom.' Well, Jeff denied inverted snobbery, but that's what it was....

A true gentleman.(Low life)
March 6, 2004... Our house is a no-smoking house. There are no signs up proclaiming it as such, however. Visitors who feel like a fag take note of the fresh-cut flowers, the lack of ashtrays and the framed texts from Scripture dotted about the place and slip...

Water on the brain.(Singular life)
March 6, 2004... So Coca-Cola's latest designer drink, on sale for 95p a bottle, comes out of the tap. Dasani, the company's new bottled water, is being promoted as a 'pure' product in a 7 million [pounds sterling] marketing campaign. But, apparently, the drink...

Rule of Eleven.(Bridge)
March 6, 2004... I CAN'T claim that I often get excited by mathematical calculations--or even that I usually understand them--but, like most bridge players, I hold the Rule of Eleven close to my heart. Thought to have been discovered by the editor of Whist...

Vlad the placator.(Chess)
March 6, 2004... Vladimir Kramnik, the reigning world champion, who deposed Garry Kasparov in 2000 in their match in London, has started to wake up in the elite tournament at Linares, Spain. After some lacklustre draws he moved into top gear for his game as...

Club rules.(Competition)
March 6, 2004... In Competition No. 2330 you were invited to list between 8 and 12 (inclusive) unusual rules to be observed by members of a club which you would either love or hate to belong to. Christopher Sainsbury sparked this off by sending me the rules...

1654: confused.(Crossword)
March 6, 2004... by Columba The unclued lights comprise a key word and three triads suggested by its components. ACROSS 8 Necessity for new wine (4) 11 Poser with pain had broken bone (12) 12 Articles I sift (5) 16 Plant with a...

Television has exploited the housing market to turn us all into greedy voyeurs.(Property)
March 6, 2004... Only television, with its immense resources of eager young creativity, manpower, money and technology, could take the economic phenomenon of a sustained property boom and transform it into a spectator sport. It is a trick pulled off with such...

The pros of yesteryear.(Spectator Sport)
March 6, 2004... What can be done about the BBC's coverage of live sport? It has lost another bauble, the Boat Race, to ITV, and while that is not in itself a grievous loss, it was careless. Once again Peter Salmon, the head of sport, took his eye off the ball,...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
March 6, 2004... Dear Mary Q. I find that I can't remember somebody's name for longer than 30 seconds after I have been introduced to them. It is worse at a party where I recognise people's faces and suspect I know them well, but cannot remember who they...

Portrait of the week.
March 13, 2004... The House of Lords voted by 216 to 183 to refer to a special select committee, and thus delay, the Constitutional Reform Bill, which seeks to abolish the office of Lord Chancellor and to set up a Supreme Court to replace the Law Lords; a week...

Lock them up.
March 13, 2004... A small milestone was reached this week. The Prison Service announced that for the first time the prison population has passed the 75,000 mark. To be precise, a total of 75,007 people now reside at Her Majesty's pleasure, of the people's...

Diary.
March 13, 2004... I see that the papers have finally given a name--'chavs'--to the new working class. They are the type of people I have been drawing for years: trailer trash covered in bling bling, wearing Burberry baseball hats, white tracksuit bottoms and...

The scene is set for a long and bitter constitutional battle.(Politics)
March 13, 2004... Derry Irvine has not gone to pieces, as some former colleagues predicted that he would after being suddenly sacked as Lord Chancellor last June. Friends say that, if anything, he drinks less than he did in government and that his intellect is...

The Spectator's notes.
March 13, 2004... Another week, another explosive revelation about the relationship between Downing Street's pouting Rasputin, Carole Caplin, and the Prime Minister. We dismiss, of course, as self-publicising hogwash the conman and Blair financial adviser Peter...

Nothing to fear but fear itself: Simon Jenkins says that Tony Blair's Sedgefield speech was just another attempt by the Prime Minister to scare us into believing that we are all in mortal danger. We are not.(Cover Story)
March 13, 2004... 'And the clouds came flying through the air bringing winds and hurling lightning and arrows, and it rained hail, fire and swords, and killed a great number of people.' So cried the Florentine monk Savonarola of the coming Day of Judgment in...

The Blairs.
March 13, 2004... IS THAT YOU CAROLE? CHERIE'S SAYING THAT YOU HAD A UNDUE INFLUENCE OVER ME! (DON'T PUT THE PHONE DOWN!!) WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO TELL HER? CAROLE!? YOU'RE BREAKING UP! CAROLE? CAROLE!? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Don't forget to pack your machine gun: Rod Liddle looks at a new magazine dedicated, perhaps a little hysterically, to security matters.
March 13, 2004... How resilient are you feeling, right now? One would hope that you're feeling very resilient despite or maybe because of The Threat. Certainly the government wishes you to be resilient and it is quite clear what it wishes you to be resilient...

No hanging chads, please: Bob Alexander on the need to reform the voting system to get rid of 'electoral bias'.
March 13, 2004... One of New Labour's most outspoken commitments in opposition was that it would reform Parliament. It vowed to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative and later committed itself to the Wakeham recommendation to introduce some...

Mind your language.
March 13, 2004... Before I forget, here is a slight development on chav, this year's youth pejorative term of choice. It is, as Sampson's Dictionary of the Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales makes clear, a Romany word, though it need not signify a Gypsy. Anyway,...

How to buy the Telegraph: Charles Moore believes it is essential for any new owner of the Telegraph to make good journalism the first priority.
March 13, 2004... It is a buzz phrase that everyone should 'have ownership' of things. Staff should 'have ownership' of their company's strategy; the public should 'have ownership' of government policies which affect them, and so on. But this sort of ownership...

No youth at all: Freddie Sayers went to an EU conference for young people in Ireland--and no one turned up. Euroenthusiasm is not groovy.
March 13, 2004... Imagine a huge celebrity wedding before any of the guests have arrived. A romantic Irish castle, a giant marquee with ruched egg-white lining and silver-birch detail, flurries of organisers talking into radios and making last-minute...

Job of the week.
March 13, 2004... Climate Change Co-ordinator Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber Salary: 32,627 [pounds sterling]-39,152 [pounds sterling] The Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber is seeking to appoint a climate change co-ordinator to...

Ancient & modern.
March 13, 2004... The Gender Recognition Bill plodding its way through the House of Commons does not deal with hermaphrodites. Bad mistake. Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. Ovid tells how the nymph Salmacis fell madly in love with him when she...

Freedom is not enough: conservatives must resist liberalism, says John Hayes. What the country needs is order, not social licence.
March 13, 2004... Conservatives are the party of freedom. We believe in giving people more control over their lives, by cutting taxes and reforming public services. But there is more to Conservatism than freedom. In recent times the dangerous myth has...

Amid the whiff of chlorine, municipal swimming has its sombre delights.(And Another Thing)
March 13, 2004... Shortly after seven every morning I am swimming or (to use the fashionable phrase) doing my aquatic aerobics in the Porchester baths, round the corner from where I live. Municipal baths have a culture all their own, halfway between benevolent...

Gibson's Passion.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 13, 2004... From Ida Lichter Sir: Bruce Anderson points out that it is the Gospels that are anti-Semitic, not Mel Gibson ('Christianity and Judaism cannot be reconciled', 6 March). This raises the question: why is Mel Gibson promoting the Gospels? ...

Panglossian Ross.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 13, 2004... From Frank Fuller Sir: Deborah Ross accuses Sir Andrew Green's Migration Watch of 'not especially helping matters' ('Green's pleasant land', 6 March). Isn't it possible that compilation and publication of statistics neither help nor...