Spectator articles from November 2003

Spectator archives from November 2003

Portrait of the week.
November 1, 2003... Twenty-five Conservative MPs wrote to the chairman of the 1922 Committee calling for a vote of confidence in their leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith. The Labour party expelled Mr George Galloway, the MP for Glasgow Kelvin, on the grounds that...

The fall of IDS.
November 1, 2003... Tory MPs have decided to get rid of their leader in what are, on the face of it, surprising circumstances. The party is ahead in the polls by as much as 5 per cent. The recent Blackpool conference generated a host of new policies on health,...

Diary.
November 1, 2003... I was as excited as a kid going to Disneyland to be invited on Concorde's last flight from New York to London. I've always regarded it as one of Britain's greatest ambassadors, and we considered that being a part of its final journey was too...

Who was there when IDS needed support? Not the Tory press.(Media Studies)
November 1, 2003... The Tories, we are told, are a party of unstable men who are genetically predisposed to plotting against their leader. I would certainly appreciate a learned piece on this subject from the Times's esteemed medical correspondent, Dr Thomas...

The Spectator's note.
November 1, 2003... Jamaica The Vole's sagacious manservant, W.F. Deedes, this week found himself in the middle of a hypothetical Bateman cartoon: 'The Man Who Told A Rastafarian He Was At Haile Selassie's Funeral.' The scene is as follows. After a hard...

The cult of treachery: the 25 letters are in. Iain Duncan Smith will soon be out. The treachery of the flunkeys has triumphed. Peter Oborne outlines what the new leader must now do to save the party.
November 1, 2003... For the greater part of the last two centuries it was axiomatic that three great institutions upheld a large part of the structure of our national life. These were the monarchy, the established Church and the Conservative party. In different...

The multicultural thought police: the BBC report on the racist police recruits has given new ammunition to those who are curbing our legitimate freedoms.
November 1, 2003... In our modern secular society, we pride ourselves on our supposed tolerance. We sneer at the bigotry of the past, wondering how the monstrous cruelty of events such as the Spanish Inquisition could ever have occurred. But we should not be so...

Bloody hypocrisy: John Laughland says Kill Bill is cheesy and evil, and wonders why it is tolerated when depictions of real violence are censored.
November 1, 2003... A brutal-looking 17-year-old girl takes a long swig from a bottle of sake and thumps it down on the bar, as an ugly-looking man next to her asks her if she likes Ferraris. 'Do you want to screw me?' she replies. 'Yes,' he says, his goofy and...

Banned wagon: global: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.
November 1, 2003... Teesside waste-management company AbleUK has won a 10.8 million [pounds sterling] contract to dismantle 13 US navy ships at its yard near Hartlepool, raising fears that these 'toxic rustbuckets' will leak 'deadly pollution' into the sea. The...

No more Mr Nasty Guy? Ahead of next year's regional elections in Provence, Jean-Marie Le Pen is using his daughter to give the National Front a kinder, gentler face.
November 1, 2003... Paris Beneath the cliffs of Bandiagara, on the edge of the Bongo plains, President Chirac was greeted by dancers in teetering Kananga masks and elevated to the rank of hogon of the Dogon, a chief priest of the cult of Lebe, the Earth god, last...

Mind your language.
November 1, 2003... My husband's favourite programme on television, to judge by what he shouts at the screen, is Grumpy Old Men. You should hear him when they sound off about automated telephone answering ('Press 2... ', etc). I think I have caught something from...

The oldest fresher in town: Rachel Johnson talks to the Hon. Sir Oliver Bury Popplewell, 76 and sprightly with it, who is reading PPE at Oxford.(Interview)
November 1, 2003... He may have caught your eye at the Freshers' Fair fair first-year undergraduates, held in the examination schools on the High Street. He was signing up for the rugger club and the law society; he was a tall, athletic student wearing a navy...

The Blairs.
November 1, 2003... AND NOW WE CAN KEEP AN EYE ON IT WOW! THAT'S GREAT, DOCTOR. IT'S SO ME! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Now for the good news: Simon Henderson on the unremarked progress being made by the coalition forces in Iraq.
November 1, 2003... The first snows are arriving in New Hampshire, but the action for the first of the US presidential primaries is still being played out elsewhere. American voters and news junkies in the rest of the world might be excused for thinking that the...

Ancient & modern.
November 1, 2003... Mars closed in, and astrology freaks wet themselves with excitement--the poor dears. In the ancient world, astrology came under the category of divination, which Cicero hit on the head in his two-book De Divinatione (published 44 BC, just after...

Tell us the reason why: the Suez intervention was illegal, says Jesse Norman. It is now up to the government to show us that the Iraq war was not also illegal.
November 1, 2003... Slowly, the pressure is building on the government to publish the documents that form the legal basis for the Iraq war. Three weeks ago, Michael Heseltine called, in these pages, for the attorney-general to resign, given that his legal opinion...

Pig business: Tracy Worcester on how the American pork industry is invading Poland with the help of EU grants.
November 1, 2003... We ignored the 'No Entry' sign at Smithfield hog factory, near Szczecinek, west Pomerania, in northwest Poland. Clambering over wire barriers, we wrenched open the ventilation shaft of one of three vast concrete and corrugated iron sheds....

Who said there's no such thing as a free lunch?(And Another Thing)
November 1, 2003... My father died almost exactly 60 years ago. I was at boarding school, on the eve of my 15th birthday, and the news came without warning. His illness was sudden, swift and implacable. In a way he was a belated victim of the Great War. He had...

Out with the Count--Transylvania fires a silver bullet at the euro.(City and Suburban)
November 1, 2003... It was a mistake, historians will agree, to let Transylvania sign up for the euro. At the time, Ed Balls, the Chancellor's eurosceptical adviser, summed up his objections in a monosyllable: 'Bats,' he said. This was an unreconstructed and...

Thank God for the rain and--for the gentle Afrikaners.(Another Voice)
November 1, 2003... Limpopo Province, South Africa Ottoshoek means 'Otto's corner' or perhaps more collo-quially 'Otto's place' it Afrikaans. But this cabin in the Soutpansberg mountain is not so much a den as a lookout. Perched on the very edge of a green, rocky...

Not quite indifferent.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... From Stephen J. Hayhow Sir: One point regarding Mary Wakefield's article 'The mystery of the missing links' (25 October). The problems with Professor Dawkins's views are philosophical as well as scientific. For example, in River out of...

Ugly reality of Mahathir.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... From Bruce Leeming Sir: Sholto Byrnes asks us to recognise the merits of the approach of Dr Mahathir Mohamad to government ('Mahathir knows best', 25 October). This is the Malaysian Muslim bigot who, inter alia and on Mr Byrnes's...

Liddle slips.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... From Dr Cyril Laming Sir: Rod Liddle's 'Thought for the Day' (18 October) was up to his usual freshness and--er--penetration in both topic and style. But he must surely have been as tired as a newt to make the mental slip that anyone...

Fairness rather than fear.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... From KJ. Marsh Sir: Rod Liddle's article ('Thought for the Day', 25 October) was inaccurate. He writes--in connection with my decision not to broadcast part of an interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury--that the BBC put out a...

Passionately British.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... From Douglas Carswell Sir: Mark Steyn is correct that British Conservatives should be wary of being seen as wanting to ape US-style local democracy ('How to save the Tory party', 25 October). As the 'Tory policy cove' who made the case for...

No demand for GM.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... From Edward Collier Sir: Forget about the flawed field trials, ignore the (largely US) vested interests and the gung-ho scientists on the 'pro' side, and the Luddite conspiracy theorists on the 'anti' ('GM may be good for you', 25...

Diana's death fears.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... From Jennifer Miller Sir: Stephen Glover (Media studies, 25 October) might care to consider that for years rumour had it that the late Princess anticipated being sabotaged in the air: 'One day, I shall go up in a helicopter and I won't...

R.I.P. RP.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... From Andrew Daley Sir: Why does Theodore Dalrymple ('Thick accents', 25 October), a writer with whom I usually agree, believe that the pronunciation of 'Newcastle' used by the majority of people who five in the city is essentially inferior...

Come along, Ken.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... From Michael Knowles Sir: So Ken Livingstone objects to The Spectator carrying the leaflet from the Campaign for an English Parliament about its Open Conference on The Future of England in the Conway Hall on Saturday 15 November (Letters,...

Solving the Polish conundrum.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... RISING '44: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW by Norman Davies Macmillan, 2.5 [pounds sterling], pp. 660, ISBN 0333905687 The Warsaw uprising of August 1944 was one of the most tragic episodes of the second world war, resulting in the destruction of...

Come, friendly bombs ...(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... CRAP TOWNS: THE 50 WORST PLACES TO LIVE IN THE UK edited by Sam Jordison and Dan Kieran Boxtree, 10 [pounds sterling], pp. 156, ISBN 0752215825 This inelegantly titled book has already achieved a certain fame because John Prescott's Hull...

More honest than most.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... MADAM SECRETARY: A MEMOIR by Madeleine Albright Macmillan, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 562, ISBN 140503369X It is a mark of the excellence of this memoir by the highest-ranking woman in American history, ex-Secretary of State Madeleine...

From the sublime to the ridiculous.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... SUNDRIE PIECES by George Herbert Gregynog Press, 375 [pounds sterling], pp. 99, ISBN 0954194217 Hah, that's had you fumbling with your bi-focals, but no, there is no printing error. It is 375 [pounds sterling]. The Gregynog Press, which in...

A triumph of optimism.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... THE MEANING OF EVERYTHING by Simon Winchester OUP, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 260, ISBN 10198607024 Ada Murray, the wife of the long-bearded progenitor of The Oxford English Dictionary and mother of his 11 children, wasn't going to have...

Rocks and guts and bullocks.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... COLLECTED POETRY by Ted Hughes Faber, 40 [pounds sterling], pp. 1332, ISBN 0571217192 Ted Hughes was the first living poet I loved. The same is probably true for countless kids who went to school in the 1960s and 70s. The general rule that...

Shooting lions and lines.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... HEMINGWAY IN AFRICA by Christopher Ondaatje HarperCollins, 24.95 [pounds sterling]. pp. 237 ISBN 0002006707 It's not fair to blame a book for its subject--a book by a decent fellow who delights in Africa in the wild, a book of charm and...

Getting both socks on.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... HOW TO BE A BETTER PARENT by Cassandra Jardine Vermilion, 8.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 229, ISBN 0091889723 Children, like dogs, need to be trained. After this promising start, Cassandra Jardine sets out to offer parents some practical...

A soldier breaks ranks.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... WINNING MODERN WARS by General Wesley K. Clark Perseus Group, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 218, ISBN 1586482181 Here's a good rule of thumb: never read a book by a politician running for office. .Whether it is George W. Bush's folksy...

A super-selective memory.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... HOPE AND HISTORY by Gerry Adams Brandon, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 406, ISBN 0863223176 Hope and History is the second volume of autobiography by Gerry Adams; together with the first volume, Mr Adams's memoirs now come to 700 pages. This...

Dogged by ill fortune.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... CAPTAIN SCOTT by Ranulph Fiennes Hodder, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 508, ISBN 0340826975 Sir Ranulph Fiennes has done Captain Scott's memory some service. For the past two decades, since Roland Huntford's devastating demolition job--Scott...

Forty years on.
November 1, 2003... The New York Review of Books has been celebrating the paper's 40th anniversary, and it's only fair to join in, with a show of hands across the sea, The first few numbers, spread out over the months of eventful 1963, were among the important...

Guardian of the nation's treasures: Susan Moore celebrates 100 years of the National Art Collections Fund.(Arts)
November 1, 2003... Exhibitions celebrating the nation's art treasures have habit of backfiring. Within 50 years of the great Art Treasures of the United Kingdom show held in Manchester in 1857, for instance around half the works of art exhibited in this...

Sense of overkill.
November 1, 2003... Bill Viola: The Passions The National Gallery, until 4 January 2004 Although I do not value most video art--too much of it is sloppily made and vacuous beyond belief--I make an exception of Bill Viola. Since his 1992 Whitechapel show, and...

Delighting in flotsam.
November 1, 2003... Eric Rimmington Scolar Fine Art, 35 Bruton Place, London W1, until 28 November It's a strange irony of the throwaway society that objets trouves--'found objects'--should now be treasured as art. For many of us this is a tough one to...

Opera at the seaside: this years obscurity rating at Wexford is down.
November 1, 2003... It does seem bizarre, considering the dismal state of opera in Ireland, where Dublin's usual diet of mainstream operas staged by Opera Ireland has been temporarily axed, and where Belfast's quite ambitious opera company was wound up in 1999,...

Surprise package.(Dance Review)
November 1, 2003... Kammer Kammer, Ballet Frankfurt Sadler's Wells William Forsythe challenges the common perception of what a ballet performance should be like. This talent remains one of the most identifiable and popular traits of his choreography. When his...

Partridge in the Pampas.(Gardens)
November 1, 2003... I never used to like Pampas grass. In fact I hated it. It was one of the first plants I could name as a child, but not because I appealed to me. There was a large clump in the garden of the school I attended when I was seven and, on almost the...

Nordic blues.(Jazz)
November 1, 2003... As every American is at pains to insist, jazz is American. And in the sense that America was where it originated and America was where it evolved, it is. But this is only part of the story--a big part in the scheme of things I grant you, but...

Bucketloads of panache.(Theater Review)
November 1, 2003... Thoroughly Modern Millie Shaftesbury Electra Gate Thoroughly Modern Millie has a thoroughly disturbing storyline. An innocent flapper comes to New York and pitches up at a cheap guest-house run by the sinister Mrs Meers, a Chinese widow...

Gluck's genius.
November 1, 2003... Paride ed Elena Barbican Gluck is a composer who tends to divide opinion more than one might expect, given that his art is hardly one of extremes. While many of us insist on his dramatic cogency, his nobility, and austere grandeur, the...

Genuine talent.(Pop music)
November 1, 2003... Signs of material success are not hard to spot in the modern pop star. Tattoos, extreme drug usage, high levels of paranoia, feeble albums--we've seen it all a thousand times. Neither mountains of cash nor the adulation of millions can make...

Tropical paradise: Sebastian Smee is seduced by the Tahitian art of Paul Gauguin.
November 1, 2003... False seduction is not something we like to equate with great art. But it's a feeling, a suspicion, that presses in on you when looking again at Gauguin, as we are invited to do by a spellbinding new exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris,...

Wheelwright of the heavens.(Radio)
November 1, 2003... BBC radio is pretty good at popularising science; so, nearly 300 years ago, was James Ferguson, the subject of Inventors Imperfect on Radio Four last week (Wednesday). The Scottish self-taught astronomer became a sought-after lecturer on...

Time to buy.(Television)
November 1, 2003... THE best sitcom on television at the moment (I think even better than Will & Grace on Channel 4, a formula which works perfectly because Will is clearly not gay, and Eric McCormack, who plays him, is a family man in real life) is Curb Your...

A bit of a thinker.(The turf)
November 1, 2003... Mrs Oakley and I have only one dissonance in our lives. When we are due to travel somewhere, she is of the cautious school and I am of the last-minute variety. She likes to camp out at the terminus the night before, I prefer to leap into the...

Blind date.(High life)
November 1, 2003... New York I believe it was Jemima Khan's idea, the search for a beau for Princess Diana--after her divorce, that is. It was late 1995 going into 1996. If memory serves, the Brits of Diana's background were judged too wet, so I suggested an...

Unmasked in Venice.(Low life)
November 1, 2003... I've got these vertical lines running down my face, on either side of my mouth, and they are bothering me. You know the line I mean. The ones that make serious men with serious jobs look like Thunderbird comics. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger...

Leave well alone.(Singular life)
November 1, 2003... Virginia America appears to have de-politically corrected itself. On my last trip to New York before 11 September, I was likely to get mud in my eye if I did any of these things: wore fur, smoked or made ironic remarks. While London...

Intriguing.(Bridge)
November 1, 2003... I'VE just read my way through most of this year's Man Booker shortlist. It seems to me a particularly good year, although I'm not sure that D.B.C. Pierre should have won--my own choice would have been Zoe Heller or Monica Ali. But I've also...

Patriarch.(Chess)
November 1, 2003... Mikhail Botvinnik was the patriarch of Soviet chess. As the first Soviet work champion, he occupied a favoured spot in the hierarchy of the USSR intellectuals. It is said of Botvinnik that when the Soviet state collapsed he announced: 'I am...

Ask a silly question.(Competition)
November 1, 2003... In Competition No. 2313 you were invited to out Mary 'Dear Mary' by raising a preposterous question of social behaviour and providing an absurd and ingenious answer. Last week I began with a digression. This week I begin with something far...

Spectator Wine Club.
November 1, 2003... GOSH, there's some not very nice wine about. The other day I tried a few bottles of something called 'Origin', a branded series of wines from single-grape varieties. They're boring and bland. It's less a wine than a marketing exercise--catering...

Racism's redoubt.(Spectator Sport)
November 1, 2003... KICK racism out of football,' proclaimed a banner at the football match I attended last weekend. Before the game, and during half-time, young people carried the banner round all four sides of the ground so that spectators could not miss the...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
November 1, 2003... Q. My husband and I are planning to celebrate our 55th (emerald) wedding anniversary with a modest family party. We have verbally accepted a quotation for a finger buffet from a local caterer, but our grandson, who with his wife runs a small...

Portrait of the week.
November 8, 2003... Mr Michael Howard remained the only candidate for the leadership of the Conservative party after a vote the week before of 90 to 75 against a motion of confidence in Mr Iain Duncan Smith, who later likened the event to a 'near-death...

The cowardice of Labour.(Editorial)
November 8, 2003... It is too much to hope that by the time all our subscribers have received this week's magazine there will have been a change of government. Nevertheless, world events may have moved on substantially. The Royal Mail has admitted that it will...

Diary.
November 8, 2003... This is the best time of the year to be in northern China. The monsoon is over and the summer temperatures are cooling down in Beijing and Shanghai. It's the best time for food, too. 'The peaches are in season in Beijing now,' is the very first...

The growing mystery of a coup without a conspiracy.(Politics)
November 8, 2003... Last week's display of virtuosity by Michael Howard was immaculate, ruthless, perfectly executed: high politics at its purest and most beautiful. His clarity of vision, contemptuous facing down of opposition, cunning, efficiency, resolve, above...

The Spectator's notes.(Book Review)
November 8, 2003... Blimey. You can't trust even an authorised biographer to draw a discreet veil these days, can you? In Niv: The Authorised Biography of David Niven, Graham Lord--previously the biographer of Dick Francis and Jeffrey Bernard--exposes his subject...

If Michael Howard can disown the past, so can we all.(Media Studies)
November 8, 2003... The Tory party's embrace of Michael Howard has caused much wonderment, particularly in the liberal press. One moment shadow minister after shadow minister declares undying support for IDS, whose virtues of integrity and honour are said to be an...

In the trough of the Long Wave, the Tories must move on from panic to funk.(City And Suburban)
November 8, 2003... Few economists have been martyred for their theories--more, perhaps, should be--but Nikolai Kondratieff fell foul of Stalin, was sent to Siberia and shot. Michael Howard should raise a monument to him. Until then his memorial will be his Long...

Why Britain is furious with America: as Iraq seems to be turning into a quagmire, Max Hastings reveals that proposals made by the British government and military have been repeatedly ignored by the Bush administration.(Cover Story)
November 8, 2003... A distinguished American writer reported after visiting Iraq: 'The troops returning home are worried. "We've lost the peace," men tell you. "We can't make it stick." Friend and foe alike look you accusingly in the face and tell you how...

Globophobia: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.
November 8, 2003... This column acquires a new identity this week. We don't claim to have coined the term 'globophobia' to describe the fear and loathing of globalisation--it was used in this sense (as opposed to its traditional meaning, the fear of balloons) in a...

'I been born to play domino': Sam Leith attends the World Championship of Dominoes in Jamaica, and finds the contestants thumping the tables and dancing the funky chicken.
November 8, 2003... The sound in the Grand Hall is like the chattering of sparrows. Milling at the door, most wearing bright yellow T-shirts with plasticky decals so big they practically double the weight of the cotton, are the domino sharks, kibitzing and waiting...

The key to No. 10: Bruce Anderson on the challenge facing Michael Howard in the run-up to the next election.
November 8, 2003... There is a piquancy. Back in 1997, Michael Howard launched a confident challenge for the Tory leadership. He had influential supporters, a good team and a strong case: that his experience and political stance made him the best qualified...

Job of the week.
November 8, 2003... Head of Overview and Scrutiny Support, Directorate for Resources Lewisham Borough Council Salary: up to 38,781 [pounds sterling] Due to Maternity Leave an opportunity has arisen to play a leading role in the continuous development of the...

God bless the future king: enough is enough, says Simon Heffer. We must stop kicking the Prince of Wales. In time he will make an excellent monarch.
November 8, 2003... In the autumn of 1896 the then Prince of Wales was exactly the same age as our present one: just coming up to his 55th birthday. He did not have the highest public reputation. Society knew he had had a string of mistresses, and this might only...

The price of liberty: Adrian Hilton says that the Act of Settlement must not be repealed, because a Roman Catholic monarchy would destroy our religious and civil liberties.
November 8, 2003... Across the whole gamut of constitutional issues that have preoccupied New Labour, many consider that the only justifiable reform would have been the repeal of the Act of Settlement 1701, to remove the discriminatory anti-Catholic provisions; to...

The Blairs.
November 8, 2003... DEAR IAIN, I MISS YOU SO MUCH! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO AWAY!? IT'S JUST NOT FAIR! DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE USED TO HAVE THOSE CHATS ACROSS THE HOUSE! ME SOUNDING SO CLEVER, EVEN WHEN I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT (WHICH WAS MOST OF...

Ancient & modern.
November 8, 2003... What should men pray for? The Roman satirist Juvenal (writing c. AD 120) famously answered mens sana in corpore sano, 'a healthy mind in a healthy body'. One wonders what he would have made of today's men and women in search of the corpus...

Mind your language.
November 8, 2003... 'This is a good one,' said my husband, bubbling into his Famous Grouse. 'Abbreviator: An officer of the court of Rome appointed to draw up the Pope's briefs.' 'But that can't possibly be a joke intended by James Murray or his collaborators...

Why we need Khodorkovsky: Rachel Polonsky on the fight to save a private school that is threatened by Russia's new cultural and economic thuggery.
November 8, 2003... Moscow In Britain, it is easy to forget what an important human freedom non-state education represents. In post-totalitarian Russia, where civil liberties are in first bud in a hostile climate, this recently regained freedom is menaced,...

Second opinion.
November 8, 2003... I was out in Westminster one morning last week when suddenly the streets seemed to fill with traffic wardens. It was 8.30, and I was most impressed: such signs of punctuality and efficiency are rare in the public service. Please do not get...

Why do the Aussies hate us? Can it be because they feel inferior?(Thought For The Day)
November 8, 2003... I wonder if there is anything we might do to help the Australians? They seem to be suffering from both an identity crisis and an inferiority complex. It must be terribly debilitating for them, and confusing too. Most of us went through much the...