Features

Thursday

Olivia Laing

Saratoga Springs: the opposite of a one-horse town

In the sweltering heat of Manhattan, even the prairie plantings on the High Line looked dusty and tired. I usually steer clear of the city in summer, but this year I arrived in the middle of August. It was the night of the supermoon and I went down to the river to try to catch a breeze. On Pier 45, couples were dancing the tango, twisting and dipping as the music drifted out across the water. The sky turned pink and right on cue the moon rose luminous behind the towers. The next morning, I caught the Amtrak Adirondack train from Penn station. Named after the mountain range it passes through, it runs up the Hudson and on to Montreal, calling at old industrial towns with names familiar from William Kennedy and Philip Roth novels: Albany, Poughkeepsie, Schenectady.

William Cook

A voyage along my grandfather’s coastline

My grandfather was born in a huge white house on the Baltic coast of eastern Germany, and ever since I was a child I’ve been fascinated by this enigmatic tideless sea. I’ve travelled along its southern shore, from Germany to Estonia, but I’d always wanted to sail across it, and last month, at last, I did, aboard the Queen Victoria on Cunard’s Royal Viking Adventure. I joined the cruise in Stockholm (the other passengers had sailed here from Southampton). Why had no one ever told me what a stunning city this is? Perched on a little island, the old town is perfectly preserved — a cluster of cobbled alleys, patrolled by blond, athletic Swedes. As we set sail, the view became even better.

Sophia Martelli

Eight of the best river cruises

While ocean liners are hardly butterflies, they have a habit of flitting carelessly between countries, often visiting several within a week. A river cruise, however, takes its (relatively few) passengers to the heart of a country, the aim being to seduce with dramatic, ever-changing vistas and evocative insights — cruises for the connoisseur, if you will. Because of its many different micro-cultures and magnificent backdrops, Europe is where river cruises thrive.

Simon Armitage

Visiting the Greek islands in a reverse Tardis

In Huddersfield, where I grew up, a town-centre department store boasted a ‘cruise wear’ section. In the window display the gentleman dummies wore deck shoes, starched white shorts and flannel jackets, while the ladies struck elegant poses and held designer sunglasses in their slender moulded hands. In Huddersfield, the opportunities to flaunt such clothes were limited. The shop closed down, but for as long as it existed it provided a vision of continental chic and luxury living, nestled between Burger King and the Polish mini-mart. Cruising is no longer an exclusive activity: even a half-hearted search on the internet throws up dozens of companies offering thousands of departures to hundreds of destinations.

Mark Palmer

Discover the blissful peace of Laos

There’s a company I came across the other day called Value Added Travel. And despite the horrible name, it seems to be doing good business — which got me thinking. If I were starting a travel business I’d be tempted to name it something along the lines of Guaranteed To Make You Feel Better About Life — a mouthful, I grant you, and a little twee, but doesn’t it describe the reason we go places? Even the great Patrick Leigh Fermor’s epic walk from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn was underpinned by an innate sense of optimism. In a word, hope. Which is why I have no wish to revisit Vegas and little desire ever to drink beer on the strip in Magaluf. But give me a regular dose of Luang Prabang and I promise to help old ladies across the street for ever more.

Jonathan Ray

It takes an elephant to get my teenage son up early

Having just turned 13, my boy Ferdy doesn’t really do early mornings. Indeed, during the summer hols we rarely glimpsed him before noon and then only fleetingly whenever he chose to assemble himself a triple-decker jam and Nutella sandwich and flee back upstairs to his darkened room and repeats of Top Gear on his iPad. I saw more of our neighbours’ kids than I did of our own. But there Ferdy was at 5.30 a.m., bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and raring to go. ‘Come on, daddy, for heaven’s sake shake a leg, everyone’s waiting!’ I hardly recognised the boy. We were staying at Phinda Forest Lodge in KwaZulu-Natal, south-east of Johannesburg, for three days’ safari and some father-and-son bonding, and it was time for the first early-morning game drive.

Thursday

Vernon Coleman

Meet the bloated, useless General Medical Council

There was a time, not long ago, when British GPs provided the best home doctor service in the world. Patients could telephone their doctor 24 hours a day, seven days a week (including Christmas), ask for a home visit and get one. Patients prepared to visit the surgery could expect to see a doctor the day they called. Today, it is easier to find a plumber than a doctor at night and weekends. Patients wanting emergency help out of office hours must visit their nearest major hospital and spend hours queuing in the A&E department.

Max Pemberton

How to fix the NHS: a doctor’s prescription

I’m a doctor, and I don’t care about the NHS. In this country, that’s an almost heretical statement — but it’s true. What I mean is that I have absolutely no interest in ensuring its survival simply because it’s a great national treasure. What I care about is making sure that we have the best possible and most cost-effective healthcare system. And as it happens, despite the strikes, panic and doom-mongering, I think the NHS — by which I mean a nationalised healthcare model — is the best option available, if only someone were brave enough to make the right changes in the right way. Don’t expect this government to try.

Tim Stanley

Brighton has become an object lesson in why it is a disaster to vote Green

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_Oct_2014_v4.mp3" title="Tim Stanley and Jason Kitcat discuss Brighton" startat=1510] Listen Such is their incompetence that the Greens often hurt the very causes they push [/audioplayer]I have just moved back to Brighton, and I am happy to report that it remains as shambolic as ever. The estate agent said before opening the door to a prospective flat, ‘I’m obliged by law to tell you that the previous tenant was an alcoholic and died here.’ I replied, ‘I am not surprised and that is not a problem.’ No one who knows Brighton expects puritanism. Unfortunately, we have grown to expect dreadful politics.

Malcolm Pearson

Why it won’t be Ukip’s fault if Cameron loses

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_Oct_2014_v4.mp3" title="Lord Pearson and Damian Green discuss Ukip and the Tories" startat=81] Listen [/audioplayer]How odd that David Cameron is still threatening us with ‘Vote Ukip, get Labour’, even after the Heywood and Middleton by-election, which Ukip nearly won with thousands of Labour defections. But if the Conservatives do lose the next election by a Ukip-sized margin then Cameron has only himself to blame — for the second time in a row. I know because I tried to stop it happening in 2010 when I was leading Ukip. Soon after Ukip came second in the 2009 EU elections, David Willoughby de Broke and I went to see Tom Strathclyde, then Tory leader in the Lords.

Rian Malan

At least South Africa has the world’s best murder trials

 Johannesburg I was astonished, in London the other week, to discover how closely you Britons were following the Oscar Pistorius trial. I was invited to Rosie Boycott’s breakfast club, which meets on Friday mornings in a west London coffee house. The table was full of charming old geezers of approximately my vintage, all clearly Oxbridge men of the most civilised variety and yet as taken with the Pistorius drama as any Hello! magazine subscriber. Why did the Oscar trial grip the world’s imagination? Some say it is because of the blade runner’s novel handicap. Others put it down to feminism — women everywhere were pissed off by what they took to be the cold-blooded murder of ‘one of us’.

Jenny McCartney

Does Jonathan Powell really want to negotiate with the Islamic State?

I think I’ve finally worked out the time-honoured Jonathan Powell formula for promoting a new book: take which-ever group constitutes the most bloodthirsty terrorist organisation of the day — in this case IS, the warped Islamist force currently enslaving and beheading its way across Iraq and Syria — and create a media fizz by boldly declaring that sooner or later we’re going to have to negotiate with them. Powell’s predicted circumstances in which the ‘talking’ to IS should actually happen, however, are hedged with unrealised conditions. At other moments he will daringly hint that talking is best without any preconditions at all.

Liam Halligan

Europe will reconcile with Russia, and soon. It can’t afford not to

After months of escalating tensions over Ukraine and talk of a new cold war, Russia and the West could soon reach a surprising rapprochement. The eurozone economy is suffering badly and sanctions against Russia are partly to blame. Winter is also upon us, and that reminds every-one Vladimir Putin still holds the cards when it comes to supplying gas. The clincher, though, is that Ukraine is heading towards financial meltdown. Unless an extremely large bailout is delivered soon, there will be a default, sending shockwaves through the global economy. That’s a risk nobody wants to take — least of all Washington, London or Berlin. Sanctions against Russia were always going to hit western Europe hard.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Every 73 seconds, police use snooping powers to access our personal records. Who’ll rein them in?

At its peak, the Stasi employed one agent for every 165 East Germans. Spying was a labour-intensive business then — you needed to monitor telephone calls, steam open mail, plant a bug, follow suspects on shopping trips and then write reports for the KGB. The advantage was that, human nature being what it is, the Stasi would probably succeed in gathering dirt on all but the most saintly. The drawback: trying to gather files on so many millions could almost bankrupt a government. How much easier it is nowadays. By interrogating someone’s mobile phone, the police can gather more information than the Stasi could dream of compiling. The modern smartphone contains all the secrets of a life: bank balances, emails to lawyers, texts to lovers.

Nick Cohen

Our suicidal newspapers are throwing press freedom away

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_9_Oct_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson and Lord Falconer discuss the police's use of Ripa" startat=57] Listen [/audioplayer]With the possible, although far from certain, exception of the men and women who hire me, it is fair to say that Britain’s editors have a death wish. They suppress their own freedom. They hold out their wrists and beg the state to handcuff them. They are so lost in ideological frenzy that they cannot see that free journalism is the first casualty of their culture wars. The Daily Mail acclaimed David Cameron’s threat to repeal the Human Rights Act and pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights as ‘triumphant’.

Peter Oborne

The unbearable vanity of Kevin Pietersen

Seven years ago Kevin Pietersen produced his first attempt at autobiography, Crossing the Boundary: The Early Years in My Cricketing Life. Atrociously written, it demonstrated no awareness of the world outside himself. This time round Mr Pietersen has taken the precaution of hiring an excellent ghost writer, David Walsh of the Sunday Times. It is hard to overpraise Mr Walsh’s vivid prose. The book is a brilliant portrayal of Pietersen as a misunderstood genius continually brought down by lesser men: a Mozart beset by a sequence of Salieris. Three of his England teammates fare especially badly: Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann and Matt Prior. He describes their behaviour as egotistical, bullying and treacherous.

Andrew J.

The US military should be winning wars, not fighting Ebola

As a general rule, soldiers should be employed in the business of soldiering — preparing to fight or actually fighting (preferably infrequent) wars. In response to the Ebola outbreak afflicting West Africa, the Obama administration has decided to waive that rule. His decision to do so has received widespread support. Yet the effect of his decision is to divert attention from questions of considerable urgency. Drawing on the increasingly elastic authority exercised by the US commander-in-chief, President Obama has directed the deployment of up to 4,000 troops to Liberia, ground zero of the epidemic. These are not war fighters but support troops, mostly construction engineers and medical personnel.

Justin Marozzi

I’ve spent years in war zones. And the most terrifying moment of my life just happened in Norfolk

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_9_Oct_2014_v4.mp3" title="Justin Marozzi and Caroline Kisko, Kennel Club Secretary, discuss vicious dogs" startat=1287] Listen [/audioplayer]It happened so quickly, as these things always do. My wife Julia and I were pootling about on Wells beach with our fluffy mongrel Maisie when suddenly two fighting dogs, English bull terriers, came flying towards us like calf-high missiles. Declining the usual canine politesse of a bit of bum-sniffing, one immediately locked its jaws around Maisie’s throat, the other clamped its teeth into her right back leg. They then tossed her around like a rag doll, as my wife and I desperately tried to haul them off. Maisie was howling in terrible distress.

Tom Leonard

A casino clash worthy of James Bond reaches its climax in the High Court

It is said that all you really need to know about casinos is that the house always wins. I wouldn’t bet on it this week. The supposed iron law of gambling is being tested in the more salubrious surroundings of the High Court, and cardsharps and casinos across the world are agog to see what happens. Phil Ivey vs Crockfords of Mayfair pits an American widely regarded as the world’s best poker player against Britain’s oldest and smartest casino. Although not, in this case, very smart in the intelligence sense. Ivey, 38, is suing the casino’s owner, Malaysia’s £21 billion Genting Group, after it refused to pay his £7.7 million winnings on a remarkable streak over four sessions in August 2012. The company says he was cheating.

Mark Asquith

Stock pickers vs robots

Most people manage to hide from their own failure, so pity the poor fund manager, whose every wild blast is measured in unforgiving performance numbers. Between 70 and 80 per cent of fund managers have underperformed a passive index over the past five years, a ratio known as the slaughtered three quarters. Fund managers are exposed by two things — their performance is quantified on a daily basis and there is a non-human alternative to compare them against. This is not the case with a politician or a policeman. Computers are getting better than us at an awful lot of things; the choice between human or computerised investment has implications well beyond the financial profession. But before we write active managers off entirely, what about the successful 20 per cent?