Features

Saturday

Christopher Howse

Spanish Notebook

Round a bend in the mountain path, between the flowering rosemary and the wild box bushes, above the spine of bare rock that stretched like a dragon’s tail hundreds of feet down into the valley of the unseen river below, someone had sprayed in black letters on the unsuitable surface of the ground: ‘Catalunya is not Spain’. True enough, but where is? In the 700-mile railway journey I’ve been making over the past week from Montserrat in the east to La Coruña on the Atlantic, not many places. To Léonese nationalists, even the ancient Kingdom of Léon has its own language, though it sounds like good Castilian to me. And I can never see the monastery of Montserrat, long a symbol of Catalan civilisation, without thinking ‘Shangri-La’.

Patrick Skene-Catling

Travel Special – Grenada: Fit for a prince

Having visited most of the islands of the Caribbean when they were British colonies and since they were granted independence, I am convinced that Grenada, in the far south-east, is the fairest one of all. Its volcanic origin created wonderfully varied landscapes, from mountainous rainforests down to fertile plantations and a palmy littoral, brightened by bougainvillea, hibiscus, jasmine, orchids…. This is where Alec Waugh’s Island in the Sun, a novel about romantic miscegenation, was filmed with scandalous success. My partner Diana and I came to Grenada this year for the ninth time. I planned to work on a novel and do some painting, but the very first day my typewriter broke down and somehow the tops wouldn’t come off the tubes of acrylics.

Ian Thomson

Travel Special – Jamaica: Meeting the queen’s man

This August, Jamaica celebrates the 50th anniversary of independence. Amid the bunting and parades, talk will be of Britain’s continued presence in the island and the role of the monarchy in particular. Jamaicans are often incredulous that Queen Elizabeth II should still be their head of state. The Jamaican prime minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, has taken steps to replace the Queen with an elected president; yet she vigorously embraced Prince Harry during his Jubilee tour. Recently in Jamaica I went to see the outgoing governor-general, Sir Howard Cooke. Jamaican by birth, Sir Howard was known to love Britain. We met in the Jamaican capital of Kingston. Soldiers in khaki drill saluted me as the taxi pulled up at the entrance to King’s House on Hope Road.

Lucinda Baring

Travel Special – Antigua: Far from the madding beach

It’s easy to slide into comfortable sloth in Antigua: breakfast, swim, sleep, read; lunch, swim, sleep, read — a morsel of frozen fruit on a stick or afternoon tea here, a snorkelling trip or paddle in a glass-bottomed canoe there. Then perhaps a game of tennis or trip to the spa, followed by dinner. But you’d be a fool to snooze your time in Antigua away. We made some wonderful discoveries. Who knew you could go zip-wiring through rainforest here? I came away with three top tips: first, avoid St John’s, with its cruise ships and KFCs, and head south instead to English Harbour, where row upon row of big boats wink at you like nautical pornstars. Have grilled lobster at Catherine’s Café on the waterfront, a rowdy but fun Antigua institution.

Saturday

Quentin Letts

‘I am in charge’

He needed a trilby and leather coat but there was something of ’Allo ’Allo!’s Herr Flick to the mandarin giving evidence at the Public Accounts Committee one recent afternoon. The PAC is parliament’s prime scrutineer of state spending. Civil servants have it dinned into their skulls to regard it with caution, if not respect. Yet this Herr Flick, with his little sticky-up fringe, his minimalist spectacles, his subtle pouts and sly smiles, conducted himself as a superior mortal. He toyed with the committee. He said he was there as ‘a courtesy’. The MPs should not expect him to make a habit of appearing before them. This lean-livered, bloodless Brahmin was Sir Jeremy Heywood, David Cameron’s new Cabinet Secretary.

Peter Hitchens

The gay marriage trap

The shambling remnants of Britain’s social and moral conservative movement are marching to Stalingrad, singing as they go. They will not be coming back, but they don’t realise that yet. David Cameron has cleverly provoked them into this suicide mission, by claiming to be a keen supporter of homosexual marriage. And so, with all the self-control of bluebottles massing round a dead cat, or squirrels besieging a bird-feeder, the Moral Minority have rushed to campaign against him. The risk to them is great. The risk to Cameron is minor. Even if they succeeded, the Prime Minister would not mind much. Very probably, Cameron does not really support same-sex weddings at all, or even care about the subject. It is not clear that he cares about anything.

Roger Scruton

Brain drain

Neuroscience wants to be the answer to everything. It isn’t There are many reasons for believing the brain is the seat of consciousness. Damage to the brain disrupts our mental processes; specific parts of the brain seem connected to specific mental capacities; and the nervous system, to which we owe movement, perception, sensation and bodily awareness, is a tangled mass of pathways, all of which end in the brain. This much was obvious to Hippocrates. Even Descartes, who believed in a radical divide between soul and body, acknowledged the special role of the brain in tying them together.

Ian Thomson

Rover dose

The other day my five-year-old Labrador was diagnosed with acute cannabis intoxication. I had been taking Olga for a walk on Hackney Downs when she disappeared behind an abandoned railway. I imagined she had found some fox shit and was rolling in it delightedly. Bad pooch! On the way home she began to stumble and fall over; half an hour later she was virtually unconscious. With Olga disoriented and whimpering in the car we drove to a vet in Canonbury. The vet took one look at Olga. ‘Very subdued. Seems almost sedated. Most likely it’s a case of oral marijuana poisoning.’ Marijuana? ‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ I said. My chocolate-brown retriever was now zonked on the table.

Andrew J. Bacevich

Time we left

The journalist Michael Kinsley defines ‘gaffe’ as that which occurs when a politician accidentally tells the truth. Reacting to the latest bad news coming out of Afghanistan — an American soldier in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province went on a rampage, killing 16 civilians in cold blood — the presidential candidate Newt Gingrich committed a gaffe of the first order. Appearing on Fox News, the former House Speaker had this to say: Look at the things that are going on around the region and then ask yourself, ‘Is this, in fact, a harder, deeper problem that is not going to be susceptible to military force, at least not military force in the scale we are prepared to do?

Melanie McDonagh

Unsinkable drama

The last hours of the Titanic were a perfect tragedy. No wonder we’re still obsessed What with the centenary coming up next month, it was hard to imagine anything that could make the Titanic loom larger in the popular consciousness. But that was before Julian Fellowes’s new series, to be broadcast this month. It’s the lot: period detail, a snobbish countess, class resentment and a darkish-blue iceberg. Each and every episode ends with the sea coming in. And all those important details get a mention.

Merryn Somerset-Webb

Investment Special: Searching for income

The outcome of last week’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting came as no surprise, but if you’re trying to live off income generated from capital, it was still bloody irritating. Once again, base rate was left at 0.5 per cent, its lowest level since records began in 1694. Once again, it was decided that quantitative easing must continue. So annuity rates will remain at record lows; deposit rates will remain below a level worth anything after inflation and tax; the squeeze on pensioner living standards will continue; and savers will feel forced to move into riskier markets to preserve the purchasing power of their cash. So what can you do? The first thing to note is that you don’t have to be bullied into moving out of cash. Deposit interest rates are not all bad.

Alex Brummer

Investment Special: The great savings robbery

The prudent among us can’t expect much reward from the Budget Three years ago, when the Bank of England embarked on its first £200 billion round of quantitative easing (QE), most of us — including some Bank officials — hadn’t a clue how this relatively untried policy would work. There were dire predictions from monetarist critics that ‘printing money’, as it was colloquially called, could only result in Zimbabwe-style inflation. That prediction has so far not been realised, largely because the economy has been operating so far below potential and the repair work, after Labour’s great boom of 1997-2007, is still going on.

Jonathan Davis

Investment Special: Contrarianism pays

When pessimism prevails, it’s probably time to buy If one thing puzzles private investors more than anything else, it is the extraordinary capacity of the stock market to move in ways that appear to follow no discernible logic. ‘Profits Up, Shares Tumble’, or even ‘World War Declared, Stocks Rise’: such headlines understandably confuse the uninitiated. But in reality there’s nothing strange about this pattern of behaviour, and understanding it explains why being a contrarian — going against the thrust of expert professional opinion — is so often the key to the greatest investment success.

Saturday

Jeffrey Goldberg

The most dangerous game

There are four main players in the ongoing, and possibly accelerating, crisis, over Iran and its nuclear programme. There is, of course, the unelected yet ‘supreme’ leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has definitive say over the direction of Iran’s nuclear programme (Iran’s elected — in a fashion — president, the ludicrous Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has never had dispositive sway over it, and appears to be fading as a political power in any case). Then there is the American President, Barack Obama, who has so far done an incomplete job of convincing Iran’s leader that he means what he says when he says he will not allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons.

Owen Matthews

Set art free | 10 March 2012

Let’s not waste more millions ‘saving’ Old Masters Last week the National Gallery and National Gallery of Scotland proudly announced that they had jointly raised £45 million to buy Titian’s ‘Diana and Callisto’ from the Duke of Sutherland, thereby ‘saving it for the nation’. A few days before, Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced that it would be blocking export licences for various exhibits due to be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. The Turks said they would not release the artifacts until items in UK and US museums excavated in Anatolia during the 19th century were returned to the Turkish state.

Andrew Gilligan

Buck up, Boris!

Why isn’t the mayor making mincemeat of Ken? Politicians do love their five-point plans, ten-point plans, 12-point plans, don’t they? Most of the points are usually Polyfilla, the political equivalents of ‘Your call is important to us,’ but at least there’s a nice round number involved. Last week, however, with characteristic originality, Boris Johnson unveiled British politics’ first-ever nine-point plan. Unkind critics sniped that it was a ten-point plan with one point missing. Even for better-disposed observers, such as myself, Boris’s Nine Commandments — intended as the foundation of his re-election campaign — leave something to be desired.

Stephen Pollard

Theatre of rudeness

I’m told that the new production of Dvorˇák’s Rusalka at the Royal Opera House is controversial. There were boos at the first night and reports of audience members walking out in disgust. I too walked out in disgust. Mine, however, had nothing to do with what was happening on stage. It was prompted by the man sitting next to me, who arrived trailing BO the impact of which could alone knock out any Iranian nuclear bomb. The odour was so powerful that I had to get out as soon as possible. No part of my mind could focus on the performance; I had to hold myself together until the first pause when I could flee. When I mentioned this to friends the next morning, the floodgates opened. Almost everyone had had a similar experience.

Lucy Bannerman

Dr Scott, I presume?

Zambia’s new, white vice president on understanding Mugabe and standing up to China Lusaka, Zambia Zambia’s new vice president, Dr Guy Scott, sinks into the back seat of his armoured car. Motorbike outriders clear the traffic ahead of us as we glide through the capital. ‘I am enjoying the toys, I must say.’ He means the helicopter and the two motorcades — one for the city, another for the bush. There were two remarkable aspects to last October’s election, in which the Patriotic Front party was voted in, ending the former government’s 20-year rule. The first was the peaceful nature of the regime change. The other was the colour of Dr Scott’s skin.

Jrh Mcewen

Borders Notebook

The Borders could handle a wee bit more love: while no one wants the place to be like the Lake District, a-bustle with elderly couples in brightly coloured clothing, a slight increase in appreciation would be acceptable. Flown over, passed through, not much visited, the Borders (by which is meant the cross-border region comprising Berwickshire, Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, and north Northumberland) is scarcely known for what it is, a land not only hooching with history and presently strong — keeping its young — but also astonishingly, ever-changingly, easy on the eye.

Saturday

Matt Ridley

The windfarm delusion

The government has finally seen through the wind-farm scam – but why did it take them so long? To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine — despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.