Features

Saturday

James Bartholomew

Legitimate question | 2 April 2011

Yoshiko found she was pregnant and talked to her live-in lover about what they should do. His attitude was not exactly out of the PC book of ‘The Right Things To Say When Your Girlfriend Says She Is Pregnant’. He said he was prepared to marry her as long as she accepted that she would have to carry on with her full-time job; she must also care for the child and, for good measure, do all the housework. Just to make it crystal clear, he added, ‘I won’t help’ and ‘I like my life as it is.’ It is worth mentioning, too, that the man only had a part-time job and they lived on the higher earnings of Yoshiko. In Britain, you can imagine this chap would get a rocket-fuelled response.

James Forsyth

Playing the heavy

An interview with Eric Pickles, the Cabinet’s surprisingly intellectual bruiser There are politicians who shy away from confrontation and those who relish it. Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, is firmly in the latter camp. As we sit around a small table in his room in the House of Commons, he entertains with war stories from his days as the budget-cutting leader of Bradford City Council at the end of the Thatcher era. ‘I arrived at the railway station and there were thousands of people outside chanting “Death to Pickles”. So I pulled my hat down, pulled up my coat, got out of the cab chanting “Death to Pickles” myself and got in.

Saturday

Anne Applebaum

The new alliance

‘Freedom fries,’ served instead of French fries back in 2003, are no longer on the menu in Washington DC. French wine, out of fashion after Jacques Chirac refused to join our ‘coalition of the willing’ in Iraq, is no longer shunned. Au contraire. In one Washington restaurant last Saturday night, someone at my table raised a toast to the new leaders of the free world: ‘Vive la France!’ What else could we do? Our president was on his way to Brazil. Over in Old Europe, the President of France and his new best friend, the British Prime Minister, had just put themselves in charge of a new ‘coalition of the willing’ in Libya.

Paul Kennedy

Hot shots with cold feet

When the United Nations sanctioned the use of force against Colonel Gaddafi, it could not quite bring itself to use the word force. The word force is, well, forceful. It suggests ruthlessness. Force is something that gets things done, and those in its way tend to get swept aside. The German word is Macht, and we have all heard about that. A powerful waterfall close to where I grew up in the north of England is called ‘High Force’; you only have to go there in springtime to witness the literalness of that name. The West has never had more force at its disposal, while being oddly squeamish about deploying it. One may wish world affairs to be decided by diplomacy and overseas aid, but as the Libyan episode shows, there are times when there is no substitute for force.

Rod Liddle

Don’t expect us to keep cheering on this vague and bizarre adventure

Actually, it’s a good question. How long is a piece of string? I’ve often wondered, and I’ve seen some string in my time. The problem is, they were all of different lengths, these bits of string, some long, some shorter. I suppose the mean length of string I’ve come across would be about nine inches, disregarding whole balls of string, obviously. Having worked this out perhaps I could be co-opted into whatever government department is running the war against Libya, as they do not know how long a piece of string is. Actually, it’s a good question. How long is a piece of string? I’ve often wondered, and I’ve seen some string in my time. The problem is, they were all of different lengths, these bits of string, some long, some shorter.

James Rhodes

The greatest living pianist

Why, despite his devoted fans, Grigory Sokolov won’t play live in Britain Grigory Sokolov is a pianist in his fifties; he is overweight, Russian, sleeps only three or four hours a night, is a strict vegan and is obsessed with the occult. He can calculate with one glance the number of seats in an empty concert hall and remembers instantly, to within an inch, where a piano used to be on a stage he hasn’t played on for years. Sokolov is also the reason we must overhaul, right now, the ridiculous visa system that prevents so many foreign artists from performing in the UK. Lord Clancarty started a debate on the matter in the Lords this week, and cited Sokolov as a reason. Clancarty was right.

Pavel Stroilov

The Gorbachev files

The international stage is dominated by two men this March: Muammar Gaddafi, fighting like mad for the survival of his regime, and Mikhail Gorbachev, celebrated around the world on his 80th birthday for not being a Gaddafi. Nobody knows what will now happen in Libya; but the Gorbachev celebrations will culminate next week in a splendid gala at Royal Albert Hall, with a crowd of celebrities and tickets on sale for up to £100,000. Some 20 years ago the communist dictators faced the same choice as the Arab dictators today: to surrender their regimes or to massacre their people. Some chose massacre, like the Chinese comrades, who slaughtered thousands of protestors at Tiananmen Square in 1989. But Gorbachev rejected such methods, and so the Soviet Union collapsed almost peacefully.

Ed Smith

Amateur hour

Thrilling as the race was, last week’s Cheltenham Gold Cup will leave an even more remarkable legacy: the winning jockey, Sam Waley-Cohen, did it as an amateur. Being a jockey isn’t his day job — he is the CEO of a dental business — and he races for love, not money. It’s not supposed to happen these days. According to the logic of professionalism, it is impossible to compete at the highest level, let alone win, unless you sacrifice all else. The word amateur has gone from being an accolade to a term of abuse. When coaches get seriously angry they call you ‘amateurish’, meaning sloppy and inept. When they are impressed they call you ‘a real pro’. The Gold Cup was a delicious snub to that simplistic view of excellence.

Jeff Randall

Abu Dhabi Notebook

With oil trading at more than $100 a barrel, Abu Dhabi holds a jackpot-winning ticket in the lottery of life. The emirate sits on reserves of nearly 100 billion barrels, about 9 per cent of the world’s proven supply. At today’s pumped-up price, its subterranean treasure is worth at least $10 trillion. That’s $10,000,000,000,000.Abu Dhabi finds almost nothing unaffordable. Were Croesus reborn tomorrow, he would discover that the Al Nahyan royal family could match his outlay. In recent years, hospitals, universities, hotels, museums, racetracks, golf courses, marinas, airports and a five-star airline have sprung up ex nihilo. When its naughty neighbour Dubai, which has very little oil, ran out of money, Abu Dhabi sent over $20 billion to fill the hole.

Saturday

Janine di Giovanni

A Le Pen as president?

Marine Le Pen is the new, friendly face of French extremism – and suddenly, she’s leading in the polls There are just 13 months to go until the French presidential election and Le Phénomène Marine Le Pen, as it is called here, is getting spooky. Not so long ago, the 42-year-old daughter of Jean-Marie, now leader of the French National Front herself, was regarded as something of a joke — albeit quite an intelligent one. But now her detractors are taking her seriously. The last national opinion poll placed her first, with Nicholas Sarkozy trailing in third place.

James Forsyth

One week to get a grip

It was meant to be a routine budget. Now Osborne looks like the government’s last chance ‘The Cameron project is worth saving’, a government insider said to me recently. It was a striking declaration. After ten months in government, the people on the inside are not talking about a bumpy start or a rough patch. Rather, their language suggests an existential struggle: they worry that, unless something changes, they will fail. The sense of panic that was so acute among Conservatives four years ago, when Gordon Brown seemed ready to call and win an election, has returned. And with that, a feeling that something drastic needs to be done — and that George Osborne is the man to do it.

Carol Sarler

Old father time

Becoming a dad past retirement age isn’t miraculous, it’s just selfish He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last. But lack of originality was clearly the least of Donald Trelford’s concerns as he commandeered acres of Sunday newsprint to boast of the arrival of his baby son, Ben. Mr Trelford is, if you please, a strapping 73 years of age and joins a motley club including Des O’Connor (a father at 72), Luciano Pavarotti (67), Clint Eastwood (67), Rupert Murdoch (72), Rod Stewart (66 — his eighth) with no shortage, I fear, to follow. Most of them, if pushed, will put up a stout defence to justify their little miracles, and while few are blessed with Trelford’s fluency, the gist is always much the same.

Daniel McCarthy

The hawk in No. 10

Will Cameron play the Bush to Obama’s Blair? Eight years ago an American president led a passive British prime minister into a war both countries would regret. David Cameron is eager for history to repeat itself, with the national roles reversed. While Barack Obama dithers, Cameron demands tough action against Libya — with a western-imposed no-fly zone seemingly uppermost on his mind. ‘Do we want a situation where a failed pariah state festers on Europe’s southern border,’ he asks, ‘potentially threatening our security, pushing people across the Mediterranean and creating a more dangerous and uncertain world for Britain and for all our allies, as well as for the people of Libya?

Rod Liddle

Has David Dimbleby killed the BNP?

Is this the end for the British National Party? I know that sentence reads like one of those headlines in the Daily Mail to which the answer is always no, like ‘Do tramps give you cancer?’ But things are nonetheless looking a little grim for that doughty and loveable band of white supremacists who, the whining left kept telling us, were poised to sweep all before them, like Guderian’s elite XIX Corp at the Battle of Wyzna. Is this the end for the British National Party? I know that sentence reads like one of those headlines in the Daily Mail to which the answer is always no, like ‘Do tramps give you cancer?

Tania Coke

Tokyo waits

A strange calm followed Friday’s earthquake It is eerily quiet this evening. I hear no traffic, no wind, not even the birds. It’s hard to believe that Tokyo has been in a state of emergency for four days, following earthquake, tsunami and radioactive leaks. I was at home alone on Friday at 2.45 p.m., in a quiet residential area of Tokyo. When the house started shaking I ran out onto the street. I could see only two other people. They disappeared before I had a chance to talk to them, so I too went back inside. Bottles had fallen off shelves, coffee was splattered across the hob, the contents of one bookshelf lay strewn across the floor. I knew it wasn’t yet over from the ongoing tremors.

John R. Bradley

Battle lines | 19 March 2011

It’s tribal and religious divisions that really shape the Middle East – and that account for the Saudi intervention in Bahrain I once got lost in Asir, the mountainous region on Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border with Yemen. This was the home of many of the terrorists on September 11, from the million-strong al-Ghamdi tribe. But the strangest thing, to me as a westerner, was that I seemed to be the only person who cared which country I was in. I met an elderly man with a garland of flowers in his hair, and asked if I was in Yemen. ‘It’s all the same to us down here,’ he mumbled. The idea of border police — or, indeed, central government — becomes more blurry the further away from the region’s capitals you head.

Mark Mason

Chained to the keys

I recently had to write the final section of a book. It wasn’t very long — 500 words or so, about half the length of this article — and an imminent train journey seemed the ideal opportunity. No laptop accompanying me, but that didn’t matter: as an exercise in nostalgia I would write the words in longhand. The words, however, refused to appear. The paper stayed defiantly blank. It dawned on me that I can no longer write except on computer. Virtually every writer I know, or know of, is the same. As so often, technology has first liberated and then enslaved. Fetishisation of the writing process is nothing new — in previous eras inspiration would depend on a particular typewriter, or a certain fountain pen on a certain grade of paper.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Enemies of the Crown

Prince Andrew’s follies have shown the royal family who its friends are To enemies of the monarchy, Prince Andrew presents the perfect target. He has an array of vices: a love of the high life, a weakness for unsavoury company, a painfully short list of achievements and a talent for finding his way into newspapers. His foreign trips have a reputation for misadventure, with diplomats sent to smooth the feathers he ruffles. To have the reputation of being rude is hardly fatal for a royal: the Duke of Edinburgh has almost made a virtue of it. But when convicted sex offenders, Kazakh billionaires and teenage masseurs were thrown into the mix, the anti-monarchists knew it was the perfect time to pounce. It is a Labour MP, Chris Bryant, who has led the charge.

Charlotte Eagar

Another Boleyn girl

Kate Middleton, it has been widely suggested, could one day be Britain’s first middle-class queen: mother a former air hostess, grandfather in the RAF. But her ancestors had starring roles in the great royal drama that was the Tudor dynasty’s century of power. In fact, it turns out that Henry VIII is almost certainly Kate Middleton’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. We know that Kate Middleton is directly descended from an Elizabethan tough, Sir Thomas Leighton, and his wife, Elizabeth Knollys. Sir Thomas and his wife were also ancestors of Prince William’s mother, Lady Diana Spencer.

Daniel Hannan

Allergic to freedom

To what problem is the statutory regulation of herbalists a solution? Are the tiny bits of bark and sap and leaf peddled by contemporary wisewomen deleterious to human health? Are we at risk of being sterilised by St John’s wort, paralysed by pau d’arco, maddened by meadowsweet? Hardly. Herbal remedies might be inert placebos or they might, as my wife maintains, be better for you than antibiotics. My wife is often right; and in any case, as the author of Proverbs tells us, ‘better a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith’ (rarely could the bit about the herbs have applied so aptly). In a sense, though, it doesn’t matter whether complementary medicine lives up to its billing.