Features

Saturday

Alan Rusbridger

How to stifle the press

It feels wrong, as a journalist, to be letting outsiders into this secret, but it is really quite easy to cover things up in England. If you are determined enough it won’t cost you a penny to buy silence. Nor does it even much matter whether you live in this country: our legal system stands ready to help all-comers. It couldn’t be simpler. You hire a solicitor with a working knowledge of Britain’s libel laws to fire off a fierce letter to whichever journalist has been pestering you. It will be the opening salvo in a process which rapidly threatens to become eye-wateringly expensive. If it’s a local paper that may well be all it takes.

Matthew Parris

Let’s hear it for contempt

The Blairite ‘Respect agenda’ is bunkum. We must all be free to insult each other or else only bullies will prevail Stealthily, an idea which was born under New Labour has wormed itself into the imagination of post-millennial Britain. It is the concept of Respect, not least as applied to how we talk or write about each other. The implications of the ‘Respect agenda’ for free speech are perilous, and subterranean — the more insidious for imposing self-censorship by means of a model of supposed 21st-century good manners backed by laws which ‘send a message’ and chill the climate in which ‘hate-speech’ might otherwise occur.

Christopher Booker

Scientists in hiding

Academics who dare to question the scientific establishment’s consensus on Darwinism or global warming increasingly find themselves ostracised and demonised Three months ago I spent a fascinating few days in a villa opposite Cap Ferrat, taking part in a seminar with a dozen very bright scientists, some world authorities in their field. Although most had never met before, they had two things in common. Each had come to question one of the most universally accepted scientific orthodoxies of our age: the Darwinian belief that life on earth evolved simply through the changes brought about by an infinite series of minute variations. The other was that, on arriving at these conclusions, they had come up against a wall of hostility from the scientific establishment.

Hardeep Singh-Kohli

Last laughs

Growing up in Glasgow I saw the word ‘Paki’ spray-painted on to the metal shutters of corner shops across the city. I was called a Paki. It was whispered, spoken and occasionally shouted, as I was pursued through the streets, running in terror from yobs. Those more attuned with the socio-geographic affairs of the Indian subcontinent would note my turban and be aware, therefore, that I am not Pakistani in origin. Actually, the jibe was all the more hurtful for its inaccuracy. In later years I was grateful for the rise of political correctness and the protection from racist and vicious language it affords. But now even I get the sneaking suspicion that things have gone too far.

Brendan O’Neill

Drunk and orderly

In the adult world of the pub, under-18s can learn to drink alcohol responsibly Why are so many young people so bad at getting drunk? No sooner have they necked a couple of lagers or downed a bottle of sickly alcopop than they start parading through the streets, skirts up or trousers down. There’s no dignity to their drunkenness. They get obviously, stupidly drunk. Things have got so bad that this week the British Red Cross — more used to helping out in disaster zones — suggested teaching young people ‘alcohol first aid’, to give them the ‘ability and confidence to cope in a [drinking] crisis’. The inability of today’s yoof to consume booze in an adult fashion is, ironically, a by-product of the authorities’ war on underage drinking.

Patrick Allitt

Get ready for Bush III

John Ellis ‘Jeb’ Bush insists he doesn’t want to run for president. Don’t believe a word of it The next presidential election is 26 months away and already the parties are fretting about it. Barring a disaster, President Obama will be the Democratic candidate, but history is not treating him well. When he took office, the millennial hopes raised by his candidacy bumped into the realities of a long recession and two hard wars. He was just another politician, after all, not a messiah. But if the Democrats have come down to earth with a bump, the Republicans are still trying to shake their post-2008 hangover. John McCain lost badly and won’t be back. His running mate Sarah Palin, the Alaska maverick, is loved by some Republicans but hated by others.

Saturday

Peter Hitchens

The Book of Common Prayer should be our manifesto

What a pity it is that all the hate and slime now directed against the Pope’s visit is not aimed instead at the Church of England. Why do God-haters and militant secularists have to turn on a pensionable German theology professor and head of a Rome-based religious multinational organisation, when they want to condemn the steadfast defence of Christian morality? For at least some Anglicans, the savaging of the Bishop of Rome will give rise to sinful pangs of envy. We would like Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman — and, I am rather compelled to mention, my brother Christopher — to be hurling their fiery darts at Thomas Cranmer’s church instead. But these professional scoffers unkindly refuse to scoff at our texts and formularies.

Dominic Cummings

How to solve our welfare problem

Dominic Cummings meets Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winner who has the answer to some of the West’s intractable problems. So why won’t politicians listen to him? One day in 1974, at the height of the famine in Bangladesh, an economics teacher from a nearby university wandered into a village called Jobra. There he found the ladies of Jobra struggling to survive. No proper bank would deign to lend to them, so in order to finance their tiny basket-making businesses the ladies were forced to borrow from loan-sharks and pay punitive interest rates. ‘This is absurd,’ thought the teacher, Muhammad Yunus.

Robert Gray

Cardinal virtues

According to Cardinal Newman, who is to be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday 19 September, it is a rule of God’s providence that Christians succeed through failure. It is hardly surprising, then, that Newman’s great contemporary Cardinal Manning has never been a candidate for canonisation. He did not care for failure. That these two titans of Roman Catholicism in Victorian England — Newman, born in 1801, was seven years the senior — were frequently at loggerheads is well known. Indeed, the differences between them appear set in stone: Newman, the subtle, sensitive and (it is now official) saintly religious genius; Manning, the ruthless and wily Machiavellian, bent on crushing his rival beneath the Roman wheel.

Rod Liddle

Cameron said he’d clean up politics — so why is Coulson still around?

Things are speeded up these days, there is no time to wait. Everything is hurried along to fit our frenetic lives, our shorter attention span, our impatience with the world. You remember poor Jade Goody, the coarse-natured and half-witted ‘reality’ TV star who presented, as the medical people put it, during an episode of the programme Big Brother? No sooner had you heard of her than she was in disgrace for being racist. No sooner was she in disgrace for being racist than she had contracted cancer. No sooner had she contracted cancer than she was dead. No sooner had she died of cancer than she was forgotten.

Michael Henderson

Proms notebook

The world’s greatest festival of music continues to grow under the splendid stewardship of Roger Wright, but there is always plenty of missionary work to do, for the world will never run short of grouches. The world’s greatest festival of music continues to grow under the splendid stewardship of Roger Wright, but there is always plenty of missionary work to do, for the world will never run short of grouches. Perhaps, like Sir Harold Acton in his Tuscan grotto, who loved to ‘hunt philistines’, we should trap the blighters in cages and force them to listen to lashings of Beethoven and Wagner until they recant. Step forward, if you will, Miss Lynsey Hanley.

Andrew Gilligan

The real battle for Labour’s soul

This summer’s election to choose a new deputy regional sales manager of the Co-op, sorry, a new leader of the Labour party, has rather obviously failed to set the nation on fire. But one level below the sundry Eds and assorted Milibands, there’s a much clearer and more interesting battle for Labour’s soul. In the party’s highest-membership region, London, the graphic designers and diversity outreach consultants who make up Labour’s new industrial base are choosing a mayoral candidate to oppose Boris Johnson in 2012.

Ross Clark

Don’t bet the house on a property plunge

The bubble may have burst, says Ross Clark, but a crash looks unlikely. For now, property remains a sensible investment — better than sticking cash in a low-interest account I’m getting fed up with my 2.5 per cent Northern Rock Super-Sucker’s Account. It was OK when it was paying 6 per cent and Alistair Darling was promising by the hairs on his chinny-chin-chin to repay every penny in the event of the bank going belly-up. But I can’t see the point now: why risk your capital for some measly little apology for interest which isn’t even keeping up with inflation? I keep wanting to hook out the money and put it into something solid: gold or property.

Saturday

Bruce Anderson

The worst-written memoir by a serious politician

It is bizarre. As he often demonstrated in the House of Commons, Tony Blair knows how to use words. He could also have mobilised a team to help him write his memoirs. Instead, it is all his own work, and the words mutinied. This book is not just badly written. It is atrociously written. For almost 700 pages, Tony Blair stumbles between mawkishness and banality. Prime ministers send soldiers into combat. Some of those soldiers are killed. That is a subject which would lead the least sensitive of men to reach into their souls and craft language out of emotional depth. This is Mr Blair’s version. ‘The anguish remains. The principal part of that is not selfish. Some of it is, to be sure.

Fraser Nelson

The rise and rise of Blair Inc

This memoir is not a requiem for Tony Blair’s past, says Fraser Nelson. It’s a manifesto for his future — as a highly paid freelance statesman with no electorate to hold him back Many prime ministers view their memoirs as their pension, but Tony Blair always had far greater ambitions. In the three years that it has taken him to write A Journey, he has become so wealthy that he does not need the royalties — and is giving them to charity. As his memoirs reveal, he has long thought it a shame great world leaders should have to retire. The example he cites is Condoleezza Rice. ‘She is a classic example of the absurdity of people with experience and capacity at the highest level not having big political jobs after retirement from office,’ he writes.

Katie Grant

Rites and wrongs

As Pope Benedict’s visit approaches, Katie Grant, a cradle Catholic, feels torn between her loyalty to the Church and anger at its callous insensitivity In 2005, shortly after Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, my then 19-year-old daughter and I walked into St Peter’s in Rome. I don’t like St Peter’s, so superior and crushing, though the dead popes with their paper skin and velvet slippers offer a chilly thrill. I spied a confessional box in the dim distance and after I’d recited a dull list of sins, a young voice — urgent, American — asked, ‘Do you ever gossip?’ ‘Good Lord!’ I said. ‘I’ve got five sisters, and that’s what sisters do.’ Silence.

Ed Smith

Have pity on Pakistan

Cricket is often said to be a game of inches. An inch is the difference between a fatal edge to the slips and a safe play-and-miss; an inch is the difference between being clean bowled and a mere dot ball; only an inch separates a no-ball from a legitimate delivery that could take a wicket. But for Mohammad Amir, just a few inches have taken on a far greater significance than the question of winning or losing. It is alleged that the 18-year-old Pakistani prodigy bowled deliberate no-balls so that illegal gamblers could manipulate ‘spot’ betting. Had Amir’s foot stayed behind the line, we would still regard him as the most exciting fast bowler in the world. Instead, a photograph of his boot looks set to cast a shadow over his whole career.

Joan Collins

Trouble in paradise

Joan Collins says that St Tropez’s unique beach culture is in danger from the local council. Taki wonders if the changes will see off the disgusting super-rich When people think about St Tropez, they visualise miles of golden sand and dozens of wonderful beach bars, shacks and restaurants catering to an eclectic clientele. But that could all be about to change. Those beaches belong to Pampelonne, which is part of the city of Ramatuelle, and the bars and restaurants face demolition if local council plans are given the go-ahead on 16 September. The council authorities say that the restaurants and huts pose an environmental hazard — they damage plant species, erode sand dunes and accelerate the encroachment of the ocean on the land. Nobody wants that to happen, of course.

Clover Stroud

Jealous of the gypsies

There’s nothing new about this summer’s outbreak of gypsy-bashing, writes Clover Stroud, who puts it down to our secret wish to enjoy the same freedoms they do It has not been a good summer for gypsies. In France, President Sarkozy has begun his purge: nearly a thousand Roma have been flown back to Bucharest, hundreds of their camps have been dismantled by police and one poor gypsy was shot dead during a car chase in Saint-Aignan. The caustic wind of gypsy hatred wafted across the Channel to Britain as well.

Rod Liddle

We are being engulfed by the moronic inferno of the internet

Well, thank the Lord there were no cctv cameras around when I caught Mr Tibbles in my garden a few weeks back, before the whole furore began. Luckily, I read about Mary Bale and surreptitiously took down the mini-gibbet and buried the remains in a small trench behind the pond, before the Facebook maniacs had a chance to get on the case. The cat had been doing its usual stuff — crapping on the lawn, eating wild animals, urinating in my daughter’s sandpit — before it was unfortunately snagged in the wooden peg and wire snare I had laid by the hedge.