Ukip 7
The Spectator
Thursday
Spectator letters: St Augustine and Louise Mensch, war votes and flannel
Faith and flexibility Sir: What a contrast in your two articles on religion last week: one liberal atheist parent (Claire Stevens) concerned about her son’s turn to conservative Islam, and one conservative Catholic (Louise Mensch) determined that her children understand her unbending fidelity to the tradition. Ms Mensch’s problem is endemic throughout the western church, Catholic and Protestant alike: greater confidence in human sinfulness than in God’s forgiveness. Mrs Stevens’s problem is the opposite: a lack of confidence in her atheism. Brought up to believe in nothing, one is prone to believe in anything.
Dealing with trolls the Swedish way
How to deal with a troll In Scandinavian mythology, trolls were shady creatures who lived below ground and varied in size from giants (in Iceland) to dwarfs (in Sweden). They snatched infants and replaced them with baby trolls, or ‘changelings’, in an attempt to improve their breeding stock. They could, however, be tackled: — By leaving a knife on a baby’s cradle, the trolls being frightened of iron. — By ringing church bells constantly. — By baptising infants quickly, as trolls will not snatch those already christened. — By exposing them to sunlight. Hello, strangers Which European capitals have the highest and lowest percentages of foreigners in their populations? HIGHEST Luxembourg 65% Brussels 34% Zurich 31% Riga 26% London 22% LOWEST Warsaw 0.
There is a way to beat Ebola (and we’re already doing it)
There is something depressing about the fact that it has taken a sick Spanish nurse to put Ebola back on the front pages. Since the summer, some 3,400 West Africans have died, but interest in the story here had waned. So long as the disease did not make the nine-mile leap across the Straits of Gibraltar, the moat which keeps all nasty things from Africa at bay from fortress Europe, a sense developed that it could quietly be forgotten — or left to the aid charities. No longer. Spain’s public health authorities are investigating how a nurse who treated two missionaries in a Madrid hospital — who had contracted the disease in Liberia and Sierra Leone — became infected in spite of the protective clothing she was wearing.
Portrait of the week | 9 October 2014
Home Alan Henning, 47, a British volunteer aid worker taken captive in Syria by Islamic State, was murdered, and footage of his death, which included an appearance by a man with an English accent nicknamed Jihadi John, was posted online. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said: ‘We will do all we can to hunt down these murderers and bring them to justice.’ Four men were arrested in London on suspicion of terror offences; MI5 sources suggested that the arrest might have ‘foiled the early stages’ of a planned attack. A 12-year-old girl in a wheelchair was saved from injury by her arm-braces when two men set a pit bull dog on her in a Northamptonshire wood. Fungicide injections derived from garlic were tried out on trees suffering from ash dieback in Northamptonshire.
Books and arts – 9 October 2014
Podcast: police phone hacking, Lib Dem tactics and vicious dogs
In this week’s issue, Fraser Nelson and Nick Cohen examine how police are using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to run wild in the public’s mobile phone records. Like many curtailments of British liberties, this started off in the name of fighting terrorism. It has now emerged that police forces used these anti-terror powers to obtain phone records from a number of journalists to work out who they were speaking to. Camilla Swift speaks to Fraser and Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, who was involved in enacting the original Ripa legislation. Have the police gone too far? And can we really trust them to use this legislation responsibly? The conference season is finally over. But why so much Tory bashing at the Lib Dem conference?
The Spectator at war: The consequences of neutrality
From The Spectator, 10 October 1914: IT would be a base act to try to bribe or to threaten a neutral Power like Italy into joining the Allies. The notion of taking up the attitude that she may find herself in the wrong box when the peace is made is one which must be utterly hateful to every Englishman. Not only is it certain that if Italy remains neutral, and does not come to the assistance of the Allies, no vengeance will be taken upon her for her aloofness, but, more than that, no one here will even pretend that her failure to show an active friendship with us may have terrible consequences.
From the archives | 9 October 2014
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 10 October 1914: The Germans must really be in very desperate straits if, as is alleged, they are straining every nerve to prepare a hundred Zeppelins and other aircraft to hover over London and bombard our capital from the clouds.
Wednesday
Looking for a cure to Ebola? Try a western lifestyle
There is something depressing about the fact that it has taken a sick Spanish nurse to put Ebola back on the front pages. Since the summer, some 3,400 West Africans have died, but interest in the story here had waned. So long as the disease did not make the nine-mile leap across the Straits of Gibraltar, the moat which keeps all nasty things from Africa at bay from fortress Europe, a sense developed that it could quietly be forgotten — or left to the aid charities. No longer. Spain’s public health authorities are investigating how a nurse who treated two missionaries in a Madrid hospital — who had contracted the disease in Liberia and Sierra Leone — became infected in spite of the protective clothing she was wearing.
Podcast special: Nick Clegg’s speech
Nick Clegg delivered an aggressive speech this morning. But will it be enough to keep the Liberal Democrats in government? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss it in this View from 22 podcast special. James's write-up is here, and Isabel’s is here.
Full text: Nick Clegg’s speech to the Liberal Democrat conference 2014
listen to ‘Podcast: Nick Clegg's speech’ on audioBoom Before I say anything else, I’m sure I speak on behalf of all Liberal Democrats when I say that our hearts and condolences go out to the family and friends of Alan Henning and David Haines for their tragic loss. These were good men. In the work they did they stood for hope and compassion – the things that everyone in this room believes are more important than anything else. We have to take on the cowards who took their lives. We have to defeat their barbarity to help protect the millions of people who now live under the threat and fear of these merciless killers. Britain will not be intimidated. We will not be divided. We will not allow this brutal organisation to pervert Islam.
The Spectator at war: Stiff upper lip
From The Spectator, 10 October 1914: American visitors have been surprised at the apparent absence of emotion in England at such a crisis as the present. They can see, they say, no signs that we realize the tremendous nature of the points at issue. The English people, they think, are not taking things seriously. Yet all the time there are signs, if they knew where to look for them, that we are moved as we have never been moved before. "If we let anybody, even our nearest and dearest, know what we feel, we may be unmanned. We must keep a tight hold, and especially on ourselves, or we may lose control." It is not indifference, but grim determination, which makes England so quiet.
Tuesday
The Spectator at war: Terror from above
From The Spectator, 10 October 1914: The Germans must really be in very desperate straits if, as is alleged, they are straining every nerve to prepare a hundred Zeppelins and other aircraft to hover over London and bombard our capital from the clouds. No doubt the first appearance of the visitors will have an alarming effect on London, but it will soon be found that their efforts can only be local, and that even if St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey are damaged, and a small number of people are killed in the streets—say, one per ten thousand of the population— terror will soon turn to indignation and contempt.
Monday
The Spectator at war: The lines are drawn
From The Spectator, 10 October 1914: FRIDAY'S news from the western theatre of the war shows that we have already almost reached the condition of "chock-a-block" described in our leading article. The two opposing armies, the greater part of them strongly entrenched, face each other at close quarters in a line drawn from Switzerland to the North Sea—a line not straight, but bending north very nearly at right angles at Noyon, and then heading fairly straight for Dunkerque, upon which fortress port the Allies' extreme left wing will very soon rest. Now will come the time for a military genius, for a commander who is able to take into his mind a vast series of facts and arrange and co-ordinate them in such a way that he will be able to defeat his enemy.
Sunday
The Spectator at war: Keeping the nation sweet
From The Spectator, 3 October 1914: ALREADY we are engaged in the exacting task of creating an army during time of war ; and it is possible that to that task we may add the process of creating an industry. Mr. J. W. Robertson-Scott, who has written much on agricultural matters over the signature "Home Counties," contributes to the current number of the Nineteenth Century a striking examination of the conditions under which he considers it would be possible at the present moment to organize a sugar supply from home-grown beet. The opportunity for invention, and for intervention, is plain, and the chances are more favourable than the most enthusiastic advocate of beet could have dreamt of a year ago.
Saturday
The Spectator at war: Attack and defence
From The Spectator, 3 October 1914: The essential value of a fortress is to act as an anvil upon which the field army, or relieving army, outside, which is the hammer, may pound the assailants to atoms. If there is such an army out- side, the parts are reversed—the besiegers, since they must stick to their position, become, as far as the relieving army is concerned, the besieged. It is the relieving army which can choose the place to hit and the time to hit. Unless the besiegers should prove to have enough troops to push it off and drive it away, the field army, when it gets to the proper distance, will strike the iron on the anvil and break it in pieces.
