Several articles in this week’s issue of the Spectator are worth the cover price alone. We’ll be flagging them up on Coffee House over the weekend. To start with, here is Rod Liddle on the row over pornography: ‘The Co-operative stores, with all the high-handed self-righteousness of the political movement to which it is paying
‘I didn’t pay back my Church of England credit union loan.’
‘The countryside would be quite nice if it weren’t for the fracking protestors.’
‘I’m sorry but I want to start clubbing other women.’
‘It used to be a coffee table. Now it’s a booze table.’
‘Bless! Wayne’s made his first affordable-home sand estate.’
‘It’s a portal to the whole David Cameron-approved world.’
‘If you want to know the time, nick a Rolex.’
‘That new office block is a frightful blot on the skyline.’
‘If you ask me, there ought to be a campaign to cover up lads.’
‘I hate this muggy weather.’
‘Lynton Crosby’s trying to give up tobacco lobbying with a patch.’
‘It used to be a coffee table. Now it’s a booze table.’
David Howell never really succeeded as energy and then transport secretary in Mrs Thatcher’s governments. After she sacked him in 1983, Thatcher wrote that ‘he lacked the mixture of creative political imagination and practical drive to be a first-class cabinet minister’. If she were still alive and writing now, she might have added that he
IQ and social mobility Sir: It seems not to have occurred to our leaders that ability is not evenly distributed across the social classes. In a meritocratic society, employers will try to recruit the most able candidates into the top positions. There, they meet other bright people, pair off and have children. As Professor Plomin’s
