The Spectator

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 28 July 2012

Divisive he stands Sir: Finally, a western European publication questions whether Barack Obama can be re-elected (‘No he can’t’, 21 July). Before Jacob Heilbrunn’s article I have seen nothing save lame re-writings of pieces from the New York and Washington media, which is still in thrall to Obama.  Heilbrunn’s analysis is compelling: the President’s campaign is one of divisiveness, pitting supposedly forlorn and disaffected separate constituencies against ‘capitalism’. Sadly, this has been a traditional tactic of left-wing candidates in the US for a long time (e.g., John Edwards’s ‘Two Americas’) but now it has been turned into a high form by the President’s re-election team.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Shelf Life: Anne Enright

From our UK edition

Winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize, Anne Enright is on this week's Shelf Life. She tells us which book qualifies as the first satisfying satire on the Irish boom, gives us a long list of the parties in literature she would like to have attended and reveals which is the only book by Norman Mailer that wouldn't make her run for the hills. Her latest novel is The Forgotten Waltz and she will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Sunday 19th August at 18:30. www.edbookfest.co.uk 1) What are you reading at the moment? Graham Greene, would you believe: A Burnt Out Case. Also A.M. Homes May We Be Forgiven, in proof, which promises to be wonderful.

Sunday

The Spectator

Bookbenchers: Jamie Reed MP | 22 July 2012

From our UK edition

Over at the Books Blog, the Labour MP and shadow health minister Jamie Reed has answered our questions about his summer reading. He is taking Joe Bageant’s Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir on his travels. It’s one of 4 non-fiction recommendations about US politics, supplemented by some Herman Melville, The Grapes of Wrath and a novel about Abraham Lincoln. It’s an American dominated list, but none the worse for that. You can read it here.

The Spectator

Bookbenchers: Jamie Reed MP

From our UK edition

This week, Jamie Reed, the Labour MP for Copeland and Cumbria and shadow health minister, is in the hot seat. He is big on books about American politics, and reads poetry occasionally. 1) Which books are at your bedside table at the moment? Most books now on my iPad... but Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is always present on the bedside table. Have just begun – finally – Team of Rivals. 2) Which book would you read to your children? They have different tastes. The Fantastic Mr Fox is always loved, along with The Hobbit. 3) Which literary character would you most like to be? Nick Clegg... or Nick Carraway. 4) Which book do you think best sums up 'now'?

Saturday

The Spectator

Competitive advantage

From our UK edition

Scambusters is the name of a government initiative to prevent householders falling victim to rogue traders who use high-pressure sales techniques to flog lousy and vastly overpriced goods and services. It would be more convincing if the government did not so frequently allow itself to be ripped off. At his appearance before the home affairs select committee this week, G4S chief executive Nick Buckles had the air of a cowboy plumber standing amid a bathroom full of leaking pipes, and demanding, in spite of the havoc he has caused, that his bill be paid in full. To astonished MPs he agreed that the reputation of his company was in ‘tatters’, and doubted whether it could provide even its lowered target of 7,000 security guards for the opening day of the Olympics.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 21 July 2012

Home The Armed Forces were called upon to supply 3,500 men to look after security for the Olympic Games after GS4, a security company, failed to recruit enough staff. Nick Buckles, its chief executive, agreed before a Commons committee that it had been a ‘humiliating shambles’ but said that the company would keep its £57 million management fee. The UK Border Agency had laid off 1,000 more workers than it intended, the National Audit Office found. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, appearing at a rail depot in Smethwick with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said that he was ‘even more committed’ to the coalition, and announced new rail schemes costing £4.

The Spectator

Letters | 21 July 2012

Beyond a boundary Sir: This is the first time that I have been really annoyed by an article in your magazine. Your leader ‘The Tories are back’ (14 July) concludes by stating that the redrawing of constituency boundaries is a piece of blatant gerrymandering. But the present boundaries are grossly unfair to the Conservatives. When Tony Blair and Labour won the 2005 election the party gained 35.3 per cent of the vote and won 356 seats. When David Cameron and the Tories gained 36.1 per cent of the vote in 2010 they won only 307 seats — hence the coalition. The present constituencies do not provide a fair and level playing field. The article’s suggestion of gerrymandering is offensive and, more importantly, ill-informed.

The Spectator

Barometer | 21 July 2012

Waiting games The Olympics have not even started yet, but already one world record is under threat: that for the world’s longest traffic jam. The first day of operation of an Olympic lane on the M4 led to a 32-mile tailback from the edge of London to Newbury in Berkshire. These are the records to beat: Longest jam Nothing has yet surpassed the 109-mile tailback on the A6 between Lyon and Paris on 16 February 1980, caused by Parisians returning home from their skiing holidays in poor weather Longest-lasting jam A record set, appropriately enough, in Beijing — although in 2010, two years after the last Olympics.

Wednesday

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Shelf Life: Tamsin Greig

From our UK edition

Tamsin Greig is so busy at the moment that Debbie Aldridge, the character she plays in The Archers, has to spend most of her time in Hungary. Star of TV shows like Black Books, Green Wing and Episodes, Tamsin Greig is also an accomplished stage actress and is about to reprise her role in Jumpy at The Duke of York in the West End. She tells us about her love for Seamus Heaney and Jackie Magazine. 1) What are you reading at the moment?      Under The Same Stars by Tim Lott and Collected Poems by Wendy Cope 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? Jackie magazine 3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?  The Road by Cormac McCarthy 4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books.

Saturday

The Spectator

The Tories are back

From our UK edition

This week marks 50 years since Harold Macmillan’s ‘Night of the Long Knives’, in which he sacked a third of his Cabinet. As if to mark the anniversary, Tory MPs this week sunk the dagger into the Liberal Democrats’ plans for House of Lords reform. So great was the potential defeat — the largest in Tory party history — that the government cancelled its vote on its attempts to place a time limit on debating the Bill. The proposals would have been rejected entirely had it not been for the opportunistic support of the Labour party. Coalition government was not supposed to be like this.

The Spectator

Potrait of the week

Home The government cancelled a vote setting a timetable for a Bill to reform the House of Lords after dozens of Conservative MPs were ready to rebel. The Bill, which gained a second reading thanks to Labour, was brought in at the insistence of the Liberal Democrats. Six men from the West Midlands were charged with terrorism. President François Hollande of France visited David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, who, standing next to the 5ft 7in leader, said: ‘We both want to stand tall in the world.’ The unseeded Jonathan Marray of Britain and Frederik Nielsen of Denmark won the Wimbledon men’s doubles. Roger Federer of Switzerland won the men’s title, beating Andy Murray, the first British finalist since Bunny Austin in 1938.

The Spectator

Letters | 14 July 2012

What went wrong Sir: I hope our Prime Minister read your editorial (7 July) on why as a country we have been engulfed in such a profound financial upheaval. Many months into this crisis, we’ve still heard no coherent account from our political leaders as to what went wrong, just a bit of populist banker-bashing and some strange metaphors about the need for big bazookas. No leader refers to those countries, Australia and Canada to the fore, who got their response to the crisis right. Jonathan Campbell-James Dubai Legal fiction Sir: Rod Liddle (‘The rule of lawyers’, 30 June) is entirely right in his view that judges are no better suited to adjudicate on contentious political controversies than the rest of us.

The Spectator

Barometer | 14 July 2012

Out of proportion The bill to reform the House of Lords looks like being another failed attempt by Liberal Democrats to bring proportional representation to Westminster. But where did the idea of PR come from? — The first such system was proposed by Louis Antoine Saint-Just, a deputy in France's National Convention after the revolution. The suggestion was beaten down by Robespierre. — The first public election by PR was in Adelaide in 1840, instigated by Sir Rowland Hill, inventor of the postage stamp, while secretary of the Colonisation Commission of South Australia. He was inspired by a system used by his father, a Worcestershire schoolmaster, to elect committees.

The Spectator

Bookbenchers: Stewart Jackson MP | 14 July 2012

From our UK edition

Over at the Books Blog, Stewart Jackson, the Conservative MP for Peterborough, has answered this week’s Bookbencher questionnaire. As the race to the White House heats up, with Mitt Romney making a controversial speech on race to the NAACP earlier this week, Jackson recommends Richard Ben Cramer’s peerless account of the 1988 presidential election, What It Takes. Click here to read more about Jackson’s reading habits.

The Spectator

Bookbenchers: Stewart Jackson MP

From our UK edition

This week’s Bookbencher is Stewart Jackson, the Conservative MP for Peterborough. He tells us which Chilean communist poet he read recently, which children’s classic has stayed with him since childhood and which three books he would save from a burning British library. 1) Which books are at your bedside table at the moment? All Hell Let Loose by Max Hastings, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell and Cyber War by Richard A Clarke 2) Which book would you read to children? The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier — published in 1956. I read it as a child and never forgot it! 3) Which literary character would you most like to be?

Wednesday

The Spectator

Shelf Life: Richard Bean

From our UK edition

This week's Shelf Lifer is Richard Bean. The British playwright recently won joint best new play at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards last year for both One Man, Two Guvnors at the National and The Heretic at The Royal Court. He tells us what he used to read to spite his father, which character in Brighton Rock he would sleep with and which play he would put on the GCSE syllabus. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Chavs by Owen Jones The King's War by Miss C. V. Wedgewood (Both social history books. Play research, I hardly ever have the time to read novels.) 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? On the Road by Jack Kerouac; The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle Junior - basically drug and hippy literature, surreptitiously  'cause my dad was a policeman.

Saturday

The Spectator

Omniscandal

From our UK edition

It is easy to understand Bob Diamond’s miscalculation. In the great pantheon of banking scandals, it was unlikely, he thought, that Libor interest-rate rigging would rank very high. Libor is the average interest rate at which banks lend to each other — or, rather, the rate at which they admit to lending to each other. Any metric that depends on bankers’ honesty is, obviously, wide open to manipulation, so when the Financial Services Authority decided to tighten the rules, with an investigation six months ago, the natural response was a yawn. Barclays had been bending the rules, but so had everyone else, and Barclays was so co-operative that the FSA reduced its fine by £25 million.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 July 2012

From our UK edition

Home  Bob Diamond resigned as chief executive of Barclays a day after he said he wasn’t resigning. Marcus Agius resigned as chairman of Barclays, and a day later was appointed ‘full-time chairman’ to seek a replacement for Mr Diamond. The imbroglio followed a £290 million fine (£59.5 million by the British Financial Services Authority and the rest by American authorities) for Barclays’ having filed false information on its borrowings in connection with the setting of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor).

The Spectator

Letters | 7 July 2012

China and Tibet Sir: Clarissa Tan poses the question: ‘What happens to people who do not have the joy of being Chinese?’ (‘China’s civilising mission’, 30 June). China’s handling of Tibet provides the answer. After 60 years of occupation, torture, intimidation and repression continue unabated. Tibetans are now doing the only thing they can to draw attention to their plight — setting themselves on fire.  If conditions are so desperate that, against all the precepts of Buddhist teachings on nonviolence and the sanctity of human life, citizens are driven to taking their own lives through self immolation, it hardly supports China’s claim to represent a ‘civilising mission’.

The Spectator

Barometer | 7 July 2012

Lost and found  A team from St Andrews University has published its attempts to map the remains of Doggerland, an area of land and later an island in the North Sea which disappeared around 5,500 bc as a result of rising sea levels after the last ice age. Some other possible lost lands: — Atlantis. According to Plato, it was a naval power close to the pillars of Hercules at the western end of the Mediterranean that sank in a day and a night in c. 9,600 bc after a failed attempt to conquer Athens. — Mu. Invented by a Victorian writer, Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed to have gleaned its existence from Mayan writings. Survivors of its rapid disappearance apparently went on to found ancient Egypt. — Lemuria.