The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 6 September 2012

From our UK edition

Save our salmon Sir: On a Winston Churchill scholarship to discover what other North Atlantic host countries were doing for beleaguered salmon numbers in the 1990s, I found that the Canadian government considered hydroelectric schemes far less green than wind farms (‘Something’s fishy’, 1 September). The Canadian experience was that hydro units minced fish, interfered with the movement of migratory species, and often produced electricity in amounts well below original specification targets. On return to the UK, I looked closely at ‘my’ Scottish river, Carron Kyle of Sutherland. Water is abstracted from headwaters to feed turbines in a neighbouring catchment.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Shelf Life: Patrick Hennessey

From our UK edition

Patrick Hennessey was a founder member of the Junior Officers' Reading Club, formed when the Grenadier Guards toured Iraq in 2006. He is the author of The Junior Officers' Reading Club — the story of how a ‘wise-arse Thatcherite kid’ became a thoughtful soldier. It is among the best examples of British military witness written since 1945. Hennessey, now a barrister, has recently penned a sequel of sorts, called Kandak: Fighting With Afghans. It is published by Penguin tomorrow. He has answered this week’s Shelf Life questionnaire.  1) What are you reading at the moment? I’m finally getting round to reading Life and Fate which is, so far, living up to its impressive reputation. 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?

Tuesday

The Spectator

David Cameron’s reshuffle as it happened

From our UK edition

This was a live blog from 4 September 2012. The latest entries at the top and you can scroll down to read the event as it happened. 20:00: That's all folks - it's time to close up the blog. Downing Street have released their final list of ministerial appointments today. We hope you have enjoyed our live coverage of David Cameron's first cabinet reshuffle and do come back to Coffee House for the latest developments from Westminster. Good night! 1938: Looks like Cheryl Gillan's ex-PPS Glyn Davies is pleased to free from his shackles: Like frisky young heifer in spring when first turned out to grass - free to gambol. Now my boss has gone, not fettered by PPS restraints. — Glyn Davies (@GlynDaviesMP) September 4, 2012 1915: More junior roles are being announced. No.

Sunday

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Bookbenchers: Tim Farron

From our UK edition

Tim Farron is president of the Liberal Democrats and shares his reading list with Spectator readers. Hopefully he is not thinking of the state of his own party when he suggests Lord of the Flies as the book that best sums up 'now', but in case he is, the next book he plans to read is all about 'the empty promises of love, money and power'. 1) Which book's on your bedside table at the moment? The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo. 2) Which book would you read to your children? Currently reading The Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis. 3) Which literary character would you most like to be? Ellie Arroway, the hero in Contact by Carl Sagan. 4) Which book do you think best sums up 'now'? Lord of the Flies by William Golding. 5) What was the last novel you read? A Troubled Man by Henning Mankel.

Sunday

The Spectator

Bookbenchers: Peter Wishart

From our UK edition

Peter Wishart is the SNP Member of Parliament for Perth and North Perthshire, and the party's Westminster spokesman on culture, media and sport, among other areas. He shares his own books choices with Spectator readers this weekend. 1) Which books are on your bedside table at the moment? On my bedside table (or rather bedside ipad) just now is Skagboys by Irvine Welsh, the prequel to Trainspotting, and tributes and selected writings about Douglas Crawford, my SNP predecessor from the 70s. 2) Which book would you read to your children? Given he is now 21, and a student, it would probably be the current condition of the bank of dad. But when he was small he, and I, loved The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr (that was one bad cat) and the tales of Katie Morag.

Saturday

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The worst result

This week, the GCSE results envelope landed on doormats across the country. The results ought, on any rational basis, to shame the nation. Never mind how well or badly pupils may have done individually, taken as a whole the results point to a chillingly predictable trend for anyone in a comprehensive school. A pupil can look at their postcode, and see where it ranks in the government’s Index of Multiple Deprivation. If they live in a relatively prosperous area, they can be expected to have done fairly well. If they live on a sink estate, the odds are that they will have done badly. Parents have long known about this link, which is why so many go to such lengths to rent property in more affluent catchment areas a year before their child is enrolled in school.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 25 August 2012

From our UK edition

Home After being granted asylum by Ecuador, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, addressed a crowd of supporters from a balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy, to which he had fled in June to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over allegations of sexual assault. The Foreign Office had annoyed Ecuador by drawing attention to the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, which might allow police to enter the embassy to arrest Mr Assange. George Galloway, the Respect party MP, said that what Mr Assange was accused of ‘might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape’. Asil Nadir was found guilty on three counts of theft totalling £5.

The Spectator

Letters | 25 August 2012

From our UK edition

A place for sport Sir: Many of us in the education world are baffled by the political furore over school sports fields. Harris Federation runs 13 academies, largely in tight urban spaces. All manage to deliver outstanding sports lessons. Why? Because of the skill of our sports teachers and the vision of our sponsor, Lord Harris of Peckham, who once dreamt of becoming a professional footballer. Harris Boys’ Academy East Dulwich has sport as a subject specialism but almost no outside space of its own. Bizarrely, in 2008 Southwark Council would only provide planning permission to build the school on condition that we would not use the park opposite for sport. Our local MP, Harriet Harman, has not helped our efforts to get this reversed.

Wednesday

The Spectator

The fall of a dictator

From our UK edition

David Cameron made separate phone calls to President Obama and President Hollande this evening to discuss the situation in Syria. In his conversation with Hollande, the Prime Minister discussed how to 'build on the non-lethal support recently announced by the UK and agreed that France and the UK would work more closely to identify how they could bolster the opposition and help a potential transitional Syrian government after the inevitable fall of Assad,' a Downing Street spokesperson said. What will that inevitable fall from power look like? In this week's Spectator, Douglas Murray argues that the International Criminal Court has changed the way dictators let go of power.

The Spectator

From the archives: The Late Dorothy Parker

From our UK edition

In celebration of the birthday of Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967) today, here's a review from the archives of her biography The Late Dorothy Parker by Leslie Frewin.   Where be your gibes now?, Victoria Glendinning, 12 Sep 1987 Dorothy Parker was 'America's wittiest woman'. Here is an example of her wit. Rising from her chair at the Algonquin, she said: 'Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom . . . I really have to telephone but I'm too embarrassed to say so.' I think that's funny. Do you think it's funny? Generally, she was funny at other people's expense, and it hurt. Born in 1893, she was a Rothschild not the banking family, but clothiers in New York's garment district.

The Spectator

Shelf Life: Freddie Fox

From our UK edition

Not only will you be able to catch Freddie Fox this month in the BBC's mega drama Parade's End (also starring Rebecca Hall and Benedict Cumberbatch) but you can also see him live at the Hampstead Theatre when he appears in David Hare's  The Judas Kiss with Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde. His current reading shows he's been doing his research diligently. 1). What are you reading at the moment? My Friendship With Oscar Wilde by Alfred Douglas. 2). As a child, what did you read under the covers? I read very little as a child owing to severe dyslexia. I was scared to read.

Saturday

The Spectator

The next Governor

From our UK edition

When Sir Mervyn King steps down as Bank of England Governor next June, even his most loyal supporters will struggle to describe his tenure as a success. He failed to spot the massive asset bubble which burst so spectacularly. His job was to keep inflation down, and Britain has instead suffered the worst inflation in Europe. He has injected £375 billion of digitally created money into the economy, to no apparent benefit whatsoever. The Governor has many qualities: he is learned, amiable and resolute. But he has not proven to be much good at running a central bank. The hunt for his successor will begin in the autumn, when the Chancellor will advertise for the job. It will be the most important vacancy in Britain. The job may be tough, but it comes with several perks.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 18 August 2012

From our UK edition

Home The closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, watched by an average of 22.9 million people in Britain, included a mixed choir of deaf and not-deaf children singing: ‘Imagine there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try’; Pete Townshend (67) and Roger Daltrey (68) singing ‘My Generation’, omitting the line ‘Hope I die before I get old’; and Eric Idle, surrounded by Welsh women in national dress, Scottish pipers and rollerskating nuns, singing: ‘Life’s a piece of shit when you look at it.’ David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that the primary school curriculum would in future include competitive sport; but requirements for schools to provide stipulated space for playing fields were relaxed.

The Spectator

Letters | 18 August 2012

From our UK edition

State of the Union Sir: One did not expect Iain Martin (‘Unionist Gold’, 11 August), a former editor of the Scotsman, to turn up in the Spectator, still arguing against Scottish nationalism and promoting the union. So that is what the Olympics are about — waving the Union flag. Not for itself. We do not rejoice in other countries’ golds, only in those of Team GB. Ah well, I said farewell to the Scotsman and will do the same to the Spectator if we cannot have a slightly higher standard of debate. How about: why is it beneficial for all countries except Scotland, one of the oldest nations, to be nation states? Helen C.

Friday

The Spectator

Why Pussy Riot were wrong

From our UK edition

The three members of Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years each in prison today for hooliganism after performing a 'punk prayer' protesting against Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral. The sentencing has been denounced as disproportionate and the charges as trumped up, but in last week's issue of the Spectator, Dennis Sewell asked whether the western media had forgotten that what the band did was still wrong. Sewell first explained that the trio's treatment by the Russian legal system was indeed unfair: In case you’re still in doubt about my position, let me remove every scintilla of ambiguity. What has been done to the trio was wrong, wrong and viciously wrong.

The Spectator

Happy birthday V.S. Naipaul

From our UK edition

Given it's V.S. Naipaul's birthday today, we've dug out from the archives a 1979 Spectator review by Richard West of A Bend In The River. Don't forget that the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize, named after his younger brother, is currently open for entries. One of the dark places The protagonist and narrator of this book is a young man named Salim from the east coast of Africa; a Muslim Indian by origin but not from one of the families of the men who came to build the railways. Like the Arabs of old Zanzibar and what is now Tanzania, Salim's ancestors had once traded in ivory and slaves from the interior of the continent: 'I remember hearing from my grandfather that he had once shipped a boatful of slaves as a cargo of rubber.

Sunday

The Spectator

Bookbenchers: Philip Davies MP

From our UK edition

Philip Davies is the Conservative MP for Shipley and the present holder of the Readers’ Representative at the Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year Awards. He is the latest MP to answer our Bookbencher questionnaire. He is known by some as the ‘darling of the right’, but perhaps he should now be nicknamed 'The Gruffalo'. 1) Which book's on your bedside table at the moment? What are the odds: The Bill Waterhouse Story by Bill Waterhouse 2) Which book would you read to your children? My favourite children’s book is A Squash and Squeeze by Julia Donaldson, who wrote The Gruffalo. 3) Which literary character would you most like to be? The Gruffalo! 4) Which book do you think best sums up 'now'? 1984 by George Orwell 5) What was the last novel you read?

Saturday

The Spectator

The American way

It is a paradox that the nation most committed to free enterprise — the United States — can be one of the most aggressively protectionist countries on earth. The accusations made this week by the New York State Department of Financial Services against Standard Chartered Bank are serious and deserve investigation, as were those made by the US Senate against HSBC a fortnight ago. It may turn out that both banks are guilty of serious failings, but there is no mistaking the relish with which the Americans are beating up on the Brits. They shouldn’t be too quick to point the finger. Gordon Brown’s much-ridiculed refrain about the economic crisis, ‘it started in America’, had a degree of truth.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 August 2012

From our UK edition

Home The Olympic Games dominated national life. Eight of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s first 22 gold medals (outdoing its 19 golds in Beijing in 2008) were in cycling. Sir Chris Hoy brought the total of gold medals in his Olympic career to six, outdoing Sir Steve Redgrave’s record. Bradley Wiggins added an Olympic gold in the road time trial to his victory in this year’s Tour de France. There were four golds in rowing, four in athletics (Jessica Ennis winning the heptathlon, Alistair Brownlee the triathlon, Mo Farah the 10,000 metres and Greg Rutherford the long jump), and one in sailing (Ben Ainslie), tennis (Andy Murray beating Roger Federer, who had beaten him in the Wimbledon championship final), team showjumping, team dressage, shooting and canoeing.

The Spectator

Letters | 11 August 2012

From our UK edition

Beware the drones Sir: Well said, Daniel Suarez (‘Drone warfare is coming,’4 August). These flying killing machines we call drones are a menace to humanity. We had better wake up to the threat they pose before it’s too late. Anybody with a cursory knowledge of pop culture can tell you what happens when automatons develop the intelligence to make ‘kill decisions’. The consequences are not pretty. (If you need reminding, watch the Matrix, or Terminator.) But it seems our cleverest engineers — and the people in power who pay them — are either unfazed by such concerns or nerdily eager to turn fantasy into reality. Perhaps, in fact, the trouble is that people are too quick to think of fighting robots as existing within the realm of science fiction.