57 5
The Spectator
Saturday
Letters | 19 May 2012
Staying home for marriageSir: ‘Find me a person who stopped voting Conservative last week because of David Cameron’s vague, half-arsed, lacklustre stance on gay marriage. Go on. I dare you… I’ll settle for just one of them instead…Anyone?’ (Hugo Rifkind, 12 May). Well, there’s me for a start: for the first time ever (I have voted at every election since I was old enough, and I am now over 70) I spoiled my ballot paper for this reason; and I’m not the only one who thinks that the preservation of marriage as normally understood (one man and one woman) is of fundamental importance to our society. The Coalition for Marriage petition now has over half a million signatures, making it one of the largest-ever online petitions.
Barometer | 19 May 2012
Breaking badA Ming vase sold for £550,000, having had a hole drilled in it to turn it into a table lamp. Without the hole it would have been worth four times as much. Owners of antiques work hard to keep them safe from thieves, but they are themselves often the problem. — Last year the owner of a £14,000 Japanese porcelain vase reduced its value to £2,000 by chipping it while he packed it for BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. — Last November the owner of a Qing vase took £200,000 off its value after she decided to chisel off the rim to even it up a bit. — Last week a $20m Stradivarius cello at the Royal Palace in Madrid was broken after it fell off a table during a photoshoot.
Portrait of the week | 19 May 2012
HomeThe Bank of England decided against more quantitative easing, after creating £325 billion in three years. Steve Hilton, the Downing Street director of strategy, left proposals for cuts of £25 billion from welfare spending as he headed off for an academic post in California. Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary said that business leaders were whingeing, and ‘large businesses are sitting on a pretty large pile of cash’. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said: ‘There’s only one growth strategy: work hard.’ Unemployment fell by 45,000 to 2.63 million. Thousands of civil servants are to be asked to work from home during the period of the Olympic Games, from 21 July to 9 September.
Old news
There is one crumb of comfort that Fleet Street can extract from the phone-hacking scandal: its own foibles still create a vastly bigger splash than do those of newer media. This week Facebook investors harangued the company’s chief executive for wearing a hoodie in meetings and Yahoo’s chief executive resigned after a shareholder questioned his claim to hold a computer science degree. But they hardly caused a ripple compared with the news that former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, her husband and five others are to be charged with perverting the course of justice. The hacking inquiry has become like The Mousetrap: a show that never closes.
Friday
The week that was | 18 May 2012
Here is a selection of articles and discussions from this week on Spectator.co.uk... Fraser Nelson writes why choice matters more than tuck shops and says this is no time to tinker. James Forsyth says Boris is continuing to charm his party, reports on the battle for the 1922 committee and thinks Miliband's shuffle might not neccessarily be to the left. Peter Hoskin says Greece is still the word and reveals the union's lazy opposition to schools reform. Jonathan Jones says Romney is looking for an average white guy for vice president and reports the public don't want the government to drop Lords reform or gay marriage.
Wednesday
Shelf Life: Laurent Binet
The latest intellectual maverick to win the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, Laurent Binet certainly isn't shy, especially when it comes to his literary tastes. A single paragraph in his debut — a postmodern take on Heinrich Himmler's righthand man Reinhard Heydrich — reveals his position on Camus, Desnos, Flaubert, Hasek, Kafka, Marquez, Rimbaud and Hemingway among others. Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones is summarily dismissed as 'Houellebecq does Nazism'. Binet's next book, an account of Francois Hollande's presidential campaign, is unlikely to be quite as provocative. He lets us know what's on his book shelf. He tweets @laurentbinetH 1) What are you reading at the moment?
Monday
Just in case you missed them… | 14 May 2012
...here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: James Forsyth asks if Greece is running out of German sympathy and reports Cameron is looking to his early leadership days for inspiration. Peter Hoskin examines Philip Hammond's attempt to speak out. Sebastian Payne wonders if the Tories will ever find friends in the North and thinks Eric Pickles struggled for an answer on growth. Jerry Hayes looks at the book no newspaper editor wants you to read. And Rod Liddle asks if TOWE is turning British girls into an army of feckless, drunken, sluts.
