The Virtual Stoa

The Mail on Sunday covers the issues that matter, over here [via].

Le Monde, in one of its summer retrospective thingummies, over here.

Today, tehgraun’s arts critics are writing about sporting events, so we have theatre critic Michael Billington on darts and rock critic Caroline Sullivan on the Second Test Match.

Tomorrow we’re promised “chief football writer Kevin McCarra on Finnish contemporary dance” and “golf correspondent Lawrence Donegan on the San Francisco Symphony’s Brahms cycle”.

I like this kind of thing.

So farewell then, Miles Kington.

Go over the fold for what I think is my favourite Kington column (though I only ever read a fraction of the oeuvre), published, appropriately enough for the inventor of franglais on the occasion of the bicentenaire [Independent, 14 July 1989].

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From tehgraun:

Black has described the US government’s case against him as “rubbish”, “nonsense”, a “vendetta”, a “persecution” and as “essentially a substitute for a wealth-redistribution policy”. He has condemned prosecutors as “Nazis” and “pygmies”. All these comments were pinned on an office noticeboard by prosecutors, who filed arguments last week calling for a longer sentence because of Black’s contempt for the process.

This prompted a slight change of tack from the peer, who informed the Canadian press in an email that he considered the US justice system to be “one of the 10 best in the world”

UPDATE [5.30pm]: Six and a half to eight years, apparently. So assuming he starts the term in early 2008, he might be out just in time for his seventieth birthday on 25 August 2014. That’ll give him something to look forward to.

The Stoa has long been interested in universities, Fabians and beavers, so I’m interested to learn that the newspaper of the LSE student union is called The Beaver. But can anybody tell me why?

There’s a helpful round-up of the recent Martin Amis kerfuffle over at Matt’s place.

All I’ll add is that we need to see the remarks about his urges to stripsearch people who look as if they might be from Pakistan (etc.) in a slightly wider context. Amis is also someone who thinks he can discern murderous intentions towards his family in the glance of an Arab doing his job, who can write things like “the impulse towards rational inquiry is by now very weak in the rank and file of the Muslim male”, who seems to absorb Bernard Lewis-like explanations of historical problems when non-crazy explanations are readily available, who recycles inflammatory quotations from Hezbollah’s leader that circulate freely around the internet, but which no-one ever quite manages to trace back to an authentic-looking source, and so on.

(This last one strikes me as weird, because presumably it’s not too hard to find Hezbollah leaders saying offensive things, so why is the very-possibly-made-up quote the one that everyone’s heard somewhere or other?)

We can practice our careful reading skills as much as we like on that particular “urges” passage, and we can be as charitable towards him as we want to be (though we should also bear in mind that there’s a long history of people with really offensive views managing to present them in ways that aren’t quite so offensive on a charitable reading of their words). But Amis also has form here when it comes to saying the kinds of things about Muslims that the real crazies also like to say, and it’d be a shame to lose sight of that fact in the parsing of his words from the interview.

I’m not sure enough about what I really think is going on in Amis’s head (and I’m not interested enough in either him or his books to spend too much time on trying to work it out), but he seems to me to be somewhere on the slippery slope that has Mark Steyn and Melanie Phillips festering at the bottom, and it doesn’t look to me as if he’s too anxious to be stepping off it any time soon. (But perhaps I’m being uncharitable.)

This is all terribly, terribly funny. First we have Johann Hari writing about Nick Cohen’s not especially good recent book What’s Left? in Dissent here (with bloggers’ responses here, here, here, here and here). Then we get NC’s reply to JH here and JH’s reply to NC’s reply to JH here, with today’s blog discussion over here [update: subsequently removed].

I want this one to run and run.

TUESDAY UPDATE: Oliver Kamm weighs in, again; AaroWatch has an Ode to Kamm [update: subsequently removed]; and JH has added bits and pieces to his reply to the reply [update: and some of the bits and pieces have been, er, subsequently removed].

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: Indecent Left, Conor Foley, Chris Bertram, Blood & Treasure.

As Europe drifted towards war in the Summer of 1939, the Chicago Sunday Tribune was asking the questions that matter: just how tall were the men guiding their nations’ destinies?

Here are the shorties, the rest are over the fold:

[With many many thanks to PM for sending this my way!]

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Here’s a handy chart from The Times showing how tall Hazel Blears is, as compared to (i) hitherto well-documented and in some cases actually-existing varieties of penguin and (ii) the Extinct Giant Tropical Penguin discussed below. [Thanks, David E.]

Over here:

30th over: West Indies 115-7 (Bravo 18 Taylor 0) Keith Flett rears his hairy head from the Beard Liberation Front’s overgrown bunker long enough to shout: “HIRSUTE ENGLAND INTIMIDATE WEST INDIANS WITH FIERCE APPEARANCE: The BLFront, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with a seam and pace attack of Harmison, Plunkett and Sidebottom amongst the most generally hirsute England bowling sides of recent years, it appears that West Indies batsmen are being intimidated to lose their wickets, rather than losing them to good quality bowling. Pioneered in modern times by Australia’s Merv Hughes the intimidation is quite within the rules of cricket and amounts to little more than looking somewhat fierce and as if you and ought to take wickets.”

The linked article (sadly, nothing to do with the image) is here.

Molly Ivins, born 30 August 1944, died 31 January 2007.

From tehgraun, on Saturday:

Barbara Cartland was mistakenly included in our catalogue of inspiring women (and in the accompanying illustration) for having fought for decent pensions (From lesbian vets to Donatella Versace, page 14, G2, yesterday). We meant Barbara Castle, the former Labour cabinet minister and MP for Blackburn who later became Baroness Castle, and who campaigned on pensions and equal pay until her death at the age of 91 in 2002. She was, fortunately, celebrated in a subsequent contribution in the same piece. Barbara Cartland was famous for her romantic novels, which she wrote until her 90s, and her signature pink outfits.

[thanks PB, via DB]

Since people keep asking me about this… The adverts for the Manchester Guardian that appear below are real, and not parodies, and have been transcribed from the back covers of four issues of Encounter from 1954.

Unfortunately too many people take the irony of this Thurberish phrase too literally. They allow their daily newspaper to think for them. And their minds become limp from lack of exercise. A change to the Manchester Guardian soon cures this mental laziness.

Handicapped - if that is the word! - by having no ’strips’, no gossip writers, no sensations, no scandals or spicy revelations - the Manchester Guardian relies entirely upon vivid writing and honest reporting. The result is a daily newspaper which is curiously stimulating. To read the Manchester Guardian every day is a delight to the healthy mind.

It is important to have some sense of values today. The theft of an actress’s jewels may make agreeable reading - but there are more pressing problems. The Manchester Guardian follows the golden rule of ‘first things first’.

You would be wrong, however, if you thought that the Manchester Guardian deliberately avoided all that was light in favour of all that was heavy. On the contrary! The Manchester Guardian is well aware of the ludicrous side of life. You may discover with pleasure that this intelligent paper makes the best of both worlds; gay about trifles, serious about serious things.

If a nation gets the rulers it deserves - it certainly gets the newspapers it asks for. Today it is not uncommon for people to deplore the lack of taste in modern journalism - and yet to be taking the very newspaper which (theoretically) offends them. Such people should try the Manchester Guardian.

Those who profess principles should at least seek to exercise them. And to change to the Manchester Guardian means no sacrifice, no giving up of anything. Rather is it a gaining.

A month or two of the Manchester Guardian will cure the taste for anything but good taste. You will come to find that the Manchester Guardian has a charm and a wit of its own. You will come to admire its keen, clean writing and reporting. You will be proud to be seen reading and enjoying a newspaper which contrives always to be good, never to be dull.

During the last few months, some 10,000 readers have changed to the Manchester Guardian. This is agreeable to us, and encouraging. But are we in danger of becoming ‘a successful’ newspaper, with all the failings that this word implies?

We hope not, and we think not. These new readers must take us as they find us. They are intelligent people. They will hardly expect the Manchester Guardian to dance to their tune, or to tremble lest occasionally a point of view conflicts with theirs. The Manchester Guardian is an outspoken newspaper, which takes its mission seriously (although never solemnly!)

A newspaper is an important influence in the life of the regular reader. Let that newspaper, then, be the best that, in this fallible world, fallible men can produce. The Manchester Guardian can make no higher claim than that it does its best to respect the truth, the English language, and the reader. You may find that this is exactly what you want.

One of my friends used to eat puddings only during Lent, on the grounds that he was denying himself the pleasures of self-denial. I don’t know if he still does this, but it seemed to me to be a very good idea.

Ash Wednesday is usually a good time for a commination, so if there’s anyone you especially want to curse, please pop your nominations into the comments, and we’ll see what a jealous, vengeful, righteous and wrathful God can deliver over the coming year.

The Court Service website is being extremely efficient: the Galloway vs Telegraph judgment from the Court of Appeal is already up.

UPDATE [2.30pm]: The Reynolds judgment is here.

Here’s Le Monde on the obesity crisis au pays des “fish and chips”:

“C’est la faute de Jamie Oliver“, déclarait récemment Paul Ainsworth, directeur général de Canterbury Food, pour expliquer la faillite de cette entreprise de restauration collective. Le jeune chef cuisinier anglais s’est mis dans la tête d’améliorer les repas dans les écoles britanniques. Dans son programme de télé-réalité, “Jamie’s School Dinners”, film� dans une école du sud de Londres, il a stigmatisé turkey twizzlers, ces beignets de dinde servis lors du déjeuner qui était le produit phare de la Canterbury Food. Quelques jours auparavant, la société Kipling, célébre pour ses gâteaux et ses cakes, annonçait, de son côté, des résultats médiocres pour l’exercice 2004-2005.Ces deux sociétés, symboles des vertus traditionnelles de l’alimentation britannique, sont les victimes de la lutte contre l’obésité, devenue la grande priorité du gouvernement de Tony Blair en matière de santé publique.

Au hit-parade de l’obésité au sein de l’Union européenne, les Britanniques se classent désormais au deuxième rang, derrière les Grecs mais devant les Allemands…

Is Canterbury Food generally reckoned to have anything to do with “les vertus traditionelles de l’alimentation britannique”? Or are turkey twizzlers a fine example of invented tradition? I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a turkey twizzler. And I do like this idea of an hit-parade de l’obésité.

From the BBC breaking news ticker:

“Three Likud party ministers resign from Israeli cabinet”

And from the Guardian’s:

“Likud ministers defy Israeli cabinet resignation order“

From the front page of this week’s News of the World:

And from this week’s Observer (scroll down to the bottom):

Who’s who in the Primrose Hill setThey are the thirty-something set of friends being seen as Labour’s answer to the youthful, urbane ‘Notting Hill’ set around Cameron. They have had their differences - but facing a new threat, they are burying the hatchet.

Their linchpin is David Miliband the 39-year-old Cabinet Minister whose home in London’s Primrose Hill is the unofficial meeting place for like minds. Married to American violinist Louise, he headed Blair’s policy unit before becoming an MP but has deftly made his peace with the rising clique around Gordon Brown - thanks in part to his brother, Ed Miliband, the Chancellor’s former aide. Both brothers are close to Douglas Alexander, the Europe minister also tipped by Blair: married with two small children, he is a sharp Scot who cut his teeth as Brown’s researcher. The third former Brownite staffer in the set is ex-chief adviser Ed Balls, married to junior minister Yvette Cooper.

With the exception of Cooper - and the new MP Kitty Ussher who knows both Eds well from her former job as aide to Patricia Hewitt, and is tipped for a ministerial job - it is blokeish circle, but one largely of new men: Balls is regularly found in the kitchen at home, thanks to his wife’s hatred of cooking.

I don’t want to think about it. Though it’ll be tricky to have quite so many “lesbian romps” if the “set” is as “blokeish” as the paper suggests.