Oh to be caught ’twixt love and duty at the world’s biggest boondoggle

Paul Wolfowitz may have to choose between Shaha Ali Riza’s affections and his sense of duty. She is a gender specialist employed by the World Bank as an acting manager for external relations and outreach, he has been nominated as the Bank’s new President, the world’s biggest boondoggle is full of quasijobs like hers, and he must nerve himself to take an axe to them, whatever this may mean for relationships on his domestic hearth. He is the Pentagon’s scholarly super-hawk, who put his shirt on Ahmed Chalabi (now scratched) for the Iraq Stakes and, when ambassador in Indonesia, urged his hosts to stand no nonsense from East Timor. His appointment is seen as a consolation prize for him (he may have hoped to succeed Colin Powell) and as a token of the Bush administration’s no-nonsense attitude to foreigners in general and Old Europe in particular. There, it went down like a bad oyster. Ministers gulped, but seemed to be ready to swallow it and to make the best terms that they could. They had a deal to preserve. By convention, they pick their man for the International Monetary Fund and leave the Bank to the Americans. This successfully leaves out the rest of the world, including (of course) the Bank’s customers, and can even be helpful, since part of the job has always been to wheedle some more money out of Congress. Mr Wolfowitz and his political masters may not quite see it that way.

Thinifer, fattypuff

They would be right to believe that the Bank needs an overhaul. Of the financial twins conceived, six decades ago, at Bretton Woods, the Fund has always been more of a thinifer, but the Bank is a natural fattypuff. Its report boasts of the 8,000 genderists, outreachers and others now employed at its head office, and of its hundred other offices thoughout the world. A banker with half an eye on his margins would ask himself whether he needs the costs they represent, and what he could usefully do with the money. Sixty years ago, he would reflect, a ruined world needed rebuilding, and was starved of capital, which was why the Bank was called into being. Now that the world is awash with capital, ready to back any and every devel opment, does it need the Bank in the way that it did? In Africa, do the Bank’s efforts serve to perpetuate a dependency culture? Should its mission now be to work itself out of a job?

Put them to sleep

All this might ask too much of Mr Wolfowitz. He is not obviously qualified to manage a large (not to say obese) financial institution and to bring it into shape and into focus. He might simply go native. (It happens.) Alternatively, he might set out to bring its policies more into line with those of its largest shareholder, as a financial extension of the State Department. Keynes, who was the twins’ godfather, feared this. There was always a danger, he said, that they would become puppets of sawdust, through which the breath of life did not blow. Or they might grow up as politicians: ‘Then the best that could befall would be for the children to fall into an eternal slumber, never to waken or be heard of again in the courts or markets of mankind.’ One way or another, that time may be nearing.

Just the tickets

Off-peak bus tickets for old-age pensioners do not really make up for it. This year we shall have to work for Gordon Brown for another two days. The bad news comes from Gabriel Stein, who works out the sums for the Adam Smith Institute, and tells us to wait until 31 May for Tax Freedom Day, when we can start to work for ourselves. Enjoy it while it lasts. For years ahead, so we learn from the Budget forecasts, a rising share of the nation’s total output will be invested in its least productive sector. That has the makings of a vicious spiral, and must now be all set to send Tax Freedom Day receding into June. By then we might have rumbled a Chancellor who takes more and more of our money and pays us back, in part, in bus tickets.

Bread for Bernie

Fallen tycoons must quake at the prospect of Bernie Ebbers on his way to prison. Martha Stewart, the cookery queen, may have suffered a ‘Just visiting’ experience for insider trading, but this time the charge is fraud and will carry a stretch. In his heyday at WorldCom, his pat answer to any objections was a chart of its ever rising share price. He came up with the figures that fuelled the shares and kept the investment bankers rich and happy. In court, he pleaded that he was just a country boy and did not understand what was wrong with them, but the jury took the view that if he didn’t, then he should have, so tough, Bernie. I would plead a mitigating circumstance. When the old regime at British Telecom opted to try their luck in America, they spent a fortune buying shares in MCI and were ready to bid for it. Using its own highly valued shares, WorldCom outbid BT, which dropped out and went home with a profit. This came in handy when BT ran into every kind of trouble, and saved it from the fate that overtook Marconi. The least that its new regime could do would be to bake Bernie a loaf with a file in it.

Shooting the moon

Easter is arriving before March is out, much to the European Commission’s annoyance. Fluctuations like these disrupt trade and travel, and need to be harmonised out of existence. Inquiries made for the Chronometric Directorate reveal that the date of Easter depends on the paschal full moon — as obsolete, surely, as pounds weight or pounds sterling. The draft Solar Convergence Directive is intended to harmonise time, by making the sun rise simultaneously in every member country of the European Union (and, later, set) and it is thought that lunar convergence could be brought within its scope. A fixed moon would then result in a fixed Easter. Appropriate powers of enforcement would be needed, the Commission says. Do not visit Brussels when the moon is full.

Abortion is a key issue

From Alan Pavelin

Sir: Your support for a reduction to 20 weeks in the upper limit for legal abortion is welcome as being (marginally) better than nothing (Leading article, 19 March).

I recall, however, that at the time of the David Alton Bill in 1987, an opinion poll in the Guardian showed that the majority of the electorate favoured an upper limit of just 14 weeks. I know of no evidence to suggest that public opinion has since changed.

More fundamentally, I cannot understand why ‘viability outside the womb’ should be regarded as the key criterion. What is really needed in our abortion-ondemand society is a change in the grounds for legal abortion, to ensure that it is available only for serious medical reasons.

Finally, those who are demanding that abortion should not become an election issue clearly want to minimise the risk of the current law being changed. But election issues are decided not by parties and politicians, but by the voting public. While eschewing single-issue politics, there are many of us for whom abortion is among the two or three key issues which will determine our vote. All candidates, take note.

Alan Pavelin Chislehurst, Kent

Tory chances look good

From John Entwistle

Sir: Peter Oborne (Politics, 19 March) compared the coming general election with that of 1987, but surely it has much more in common with 1970, which I, as the Conservative candidate being opposed by Harold Wilson, recall vividly. The polls then were showing Labour in the lead by 5.5 per cent in the first week of the campaign and 12.4 in the second week, but the Conservatives won with a late swing of 4.7 per cent. This was despite Labour extending polling to 10 p.m., reducing the voting age to 18, refusing to change the outdated parliamentary boundaries and continual sunshine. The main reason for this was that former Labour voters did not turn out to vote because they did not trust Harold Wilson and another Labour government with the economy. Also, in 1970 Michael Howard was fighting in Liverpool Edge Hill, where he achieved the biggest swing in Liverpool — 5.8 per cent against Labour. Based on 1970, the omens are good for the Conservatives for the coming election.

John Entwistle

Kendal, Cumbria

A treaty in store

From Denis MacShane

Sir: Charles Moore complains that the new EU treaty is too long (The Spectator’s Notes, 12 March).

The main body of the treaty as signed runs to 65,534 words — equivalent to about 59 Spectator pages, or about as far as Taki’s column.

The French have produced a 28-page, tabloid-style version of the main parts of the treaty. Perhaps The Spectator could do us all a favour and devote one of its issues to publishing the treaty. This would still allow space for us to enjoy Taki, Simon Hoggart’s excellent wine tips, and the adverts for holiday homes in the European Union which our membership allows us all to enjoy so much more easily. And Spectator readers would see why the rest of Europe hails the new treaty as promoting British ideas for Europe’s future.

Denis MacShane Minister for Europe

Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London SW1

Tributes to Alice

From Terence Monaghan

Sir: How strange that Damian Thompson should think that the Tablet had run a ‘short and mean-spirited obituary’ on the death of Alice Thomas Ellis (‘Alice doesn’t live here any more’, 19 March).

As for its length, the one I read on 19 March was exactly the same size as that for the late Bishop David Sheppard, rather longer than that for Canon Martin Reardon — both admittedly Anglican prelates whose inclusion Thompson may find unacceptable in a Catholic periodical — and a lot longer than that for the Catholic Joseph Kirwan, all in the same issue.

Regarding its ‘mean-spiritedness’, it was written by Alice’s personal friend and fellow novelist David McLaurin with a warmth and friendliness that I found extremely moving. He wrote at one point: ‘It is a pity the hierarchy failed to listen to this authentic Catholic voice.’ It was a fond and generous tribute. Unlike Damian Thompson, McLaurin made no mention of the novelist having been a heavy drinker, merely making reference to her ‘sipping Stella Artois’ at her kitchen table.

In addition to that obituary, she is also included with the late Dave Allen in an adjacent two-page article under the heading ‘Vices & Desires’, which describes them as having been two of the best exponents of wit aimed at ‘the profoundly fleshy Catholic faith’.

Terence Monaghan Presteigne, Powys

Genes and autism

From Kim James

Sir: I was intrigued to see the article by Rod Liddle suggesting that we breed for autism (‘A question of breeding’, 12 March). Nearly 30 years ago I was working in the field of mental health as the principal lecturer on a postgraduate course for art and psychotherapy. My observations on autistic patients showed me that overwhelmingly the parents and grandparents of these people belonged to professions which demanded more than normal attention to detail.

When Leo Kanner first identified autism, it was thought to be a middleclass phenomenon. Not so. Among the patients I observed there were many who did not fall into that category. However, what those of lower economic status did have was work in trades which called for much attention to rules and regulations and attention to detail.

If you breed for racehorses over long periods you get fast-running animals. If you breed for economic and social success generation after generation, eventually you get autistic children.

Kim James

Wollaston, Northamptonshire

Hitler’s house party

From Paul Levy

Sir: I enjoyed Philip Hensher’s generous review of The Letters of Lytton Strachey (Books, 19 March) and am pleased to have his corrections for future editions. However, just for the record — from the new ODNB entry on Unity Mitford, written by Richard Davenport-Hines — ‘She and her father joined the Anglo-German Fellowship, and attended the Nüremberg rally of 1938 together with Robert Byron: Lord Redesdale, said Byron, “treated the Nazi party conference as though it were a house party to which 500,000 rather odd and unexpected guests had turned up” (C. Ritchie, The Siren Years [1974] p. 138).’ I happily concede my mistake about which Redesdale was the pork sausage-shunner. But the late David Harlech (1918–1985) told my wife and me that he remembered the euphemism ‘friend of Dorothy’ being used in the 1980s.

Paul Levy

Long Hanborough, Oxford

Nominating Napier

From Stephen Mulholland

Sir: In his interesting and thoughtful article on papal succession, Piers Paul Read neglected to mention a cardinal who would fill all the needs he outlines (‘The man who should be Pope’, 5 March).

Cardinal Wilfred Napier, leader of the Catholic Church in South Africa, is, at 60, young and energetic enough to give the Church a couple of decades of active and forceful leadership. He is black, conservative and a devotee of the present Pope’s philosophy and policy. He is also brave. He is not reluctant to confront powerful politicians. He is, for example, extremely critical of the Mbeki administration’s policy on abortion, asking how the government can, on the one hand, condemn violence towards women and children, while, on the other, condone it regarding the unborn foetus.

He could strengthen the Church in precisely those areas where it has great opportunities for growth while facing threats from other movements.

Stephen Mulholland

Johannesburg, South Africa

Tax me happy

From Alasdair Duncan

Sir: I wonder if Richard Layard has seen the classic Reese Witherspoon film Legally Blonde (‘The price of happiness’, 12 March). His reasoning — that helping others makes you happy, and higher taxes help you to help others — reminds me of the relentlessly perky Elle Woods who, when defending a murder suspect, utters the immortal words: ‘Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don’t just shoot their husbands.’ Uncanny, no?

Alasdair Duncan Brisbane, Australia

Lost marbles

From Mark Corby

Sir: Before we insist that the French disembowel Versailles and retrieve the marble columns they looted from Leptis Magna (Letters, 19 March), perhaps we should put our own house in order? We also pillaged Leptis in 1816 and then erected the 20 or so columns in Virginia Water, of all places. There they have remained for nearly 180 English winters, forlorn and forgotten, a monument to Anglo-Saxon cultural kleptomania at its worst. In view of our improved relations with Libya they should be returned at once.

Mark Corby By email

A hole in his bucket

From Peter Maddox

Sir: If Charles Moore really believes that David Blunkett was the author of the lines relating to the hole remaining in a bucket of water (The Spectator’s Notes, 19 March), and if David Blunkett really believes that he wrote these lines, then someone has a false impression.

Had either of them toured school or college staffrooms of the 1960s or 1970s, then they would have spied versions everywhere. Perhaps Mr Blunkett was using his politician’s expectancy of the public’s forgetfulness to ingratiate himself with them by pretending to invent jolly little verses which show his humanity.

Peter Maddox

Villedieu-les-Poeles, France

The dogs of law

From Colin Bostock-Smith

Sir: Charles Moore reports that police have asked a master of foxhounds in the West of England to be ‘a little more discreet’. The master may well have responded already. A notice on a road near Halwill in West Devon reads: ‘Caution! Horses, dogs and foxes exercising.’ Colin Bostock-Smith Milton Keynes

From Deborah Jones

Sir: Charles Moore suggests that it would be a new principle in English law ‘if dogs could be criminals’. Yet it was common in mediaeval ecclesiastical law for animals to be subjected to full trials before judges, with counsels for the prosecution and defence. Later Crown cases in England are recorded, such as the trial before James I of a bear found guilty of killing a child and sentenced to be baited to death. In 1679 a woman and her dog were hanged at Tyburn, having both been found guilty of the crime of bestiality.

Deborah Jones Witney, Oxon

Free the Moon bears

From Lee Gibbins

Sir: Please may I thank the very many people who have responded to Paul Johnson’s article (And another thing, 19 February) so generously. I have received donations for the campaign to free the Moon bears from farms in China from all over the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Australia and South Africa. The response has been overwhelming and it is wonderful to realise that there are so many people in the world who care about the beautiful animals with whom we share our planet.

Lee Gibbins

Moon Bear Rescue Holford, Somerset