Samizdata

Ah yes, St. Valentine’s Day. The shop windows are filled with endless tacky heart-shaped corporate eye-catchers and the air is filled with cupid’s arrows… and other rather faster moving objects.

Have fun.

Last Saturday I decided to treat a friend of mine to a dinner at a restaurant, the Painted Heron, that received one of the most glowing reviews I have ever come across. It appeared in the last week’s Sunday paper magazine (no link, alas) and it certainly inspired me despite the fact I am not too keen on Indian food.

The dinner was an extraordinary experience. Despite our high expectations induced by Matthew Norman’s raving review, we were not disappointed. Everything – the decor, food and service – was excellent and the price commensurate with the quality we enjoyed. For our London-based readers I recommend to make a trip to 112 Cheyne Walk, SW10 and sample the gastrogasm-inducing fare we enjoyed.

I also applaud Matthew Norman whose restaurant review in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine is one of the sections of the paper I read regularly. His razor sharp witt is refreshing as he uses it to punture many a pompous restaurant’s pretentions. However, his vitriolic sarcasm had a day off when he wrote a review for the Painted Heron – one of the reasons I wanted to see this culinary marvel. And as it was substantiated, I am ready to trust his opinions in the future. He is by no means the only one to give high marks to the place. Although I cannot link to his review, I found another reviewer making pretty much the same points:

The food is bloody marvellous. Every single dish made me stamp my feet and howl at the moon.

The tandoori baby chicken came. And I came over all funny. This was a good strong bird not much bigger than a greedy quail, served whole, orange from the oven and trickling juices and runnels of bright yoghurt, served on onion kulcha bread.

I picked it up and tore in. Sweet Jesus. And then I was sorry again because the chicken in your local curry house is not fit to cluck orisons over the carcass of this princely bird-child.

Quite.

Still reeling from the culinary delights of the night before, I opened this week’s Sunday Telegraph and right in the news section I find out how Matthew Norman’s review of another restaurant has earned him a letter from the owner threatening to sue.

It was, both parties will submit, not quite a glowing review. Indeed, phrases such as “the eighth circle of hell”, “among the very worst restaurants in Christendom” and “meals of crescendoing monstrosity” may have conveyed the impression that Matthew Norman, the prize-winning restaurant critic of The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, was not entirely enamoured with the food on offer at Shepherds in Westminster, central London.

Last week, alas, things moved from the kitchen towards the courtroom. Richard Shepherd, the owner of Shepherds, whose restaurant has long been a favourite of politicians, is threatening to sue The Sunday Telegraph for libel because he was so hurt by the review.

Unless Mr Shepherd received damages paid to the charity of his choice, and the opportunity to write a letter defending his restaurant, he would have no choice but to sue.

It is not just a matter of free speech and the right to express one’s opinions, especially when one is getting paid for doing so, but the manner in which Mr Shepherd’s reacted to Mr Norman’s sharp and let’s face it, witty criticism.

Where do you start with somewhere like Shepherds? You don’t. If you have any sense you finish with it.

There is so much about Shepherds that is wrong that it would, in a more elegant age, merit a pamphlet rather than a review.

This is a man who likes his food and dislikes the kind of pretentious ‘concept’ restaurants that has sprouted all over London in the last decade or so. Apparently, many customers have written letters to the Telegraph expressing support to the restaurant with colourful insults directed at Mr Norman. One has to remember though that Shepherd’s is frequented by politicians whose palates are not necessarily amongst the most discriminating, what with having to kiss arses all day long…

Mr Shepherd’s response, or more accurately his lawyers’ response, is a seriously po-faced letter that completely misses the point of Mr Norman’s job and talent. It is almost distressing to see the kind of corporate bullying normally reserved for customers directed at a restaurant reviewer. There was at least one dissenter, John Blundell of the Institute of Economic Affairs, who wrote:

Thank you a million times for your brilliant review of Shepherds. I stopped eating there four years ago when we had to send back three of our four main courses.

Mr Norman himself appeared unrepentant, although he did admit that he had one regret.

The lawyers’ letter was far more amusing than my review. That’s the sad thing.

Somehow I doubt it…

An American scientist, William von Hippel has an explanation for racism. Well, a theory of why elderly people are more likely to be prejudiced than young people. And if his research is right, it’s not just because they grew up in a different era, because Blair’s Britain is a sink pit of immigrant crime, or because old people are brave enough to fly in the face of political correctness. Mary Wakefield explains in today’s Telegraph that a bit of their brain is missing:

According to von Hippel and other psychologists working in the same field, whatever age we are, our immediate thoughts are formed by cultural stereotypes. This means we instinctively think inappropriate and unfriendly things about each other.

…

For a highly social species, the ability to keep these thoughts to oneself is crucial, so we have developed a special part of our brains – a mesh of connections between the prefrontal lobes and the limbic system – to inhibit and temper them.

…

Where von Hippel’s research is new is in suggesting that older people’s brains often suffer the same sort of damage. They become prejudiced because they lack the power to inhibit the stereotypes that form our instinctive thoughts.

The gap in their brain releases stereotypes and they naturally infer that they are doing it on purpose.

I have no idea whether the theory will hold up to further scientific scrutiny. I also do not like the implication that older people’s opinions and behaviour are somehow not results of their rational discourse but determined by a neurological phenomenon. Nevetheless it is an interesting article that caught my attention and so it appears here without any firm conclusions from me as to its goodness or badness. If true, it has highlighted the importance of stereotyping and unexamined prejudices. Get your opinions in order before you are disconnected from them and begin to embarass your offspring.

Of course, this means that there could be a psychological metacontext.

Sorry, Natalie, but I am in a profound depression triggered by the US Supreme Court’s decision to jettison the First Amendment (which protects, or used to, freedom of speech and of the press). After I am suitably medicated (less than half a bottle of Laphroiag to go), I will have some thoughts on one of the fundamental flaws in the whole campaign finance debacle.

Surely, this time, that clique of tranzi panhandlers and chisellers have overstretched themselves just a bit?

The United Nations has published new predictions on the size and age of the world’s population 300 years from now.

You know what they say, there’s lies, damnable lies and then there’s UN predictions.

It says that if fertility stays at the current level, the global population could rise to 134 trillion.

134 Trillion!!??. Why not add a few more zeros? Go on, really crank it up. Why be so conservative?

The UN publishes long-range projections to help environmental scientists and policy-makers assess implications of dramatic change in world population.

And whine for more funding, of course.

The report says the increase is a clear indication that fertility levels are unsustainable.

Then make war, not love.

Has there ever been any organisation more scurrilous, more fraudulent or more transparently self-serving than that stinking, Augean mess known as the United Nations?