Latest news with #Spectator
Hamilton Spectator
16 hours ago
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Florence Kasoian worked at Hamilton's flagship Tim Hortons for nearly 45 years
Florence Kasoian was just looking for a job when she came to work at the Tim Hortons store at Ottawa Street North and Dunsmure Road in 1975. She wound up becoming an institution at the business — the first location in the doughnut-and-coffee empire — and spent more than four decades working there, becoming known for her top-notch customer service and hugs. Kasoian — who died June 5 at age 96 — had two ceremonies marking her time at the store, in 2015 and in March 2019 at Tim Hortons Field to also mark her 90th birthday. She started at the store on Sept. 9, 1975. 'I hadn't worked for 20 years and I figured, well, why shouldn't I,' Kasoian told Spectator columnist Paul Wilson in a 1990 Cable 14 video about the opening of the store at 65 Ottawa St. N. on May 17, 1964 by hockey player Tim Hortons and former Hamilton policeman Ron Joyce. 'My son saw an ad in the paper and he said, 'Come on, mom, let's go.'' Florence Kasoian, who died June 5, was a beloved fixture at the Tim Hortons on Ottawa Street. Here, she's celebrating 40 years at the flagship store in 2015. The pandemic ended her time at the store in March 2020, but her son Michael said his mom would have 'stayed right until the end.' He said it wasn't until the last week of her life she began to fail. 'She got pneumonia and respiratory failure, but her mind was still sharp,' said the retired Halton school board principal. 'I thought she was going to live well over 100.' The old store was torn down in 2014 and replaced with a new two-storey store that included a museum. It opened in January 2015. A 1970s uniform worn by Florence (whose real name is Flavia) was hung in the museum. The store is undergoing renovations and is expected to reopen in a couple of weeks without the museum. Tim Hortons said in a statement there will be a main-floor collection of memorabilia that pays tribute to the history and importance of the location. Kasoian got to know the regulars, and told The Spectator in 1996 she knew nine times out of 10 what each customer took in their coffee or what kind of doughnut they liked. Her then-boss, Brenda Healy, said Florence was always chipper, even when she was limping around one time on a broken toe. 'When you're friendly to your customers and you know what they take in their coffee, well, it makes them feel important,' Kasoian told The Spectator. 'It makes them go from here feeling better.' Florence Kasoian spent four decades working at the original location of Tim Hortons on Ottawa Street. Her son said his mom was always 'kind and outgoing. She thought of other people before herself.' He said more than 150 people attended her visitation and funeral, including former co-workers and customers. Kasoian requested Perry Como for her funeral and the family played 'Catch a Falling Star.' Kasoian was on hugging terms with quite a few customers. One example was a customer who had been in a serious car accident in 1994. After three months in hospital, he began taking physiotherapy at a nearby clinic. He'd come in every day in a bad mood. Florence Kasoian in 2019 celebrating her 90th birthday at a Tiger-Cats game. 'His name is Paul and I knew he was feeling blue,' Kasoian said. 'So I asked him, 'Would it be OK if I hugged you?' I knew his back hurt so I just gave him a gentle hug, but he hugged me back hard.' 'Then he kept coming in everyday. Even though we'd have a lineup to the door, he'd wait for me to get his coffee and give him a hug.' Kasoian was born in Hamilton on March 17, 1929. Her father James Marino died shortly after she was born, and her mother Paola raised her, plus a sister and three brothers. After Kasoian graduated from elementary school, her son said she went to work at a cotton mill. She quit work in about 1955 to raise her children and look after a relative. Kasoian is survived by her son Michael, daughter Marguerite (Margo), five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by her husband Richard, who died in 1986 at age 55. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Spectator
2 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Trump cannot be a fascist
The global left and their many friends in the media are insisting with increasing hysteria that Donald Trump is imposing fascism on America. Their apocalyptical narrative is as simple as it is false: President Trump has begun the transformation of the USA into a fascist state. But the feverish intensity with which this tall story is told cannot conceal its mendacity. Trump has not, as fascists do, created blackshirt hit squads to terrorise and torture opponents, nor courts to jail them without just cause. And no rational observer believes his aim is to replace political parties with a one-party cult, or democracy with dictatorship. But above all, perhaps, the story is false because, regardless of what you were taught, and are told, fascism is a far-left, not far-right, phenomenon. Whatever else he may be, the Donald is not left-wing, unless you count his mission to protect the American working class from the negative aspects of globalisation. But for the left and their intellectual minders in command of the citadels of our culture, only their truth counts. Yet the 'proof' they offer of Trump's alleged fascism is risible. It includes his highly popular crackdown on illegal immigrants and his recent deployment of troops in Los Angeles after days of often riotous demos against that crackdown. It even includes his decision to hold a military parade in Washington DC on 14th June to mark the US army's 250th anniversary, and his 79th birthday. This, apparently, was a provocative display of – to use a new left-wing buzz-word – his 'militarisation' of America. To ram home the point, there were anti-Trump demos across America 'in defence of democracy' to coincide with the parade. As one protester explained to CBS: 'We need to show there are more Americans fighting this fascism than supporting it.' Progressive intellectuals, meanwhile, queue up to leap on board the Trump's-a-fascist bandwagon. They include the left-wing playwright, Sir David Hare, who in his Spectator diary earlier this month produced a list of the '16 principal characteristics of fascism', so vague as to be meaningless. And he used the word 'fascism' to lump together Italian fascism and its hybrid German offspring, Nazism, despite one glaring difference between the two: for many years, there was nothing anti-Semitic about Italian fascism until its inventor Benito Mussolini's fatal military alliance with Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s. Between 1922 when Mussolini came to power and 1938 when he introduced anti-Semitic laws, fascism did not persecute Italy's 50,000 Jews. Many Italian Jews were fascists, as was Mussolini's main mistress for most of that period, Margherita Sarfatti. Even afterwards, fascist anti-Semitism, however shameful, was only ever half-hearted. Relatively very few Jews (8,000) were deported from fascist Italy to the Nazi death camps. Indeed, in Italian-occupied south east France, fascist officers and officials saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis and Vichy France. So it is not true, as Sir David claims, that if the Nazi genocide can be denied by apologists then 'fascism could be rehabilitated'. For a simple reason: whereas Nazism was intrinsically anti-Semitic, and only the demented can deny its responsibility for the Holocaust, fascism was not necessarily. But this does not rehabilitate it as it was reprehensible. for all sorts of other reasons. As for Trump, he is not anti-Semitic at all, unlike so many of his left-wing opponents. As for Trump, he is not anti-Semitic at all, unlike so many of his left-wing opponents Sir David's 16 characteristics of fascism which include 'attacks' and 'assaults' on the media, cultural institutions, higher education and universities, could just as easily be applied to any dictatorship left or right. They also include 'obsession' with higher birth rates and 'elevation' of the heterosexual family, but these are just as characteristic of Catholicism and communism as they are of fascism. Number 11, 'extreme nationalism', might seem to the untrained eye to be a characteristic of fascism but as George Orwell, a left-wing patriot who despised communists, especially middle-class English ones, pointed out in his 1945 essay Notes on Nationalism, Soviet Russia was as nationalist as any fascist regime. As for number 15, 'persecution of particular racial groups': which dictatorship isn't guilty of that? Yet during the often violent recent LA protests, California's Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom called Trump 'a dictator' on X, and announced ominously in a state television address: 'Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes.' Yet most Americans appear to support both Trump's sealing of the southern border which has virtually stopped illegal immigrant arrivals and his tough deportation programme. More than half (54 per cent) of Americans approve the deportations, according to a CBS/YouGov poll this month. And nearly all (97 per cent), in a poll by Pew Research Centre in March, support the deportation of illegal immigrants who have also committed violent crimes, and 44 per cent even support the deportation of illegal immigrants who arrived during the four years of the Joe Biden Presidency – believed to total a staggering 10 million people. That a clear majority vote for a political leader, as they did for Trump, and then approve what he is doing, does not entirely absolve him – or them – of being a fascist. But a determination to defend the borders of one's country surely must. To do so is not an act of fascism, as the left wants us to believe, but instead both the common sensical and the patriotic thing to do. Patriotism is the antithesis of fascism, unlike nationalism. Whereas a patriot wants to defend his country, culture and way of life, a nationalist wants to impose them. But unfortunately for the left, not even nationalism is the exclusive property of the right. It is ridiculous, as the global left keeps on doing, thanks to its ignorance and dishonesty, to try and brainwash us into thinking that the founder of MAGA, Donald Trump, is a reincarnation – in a red baseball cap, instead of a black fez – of the inventor of fascism, Benito Mussolini. Fascism was one side of the left-wing revolutionary coin; communism the other. The cult of woke which – unelected – has taken command of the vital organs of our society and culture is much more reminiscent of fascism than democratically elected Trump who epitomises the spirit of free enterprise. A quick look at Italian fascism and what it actually was, shows just how ridiculous it is to call Trump a fascist. Mussolini, the rising star of revolutionary socialism in Italy and editor of its party newspaper Avanti!, founded the fascist movement in 1919 as a left-wing revolutionary alternative to socialism. The first world war had forced him to accept that people are more loyal to country than class. He thus replaced the sacred Marxist creed of international socialism with national socialism which he called fascism. While the fascists did not abolish private property, they did set up the Corporate State – the so-called Third Way – by which the State jointly managed each major sector of the economy. The fascist class war was not between rich and poor but parasites and producers. The fascist state dominates the life of the individual both at work and outside Mussolini desired a totalitarian dictatorship with everything inside the state – nothing outside – not even the minds of the masses. To make this work, fascism had to become a religious cult complete with a nationwide congregation of the faithful, and led by the Duce, who would be, if not its Messiah, at least its Pope. Faith was Mussolini's watchword, and his bible was La Psychologie des Foules by Gustave Le Bon rather than Marx's Communist Manifesto. The 20th century would be the era of the crowd, wrote Le Bon, the sub-conscious crowd, irrational and tyrannical but impotent, unless led by a charismatic dictator in whom it had faith. The 1932 Dottrina del Fascismo, the nearest thing to a fascist manifesto, says: 'The fascist conception of life is a religious one' that aims to create 'a spiritual society'. Fascism 'accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the state.' The state is 'all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist… Thus understood, fascism, is totalitarian.' In each town, the fascists built the party headquarters in the main piazza, complete with a belltower to summon the faithful, often opposite a real church – and always uneasily. Despite making temporal peace with the Vatican in 1929, fascism remained a rival of the Catholic Church in the battle for control of the minds, if not the souls, of Italians. But the Duce was not Jesus, nor even Pope. All this made fascism completely different from the Anglo-American, conservative 'bourgeois' right of which Trump is a part. As did its credo that the state is the solution, not the problem, whereas for conservatives the opposite is the case. The fascist state dominates the life of the individual both at work and outside. In the end, Mussolini helped cause catastrophic damage to Italy and Europe. But throughout the 1920s, and much of the 1930s, fascism was hugely admired across the political divide, even by legendary left-wing icons such as Mahatma Gandhi and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But the communist left and their fellow travellers in the West became desperate to distance themselves from their fascist sibling, especially after the devastation of the second world war, above all caused by the Nazi version of fascism. Their relentless propaganda successfully branded fascism as the paid creature and agent of capitalism – and thus 'far right'. In reality, it never was. To the bitter end, Mussolini remained a socialist at heart. He even called the puppet regime the Germans allowed him to run in the north of Italy from 1943-45 the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. In April 1945, when communist partisans executed him and his mistress Clara Petacci after their capture at Lake Como, those with him included his old friend Nicola Bombacci, a founder of the Italian communist party and once a member of the Soviet Comintern, who had become his closest adviser. Bombacci's last words before a firing squad shot him dead by the lake were: 'Viva Mussolini! Viva il socialismo!' I'd love to ask Trump's accusers: 'Given the facts, how can you sit there and tell us the Donald is the Duce, let alone the Führer? Surely you on left are a far closer fit, aren't you?'
Hamilton Spectator
3 days ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Top Hamilton headlines this week: Shalini Singh was ‘always smiling' + Downtown shelter could be on the move
T he weekend is here, but plenty happened in the Hamilton area this week. Don't miss these top stories from Spectator reporters. Canada Day weekend is here and there's plenty to do. It's Your Festival tops the weekend's festivals. Warm weather has returned with highs of 26 C Saturday and 29 C Sunday in the forecast. Showers are possible Saturday. Sunday's forecast is calling for clear skies. More than six months after Shalini Singh's disappearance and suspected murder, her family is holding on to memories and looking for answers. This week, police announced the arrest of Singh's boyfriend, Jeffery Smith, on second-degree murder charges. Depending on your perspective, it was either famous or infamous. Pink Floyd at Ivor Wynne Stadium, June 28, 1975, was the biggest concert ever in Hamilton, and featured the band's signature special effects that included a mock flaming jet crashing into the stage. George Howson, a defenceless 73-year-old with Parkinson's disease, was killed by his stepson. Tim Brown was charged with second-degree murder in the 2021 slaying, but was found not criminally responsible. Family members, long concerned about Tim's behaviour, say the case was rushed and the system failed. They're still fighting for answers. The Salvation Army and a development consortium say they're exploring plans to relocate the social-service agency's longtime downtown men's shelter. Higher-density housing, restaurants and shops are part of the redevelopment of the former FirstOntario Centre, happening across the street. A neurosurgeon associated with a Hamilton pain clinic has been suspended in the latest of a string of issues with his medical licence in Ontario and the United States. Subscribe to our newsletters for the latest local content . Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Michael Gove on divorce, gay rumours, dating and the Camerons
Michael Gove has agreed to this interview nominally to plug his new podcast, which he says will be 'mischievous, right-wing, not always predictable' — core brand Gove — but we both know why I'm really here. His ex-wife, Sarah Vine, has just published her memoir, How Not to Be a Political Wife, garnering a gazillion column inches, and Gove wants either to brief his own version of events or surf the wash of her publicity wave. (Possibly both.) And, since I've already interviewed Vine at length, I now feel like a niche form of couples therapist — or Derek Batey, host of the Eighties game show Mr & Mrs. Gove is detained, so I sit for 20 minutes in his office at The Spectator taking in the bookish clutter, knackered furniture, depressing strip lights and a plastic fern in a pot. On his desk is a book of essays by Denis Healey — he's fascinated by the intellectual hinterland of Seventies politicians — and behind it is a silhouette of Churchill, the only thing he's unpacked. Although he became editor of the magazine last October, everything else, including a drinks cabinet of half-empty single malts, belonged to his predecessor, now a Times columnist, Fraser Nelson. Finally Gove, 57, materialises looking hassled, then is off again: 'So, so, so sorry, back in three minutes.' When he eventually settles beside me, looking slimmer than of late, he seems surprisingly nervous. Always articulate, 20 years in politics made him a fluent performer and navigator of interviewer bear traps, especially personal ones. But Vine's book has plunged his private self into public print and, although mainly warm and affectionate, she paints him as a prodigious drinker, social climber, absentee husband and distracted father tethered to the wheel of political ambition. Moreover, Gove must be wary that since I knew him and Vine (both former Times staff) until the mid 2010s, I've witnessed much of this for myself. So every Gove sentence is punctuated by loud, prolonged 'ahhhhhs' and 'ummmms' to buy time while he selects the precise (ie safest) word. Even so, he's incapable of dullness. When I suggest that as Spectator editor and the newly ennobled Lord Gove of Torry he has attained his final form, neither journalist nor politician but a synthesis of both, he says, 'I never expected really to be a peer, but I suppose it's a, ahhhh, sort of, ummm, capstone on a political career. It's a way of, ahhhhh, saying almost all the previous chapters have closed, but the story hasn't quite ended.' Then he adds, 'I don't know anything about golf, but being in the Lords is a bit like being a superannuated golf pro turning up to a pro-celeb tournament. Having played in the Open, now you're appearing with Russ Abbot.' I say I'm not sure how his noble friends will take that. 'Well, you know, it [the Lords] is a wonderful place, but the Commons …' Now on to the book, the Amazon status of which he's tracking so carefully — 'It's No 1 in political biographies!' — I feel he's worried it will steal the thunder of his own vaguely mooted memoir. Was it strange seeing his private life laid so bare? He says that given Vine, as a Daily Mail columnist, had already written so much about him, 'It's not quite out of a clear blue sky,' and in any case she has a right to her view: 'Sarah put up with a hell of a lot being married to me.' And while it was painful to recall upsetting moments, such as when the couple and their children were accosted on holiday in New York and told, 'Wankers like you shouldn't have kids,' none of it was 'a new shot through the heart'. Vine's thesis is that Gove strove to keep up with his far richer, posher fellow Tory modernisers, David Cameron and George Osborne, via affectations such as paying for his outer London house to have a more prestigious 0207 (ie central) phone number, learning how toffs pronounce 'Ascot' (ASS-cutt), and buying wine or cologne at fancy shops in St James's with royal warrants. Yet since in class terms David and Sam Cam never saw the parvenu Goves as equals, they were treated not as true friends but family retainers who, when no longer useful or biddable, could be coldly dispatched. • The Camerons froze me out too, but I didn't moan like Sarah Vine Although he won't explicitly contradict Vine's account — and reading her book pre-publication, he asked for no changes — he paints it as a rather broad brushstroke: 'I think the heuristic is an oversimplification of things, but it's not — what's the word? — untrue.' He claims no memory of the 0207 business, although says in London postcode terms, 'They [the Camerons] were the elves and we were the hobbits.' But his tastes were established 'before I ever got involved in politics, before I met David Cameron. And it's definitely the case that I gravitate towards, in terms of creature comforts, things that are establishment-coded. For example, you'd be more likely to find me in tweed than a denim jacket. Also, I like pedantry and … all the curious aspects of life in Britain and England.' As the adopted son of an Aberdeen fish merchant, he compares himself to Pip in Great Expectations, the lowly orphan who clambered up through society to become a gentleman. 'I think it's particularly a feature of having been adopted,' he says. 'I grew up in a house where there were books, but not many. My dad's favourite reading matter was Reader's Digest condensed books. My mum's was Catherine Cookson. I was spoddy, swotty, bookish from an early age, and so there was an element of being a cuckoo in the nest. And my sister — also adopted — is profoundly deaf. So there was a sense in my mind growing up that I had this intellect or curiosity that set me apart slightly from my family. Not in terms of feeling unloved — quite the opposite — but in terms of being slightly different as a sort of breed, you know? I had different interests, different characteristics.' (Of his biological family, whom he has never tried to trace to spare his adoptive parents pain, he will say only that it feels like an unanswered question.) Oxford contemporaries recall Gove wearing tweed suits bought in Oxfam for £1.50, already a young fogey. His politeness, self-deprecating wit and appetite for debate with those with whom he disagreed meant he was liked even by those on the left. Yet Gove had a strand of theatricality: he acted in plays, even a film, was a star debater, president of the Oxford Union and, before the term 'troll' was coined, wrote opinion pieces intended to provoke. Gove identifies with Alan Bennett, who chronicles the expanding gulf between himself and his working-class Leeds parents after he goes to Oxford. Gove's own family were proud their private-school scholarship son was entering a prestigious university, 'but, by definition, your interest in a variety of things creates a certain sort of distance. So for my dad, when he was alive, or for my mum now, having a drink would not involve a glass of wine. And drawing distinctions between bordeaux and burgundy would seem like a different life.' Fine wine, opera (especially Wagner), gambling at gentlemen's clubs and running with a fast, rich set who revelled in such pastimes were just, he says, things he enjoyed. If he were a truly determined social climber, he argues, wouldn't he feign other 'establishment-coded' passions for 'tennis, horse racing, property porn, which I have no interest in at all'? According to Vine, their inferior standing in Tory high command first became apparent when David Cameron moved Gove from education secretary to chief whip — a demotion and a pay cut to a job he hated — because Lynton Crosby's polling found his unpopularity with teachers an electoral drag. 'If anything,' Gove says, 'Sarah took it harder than I did at the time, although I definitely felt let down.' But while Vine smarted about a betrayal of friendship, Gove saw Cameron as 'a CEO saying, 'We've got to carry on making a profit and what you've been doing is not a profit centre, so I'm going to have to move you on. Otherwise the whole thing will sink. So, you know, suck it up.' ' Similarly, when Cameron decided to call the EU referendum he expected Gove to abandon his longstanding, deep-rooted Euroscepticism to support the PM's Remain position. 'His view was 'we' — as in the group of people in his leadership campaign, in modernising the Conservative Party — are a team and tribe, and the people who want us to leave the EU are the guys who generally got things wrong about how the Conservative Party needs to change. 'So you might agree with them on this issue, and it might be a really big issue, Michael, but these guys are only going to take the country and the Conservative Party back. So swallow your doubts on this. Just trust me and get with the programme.' ' But this time, Gove did not fall in line. What he regrets now, he says, is being 'insufficiently clear' to Cameron that he would campaign for Leave. 'Sarah is right,' he says, 'in that I often find it difficult — and I hope I find it easier now — when I disagree with someone and it's likely to be painful, to say what I really think.' He deferred telling Cameron his intention in the hope 'something would turn up to prevent an inevitable rupture'. Does he believe his friendship with Cameron was real, not merely political? 'Yes,' he says emphatically. But that friendship is over? 'Impaired, which is sort of a euphemism. Not the same, and I can completely understand why. He felt he'd earned the right, as the captain, to expect members of the team to recognise it was better for us all to hang together.' But Cameron, in his own memoir, accuses Gove of fundamental disloyalty, both over Brexit and for dramatically changing his mind about supporting Boris Johnson's 2016 leadership bid. Are you a disloyal person? 'No.' Do you still see Cameron? 'Infrequently, cordially. Remember we shared a cabinet table for a year. [When Cameron was Rishi Sunak's foreign secretary.] The last time I saw him was about three weeks ago, at a reception for the New Schools Network, and he couldn't have been nicer.' Gove admits his conflict-averse nature may surprise those who see him as 'a guy who crosses the road to have a fight … who can't see a controversy without joining on one side or the other'. But his distaste for shouty rows means he was ill suited either to be chief whip or (briefly and earlier) news editor at The Times. Vine, who is similarly anti-confrontational, depicts their marriage as quietly petering out rather than as a series of stormy battles. She describes how when they moved house in 2017, Gove totally disengaged, retreating to their bedroom to read, leaving his wife and mother-in-law to unpack. 'I think now I was depressed,' he says. (He'd just been sacked as justice secretary by Theresa May.) Nonetheless, it was pretty selfish. Has the book made him wish he'd done anything differently? 'Yes,' he says. 'Simply being more present. Being at home and with the family more, and then, when at home with the family, being there.' Not always distracted? 'Yes.' • Everything we've learnt from Sarah Vine's new book But isn't the truth that a ministerial career is simply more exciting than sitting at home with small children watching Peppa Pig? 'Politics is much more than a job — it's a crusade. You get involved in politics because things really matter. Now, people might say I'm deluded or that I got terrible things wrong. But you don't do it to pay the bills or because it's intellectually interesting — although it is. You're doing it to change things. So in my mind, a phone call unreturned, a submission unread, a speech unmade, a meeting postponed, were all opportunities to advance what we were doing. So if you're going to turn around how the country's prisons are run or change the school system, it's closer to being involved in a conflict than a job.' Vine and Gove's problem, he says, was lacking either extended family or a cushion of wealth to help them cope. Yet Cameron was famous for 'chillaxing', regular date nights, balancing his life. 'David was in that respect, as in so many, just a cut above,' Gove says, echoing the gushing terms in which Vine writes of Sam Cam. 'Better at politics, better at managing life. Most politicians don't have the degree of focus, self-discipline, consideration — the all in one package that David had. Whether I'm one of the worst, I don't know. But politics is littered with relationships that have undergone tremendous strain and gone wrong. And there will be different explanations for that — the male ego, the propensity of politicians to take risks, and other deformities that characterise people who are drawn into public life. But one of the things about David is that he's just a more effectively operating human being than most of us.' Gove makes government sound like dancing in The Red Shoes: passion turns into an unstoppable frenzy that ultimately destroys you. He lists the sundry pressures: the constant public scrutiny, so no MP 'can walk down the street and pick their nose'; the risk of a misspeak on breakfast TV, which 'for 24 hours — and it is only 24 hours — means you will be laughed at on social media'. Vine often notes Gove's heavy drinking, that he glugged half a bottle of whisky during the expenses scandal, was nearly sick on the Pope after a heavy night and (I've observed this at dinner myself) his unquenchable thirst for red wine. Vine told me she was once so concerned she sent him to the Mayr clinic in Austria, where he was told 'he has the liver of a baby'. Did he drink to combat stress? He swerves the question and says the reason he runs in the morning is because, 'Exercise clears mental space. I think for all sorts of people there will be different ways of coping — and I'm a Scot. But I'm not drinking at the moment.' (He does still smoke.) After the divorce in 2021, his life changed dramatically. While Vine lives with their daughter, Bea, 22, and son, Will, 20, both students, Gove moved initially to a grace and favour apartment for his own protection, since Ali Harbi Ali, the jihadist who murdered the Tory MP Sir David Amess, was found to have first stalked Gove as a potential target. Now he lives with Dr Lola Salem, 32, an Oxford lecturer in music and French. A trained opera singer who is, as a mutual friend puts it, 'even more combative and right-wing than Michael', she sounds like his perfect match. He says he'd rather be discreet about Salem. But, I say, you did snog her openly in J Sheekey fish restaurant. (A photo was passed on to the papers.) 'Manifestly,' he says. 'In my mind, the street is sniper's alley. But in a restaurant, you expect a certain amount of politeness.' Before meeting Salem at a Civic Future leadership conference, Gove tried the Bumble dating app. His experiences, he says, were fairly standard 'except for the aspect of being the notorious Michael Gove'. He had to prove to one woman it was really him by holding up a copy of that day's newspaper, hostage-style. He had a few pleasant dates without any mutual spark, but found the process 'fascinating … the pictures people choose, the descriptions they give themselves'. To the question, 'What does your online ad algorithm assume you are?' Gove replied, 'Loaded, but sadly that isn't true.' Before Vine, Gove had several serious girlfriends including the historian Amanda Foreman and Simone Kubes, now the Tory peer Baroness Finn. Even so, rumours still persist that Gove is a closeted gay man. Vine ascribes this to his many gay friends (he lived in Mayfair with the entrepreneur Ivan Massow and the former Tory MP Nick Boles) and his gay advisers, such as Henry Newman, plus his slightly camp taste for fripperies such as Geo F Trumper colognes. Gove adds, 'I also think people like the idea anyone in public life will have a kink or secret of some kind. So everyone from Peter Lilley to the current PM has had rumours spread about them. And this was one that latched onto me. I find it hilarious. But any protestation sounds like you're trying to cover something up.' Has he ever kissed a boy? 'No … except my son.' He seems happy to be outside politics, liberated from ministerial cars, using the Tube again, no longer walking with his head fixedly down. He goes into an excited reverie about the pleasures of people-watching, how amazed he is by the fashion dominance of 'athleisure wear'. Did he stand down as an MP last year because he knew when he lost Surrey Heath in the general election people would talk about 'staying up for Gove'? He admits 'that was at least one part of it', but he reckoned too that having angered over the years everyone from teachers to Boris fans he was an electoral liability. 'And also,' he says, 'I felt exhausted.' In the end, the Lib Dems won with a mighty 21 per cent swing. He says politicians rarely have legacies: 'Things are never static; there are never permanent victories.' He says he made his greatest mark in education, had a genuine zeal for reform as justice secretary, but there was too much unfinished business. He mentions how, after the Grenfell fire, he brought in the Building Safety Act. But of course, his one abiding legacy is Brexit. I ask if in 2016 he'd known how the next decade would play out, how exiting the EU would suck away so much energy from issues he cared about, whether he'd still have supported it. 'I don't know that I would have had the courage to say, 'Let's leave.' I hope I would have done.' But then he adds, more robustly, 'Some of the things which made me more pro-Brexit were the reactions to it. How the condescension towards people beforehand became more vivid and strident afterwards. 'These people didn't know what they were voting for,' or, 'Voting Leave is correlated with a lower level of education.' That only made me more pleased to have been on that side.' As for Brexit bonuses, he says, 'It's literally too soon to say. But the loudest predictions of ruin from the Remain side have certainly not come true, nor have the most extravagant predictions of benefits from Leavers.' Of his most notorious quote that 'people have had enough of experts', he says, 'I went through a period of actually thinking, 'Well, that isn't quite what I said. It's an inaccuracy. I want to try to make the case properly.' And now I think, 'That's fine. And do you know what? [His eyes gleam.] We have had enough of experts.' You're doubling down? 'Yes.' Whom do you mean by experts? 'People in organisations with three-letter acronyms. The IFS, CBI, IFP. And so on. Book-smart people who attempt to reduce the complexity of humanity to something that will fit into a PPE essay.' Can you imagine voting anything but Conservative? 'No. I used to, but now it's too late.' It's in your blood? 'Yes.' Never Reform? 'No.' I ask if he's back on speaking terms with Kemi Badenoch after having an affair with her friend, causing the break-up of a marriage. His eyes go saucer-wide and he won't comment. 'I am a huge fan of Kemi, but she's got a much more high-pressure job than me.' Do you think she's doing it well? 'Yes.' Isn't she too fighty to bring the electorate or even the Tory party with her? 'I think it's a good thing to be fighty.' He's fascinated by Blue Labour, got to know Lord Glasman during the referendum, has known Labour's campaign strategist Pat McFadden since the Nineties, when he worked for Donald Dewar, while Gove was a researcher on Scottish TV. 'I admire Morgan McSweeney. I very much admire Shabana Mahmood. I admire Wes Streeting. I don't dislike Keir Starmer at all; I just think he and Rachel Reeves have got themselves into an unnecessarily difficult situation … I'd say he's handled foreign affairs and defence better than I would have expected, and domestic politics worse.' Editing a political magazine must be fun, but doesn't he miss the power and tumult at the heart of government? 'This is a crap analogy, because I haven't been either, but it's a bit like I was a farmer and then I was called up. I served my time as a soldier and then, at the end of it, I was demobbed. Maybe it's the case that I will forever carry the PTSD from the trenches with me, but I'm now back on the farm. I really enjoy being a farmer, but there were experiences that were irreplaceable as a result of having been called up where we did things that needed to be done.' Then, as I am leaving, I note several shirts on the back of his office door. 'I need them to get changed into because I'm always spilling things down me,' Gove says. (He is noted for his lack of physical coordination.) But he does smell very nice. What is that fragrance, I ask, and he rushes to his briefcase to pull out a bottle of a Geo F Trumper cologne called Spanish Leather. 'I know!' Gove says. 'It's only going to fuel the gay rumours.' Quite Right, a new podcast from The Spectator, launches in September. Find out more at
Hamilton Spectator
6 days ago
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Podcast: Lime Ridge Mall has been sold. Now what?
More than a few people in town were caught off guard by the sale of Lime Ridge Mall the other day. The fact it was sold was interesting, but it's more than that. The news got people thinking about the place and its future. There's the mall itself. What changes might come with today's commercial climate? There had been plans for a massive development with condos and other refreshes to the mall under the previous ownership that could've helped with the city's housing crisis. What happens to those ideas now? Of course, people can purchase stuff plenty of places, not just here. And there are condos elsewhere. So why does this really matter? The answer is that the sprawling property isn't just a bunch of stores. It's also Hamilton's largest taxpayer, which makes it rather important for the city. Retail analyst Bruce Winder and Ward 7 Coun. Esther Pauls chime in on what might be to come. This podcast explores issues about the city and stories of interest to those who call it home. Every week, Spectator columnist Scott Radley will dive into hot-button topics with newsmakers, explore stories with the reporters covering them, and chat with those who add to the fabric of this community. Whether it's serious or lighthearted, Placeline Hamilton will keep you informed and engaged. Listeners can expect new episodes every Wednesday. Follow or subscribe at Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Amazon Music or wherever your favourite podcasts are found.
