Society

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Philip Hammond’s driverless car U-turn

On Sunday, Philip Hammond took both No 10 and No 11 by surprise with his interview on the Andrew Marr show. As well as announcing that there are ‘no unemployed people’, he promised to launch Budget week by posing in a driverless car, on a visit to the West Midlands today. Given that it doesn’t take much to work out that a beleaguered Chancellor about to deliver his budget pictured in a driverless car is not a metaphor for success, people soon took to social media to ask who had approved such an idea. It turns out no-one. As the Times reports today, aides had explicitly ruled out such a stunt. There was

Sunday

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

What we need is a Freedom of Uninformation Act

One dietary fad that never made sense to me was the campaign against the consumption of eggs. Now call me an old Darwinist, but here we are having spent a few million years evolving into a bald monkey with prehensile thumbs, perfectly optimised as an egg-stealing machine, and yet the digestion of an omelette somehow came as a horrible shock to our cardiovascular system. What next, I wondered. Perhaps they’ll discover that 45 per cent of cows are allergic to grass, or that sharks are largely sea-food intolerant. And it seems that the opprobrium directed at eggs was mostly wrong. It was based on the assumption that, since some cholesterol

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: the inspired awfulness of Dan Brown

The latest comp was a nod to the curiously enjoyable awfulness of the wildly rich, bestselling author Dan Brown’s much-mocked prose. You were invited to submit a short story in the style of the master. Geoffrey K. Pullum, professor of general linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, nails it when he describes Brown’s style as ‘not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad’. Here, for the uninitiated, is an oft-cited example of one of the most deliciously toe-curling sentences from Deception Point: ‘Overhanging her precarious body was a jaundiced face whose skin resembled a sheet of parchment paper punctured by two emotionless eyes.’ It was a nicely

Toby Young Toby Young

Can Boris Johnson’s dad avoid saying anything inflammatory on I’m A Celebrity?

Crikey Moses! Stanley Johnson has been cast as the token pensioner in the new series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! At 77, he will be 27 years older than the next oldest person in the jungle-based reality show, 50-year-old ex-footballer Dennis Wise. He cheerfully admits he has never watched the programme before, which comes as no surprise. If he had known what he was letting himself in for, would he have signed up? I don’t just mean the routine indignities, such as chewing on turkey testicles or washing down a plate of live cockroaches with a beaker of blended emu liver. Or the discomfort of enduring a

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Is Prince Charles so fond of Islam because he distrusts Jews?

It has long been my belief that whereas the quality of gentiles drawn to Judaism is very high (Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, myself), the dregs are drawn to Islam. And leaving aside the dozy broads who gravitate to it for kinky reasons after watching one too many Turkish Delight ads (Vanessa Redgrave, Lauren Booth), there is something about this religion which attracts the very weakest of Western men. We think of those often half-witted types who learn to build a bomb online. Then there are the imam-huggers of the left who never met a wife-beating mad mullah they didn’t like. A lot of the reason left-wing men seem to have

Saturday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The hidden danger of electric cars

Wasn’t the whole point of electric vehicles supposed to be to civilise our cities, making them safer and less-polluted places to live? I just wonder what the mung bean-eaters who act as cheerleaders for the industry are making of the latest performance by Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla. Launching his latest vehicle, a £150,000 ($200,000) roadster which apparently does 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds, he was asked what the point of the vehicle was. He replied: “to deliver a hardcore smackdown to gasoline cars”.   A hardcore smackdown, eh? I am not sure that is quite what environment secretary Michael Gove had in mind in July when he announced that,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Is tax avoidance always wrong?

In the argument about tax avoidance, people feel very strongly, yet it is hard to define wrong behaviour. We all know that tax evasion, being illegal, is wrong. But what tax behaviour is legal, yet wrong? Take a deliberately trivial example. Safety riding hats carry no VAT if they are sold as children’s hats. No law says that only children may buy or wear them, and no law limits their size. So it is commonplace for adults, without any dishonesty, to buy children’s riding hats for themselves to avoid the VAT. I struggle to see this as immoral. Is it just a matter of scale, then? Is it all right

Friday

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

There is no simple fix for Britain’s ‘broken’ housing market

You’re probably sick of hearing that Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis – we’ve all heard it said so many times. Over the last few months, Theresa May has been focusing on the topic; claiming that our housing market is ‘broken’, promising to take ‘personal charge’ of the problem. ‘We must get back into the business of building the good quality new homes for people who need them most,’ she said yesterday. On the face of it, the latest figures released by the ONS seem positive. They show that housing supply in England saw a net increase of 217,350 last year; a 15% increase on the previous

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Read what The Spectator thought of the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction

Last night saw the award of this year’s £30,000 Baillie Gifford Prize – the country’s most respected prize for non-fiction – to David France’s How To Survive A Plague (Picador). You can read Peter Tatchell’s Spectator review of this account of the ‘plague years’ of the Aids crisis, and the extraordinary work that activists did to change the medical establishment’s treatment of the disease, here. Mr France’s book headed a strong shortlist. The Spectator’s reviews are all linked below. The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason, Christopher de Bellaigue (The Bodley Head) Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe, Kapka Kassabova (Granta Books) An Odyssey: A Father,

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

I love dogs but should we really give them medals for bravery?

The oddest thing about the Dickin medal awarded to a dog called Mali today, and given to animals from carrier pigeons to horses for ‘conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving or associated with any branch of the Armed Forces or Civil Defence Units’, is that it was instituted in 1943. Back then, there were umpteen examples of animals doing useful war work, including pigeons such as Winkie and Tyke (six of the first seven citations were to them) who helped rescue stranded airmen, and a mongrel called Tyke who sniffed out a number of Blitz victims. Naturally, there are bonds of affection and gratitude between the humans who

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Alekhine’s anniversaries

Alexander Alekhine was one of the two world champions (the other being his fellow native Russian Mikhail Botvinnik) who won, lost and regained the supreme title. In fact 2017 represents the 90th anniversary of Alekhine’s victory over the Cuban world champion José Raúl Capablanca at Buenos Aires 1927, and the 80th anniversary of his revenge match against Max Euwe, played on the Dutchman’s home turf, where Alekhine retrieved the title he had lost in 1935. On re-examining Alekhine’s games recently, I was struck by the proliferation of queen sacrifices which characterise his vigorous creative approach, several against the leading exponents of the day. Next week I shall continue with further examples

Raymond Keene

no. 483

White to play. This position is from Alekhine-Supico, Blindfold Simultaneous, Lisbon 1941. Can you spot White’s remarkable finish, which is based on an idea first played by Frank Marshall in 1912? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 21 November or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Qxf7+ Last week’s winner Andrew Gilmour, Cheltenham

Toby Young Toby Young

It’s a jungle in there, Stanley

Crikey Moses! Stanley Johnson has been cast as the token pensioner in the new series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! At 77, he will be 27 years older than the next oldest person in the jungle-based reality show, 50-year-old ex-footballer Dennis Wise. He cheerfully admits he has never watched the programme before, which comes as no surprise. If he had known what he was letting himself in for, would he have signed up? I don’t just mean the routine indignities, such as chewing on turkey testicles or washing down a plate of live cockroaches with a beaker of blended emu liver. Or the discomfort of enduring a

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 16 November 2017

Q. My husband, who used to be away on business most of the time, now works from home and has become bossy and dictatorial. He spends a good deal of his day advising me how the house could be better run. This is bringing tensions into our previously harmonious relationship. How can I put a stop to his interference in a delicate way without him feeling that I’ve ceased to respect his opinions? PS: the house already runs like clockwork. — Name and address withheld A. Why not act daft and agree with your husband that, since you seem to be less efficient than him, he should direct the running

The Spectator

The next Iraq war

After the most intensive street-by-street combat since 1945, Isis’s so-called caliphate is no more. Last weekend, the Iraqi government won what should be the final battle and is now preparing to say that the war is ended. The jihadis still have the odd redoubt — but they have been forced out of Mosul and Raqqa after an intensive coalition campaign led by America and Britain. Donald Trump is unlikely to emulate his predecessor-but-one by appearing in front of a banner saying ‘Mission Accomplished’. Theresa May probably won’t deliver such a statement either. Indeed, the war against Isis has barely been mentioned by either politician, even though our involvement has been

Dot Wordsworth

Call out

The inventor of the verse form known as the clerihew, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, had a way with this seemingly simple vehicle. Take this example: ‘Sir Christopher Wren / Said, ‘I am going to dine with some men. / If anybody calls / Say I am designing St Paul’s.’ My interest just now is with call. Bentley meant ‘call at a house’. The default meaning now, I think, is ‘to telephone’, a usage that has largely displaced ring or phone. But call is also very productive of phrasal verbs: call off, call for, call in, call on, call upon or call out. Call out is fashionable at the moment, when virtue signalling and

Taki

High life | 16 November 2017

What is left to say after the church shooting in the Home of the Depraved? Those killed in Texas included a toddler, several children and eight members of one family at prayer. It is almost too hard to fathom. I’ve been here for six weeks and three mass-murder sprees have taken place, two perpetrated by deranged male shooters, the other by a disciple of Allah from Uzbekistan, who unfortunately survived a cop’s bullet and demanded an Isis flag be raised in his hospital room. Nice. At least that ghastly man Jann Wenner has not plastered the Uzbek scumbag on the cover of Rolling Stone. After the Boston marathon massacre, he

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 16 November 2017

At ten to eleven we filed outside the church and assembled in the graveyard around a small cenotaph commemorating the dead of two wars with a dozen unmistakably local names. As we shuffled out, we hoped that the rain would hold off — no offence of course to any of the names on the cenotaph who copped it at Passchendaele. We were about 30 souls, combined age about 2,500. At 60, I was the second youngest by a decade or so, and I was attached by the hand to grandson Oscar, aged seven. The rain couldn’t decide whether or not to hold off. Oscar and I sheltered from the horizontal

Melissa Kite

Real life | 16 November 2017

The incident I am about to recount I make no judgment about, other than that I believe it tells us where we are in the cycle of civilisation and that it is helping me orientate myself. A friend of mine was walking her dogs at the same beauty spot I walk my spaniels, when a car screeched into the car park sending children scurrying for their lives. My friend ran up and knocked on the window and the window was wound down to reveal a man in a dress and blond wig. My friend said, ‘What are you doing? You could have killed a child. Slow down!’ And the man

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 16 November 2017

I spent last weekend glued to Bridge Base Online, watching the 16th European Champions Cup taking place in Latvia, and waving my little St George’s flag. England’s Allfrey team produced some spellbinding bridge, and after 11 rounds they topped the round-robin. Unfortunately, they went on to lose the semi-final to Norway, and ended up coming a disappointing fourth (the Netherlands won). Still, that was the best performance by England’s team in the history of the competition. All six pairs played superbly — but Alexander Allfrey and Andrew Robson in particular were on fire. I enjoyed this slam against Monaco: (see above). East (Pierre Zimmerman) opened a weak 2♠, and West