Society

Sunday

Peter Oborne

Should we celebrate Balfour?

Should we celebrate Balfour? Britain has honoured the first half of Balfour’s letter, which promised to deliver a Jewish homeland. But we have miserably failed to keep our second promise to protect the civil and religious rights of Palestinians. Last month I visited East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Above the Jordan Valley I spent an afternoon with a Bedouin chief for whom Balfour has been a disaster. He told me how he tried to build a school, but the Israelis knocked it down. So he tried to construct a road to the nearest school, but the Israelis destroyed the road. They bulldozed his encampment. They have taken his water

Saturday

Peter Hitchens

If all tasteless jokes require a public apology, where will we end up?

Now, I can’t say I thought all that much of Michael Gove’s laboured joke about Harvey Weinstein and John Humphrys. But what about his apology? If all bad, tasteless jokes require a public apology, where will we end up? Everyone involved in Armando Iannucci’s dreadful, crude and trivialising film about The Death of Stalin would be saying sorry for the rest of their lives, for instance. Also, surely the people who laugh at these things ought to be made to say sorry, too? Should the BBC round up the Wigmore Hall audience who laughed at the Gove joke, and not let them go till they have provided written regrets? Those

The Spectator

Gordon Brown’s memoirs show he is good at blowing his own trumpet – but nothing else

Gordon Brown has pitched his memoirs as the honest confessions of a decent man. He failed to win the one general election he fought, he asserts, due to a personality that was unsuited to an age of Twitter and emotional displays. His is the Walter Mondale response to failure — the former US vice president said of his defeat in the 1984 presidential election: ‘I think you know I’ve never really warmed up to television, and in fairness to television, it’s never really warmed up to me.’ Admitting to poor media skills is not genuine self-examination on the part of Brown, more an attempt to shift the blame for his

Friday

Edie Lush

Making money by doing good needn’t be impossible

‘Impact investing’ — the idea of doing good and making money at the same time — is reaching a tipping point of acceptance. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals have provided a blueprint that is pushing impact investing into the financial mainstream. Consider a few of our planet’s economic challenges. According to the Business and Sustainable Development Commission (a group of 35 corporate chiefs and civil society leaders) violence and armed conflict cost the world the equivalent of 9 per cent of global GDP in 2014 alone. Lost biodiversity and eco-system damage cost another 3 per cent. Meanwhile, median wages in developed countries have been stagnant for 30 years and there’s

Ayesha Hazarika

If MPs aren’t sure how to behave young women, here are some rules

The tsunami of sordid stories about sexual harassment has left most of Westminster – and indeed the country – feeling queasy and uneasy. As a former Labour adviser, my phone has been ringing off the hook over the last few days. Advisers past and present, MPs and journalists are all reflecting on their own experiences and soul searching about a culture which clearly normalised sexual harassment, bullying and abuse of power. But the key question is: what next? It would be a tragedy if this collective outpouring of indignation and condemnation created a media storm, one high profile resignation and little else. There has got to be a genuine attempt

Sabuhi Gard

Can making home improvements really add value to your home?

‘Adding value’ to your home has always been a staple manoeuvre for any astute homeowner – but it is proving more popular now than ever. This is due to a number of reasons: record numbers of homeowners staying put, the increasing costs of moving home and a general loss of confidence in the UK housing market (one in five British adults surveyed by the Halifax bank expect house prices will fall in the next year). According to a new study by Gocompare.com, 43% of homeowners have carried out major work on their properties in the last 5 years, from updating bathrooms and kitchens, investing in energy efficient measures such as new central

Patrick Alexander

Twenty years on, Brass Eye is still the best – as this film of unreleased material proves

‘Drug use among children has for many an education and with obvious alarm for both parents on the increase almost yearly.’ Try reading that again. Maybe in the style of Huw Edwards. By all means, try it a third time but it’ll only give you a headache. It has the appearance of sense. It makes the same noises as normal sentence. But it’s not normal. It’s a Brass Eye sentence. Last night, at the Curzon cinema in Soho, 20 years after Chris Morris’s comedy masterpiece was first broadcast, there was a sell-out crowd who wanted more. And another sell-out crowd at 9.15. They were there to see Oxide Ghosts – 60

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Martin Luther’s genius was to teach us that feeble faith is enough

I sometimes identify with something that Evelyn Waugh once said. A friend asked him how come he claimed to be a Christian, being such a cantankerous curmudgeon, such a master of cruel wit. Well, Waugh replied, imagine how horrid I’d be if I didn’t try to be a Christian. There’s something authentically Christian in that answer – an admission that we can never be very successful Christians. Because it demands so much, this religion is an awkward commitment, full of tension and ambiguity. Because it demands so much, we can be honest about our failure. For me, this capacity for honesty is crucial. If I felt there was no room

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 2 November 2017

Equality of outcome Sir: Rod Liddle exposes some deep flaws in the way children are prepared to play their part in adulthood (‘The kids aren’t all right’, 28 October). But one in particular merits further analysis. He is right to say that teachers’ imperative is to raise the D grade students at GCSE to a C, as a school is judged on the number of A-C grade passes it secures. So all the best teachers and all the extra resources are focused on the D grade children. An A grade student who could, with a bit of help, achieve an A* and thus begin their journey to Cambridge is ignored,

The Spectator

Barometer | 2 November 2017

Lynx on the loose — A Eurasian lynx escaped from a zoo in Wales, pre-empting plans to introduce six of the animals to Kielder Forest in Northumberland. The animal was once native to Britain, becoming extinct around the year 700, earlier than the wolf (possibly 1290) or the brown bear (around year 1000). — However, in continental Europe and near-Asia, numbers have been growing since a low of 700 between 1930 and 1950. There are now believed to be 50,000, spread from Uzbekistan in the east to Germany in the west. Of the smaller Iberian lynx, restricted to Spain and Portugal, numbers fell to 100 in 2002 but now stand

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 2 November 2017

Home A great ferment of accusations of sexual impropriety was made against people in Parliament and out of it. Bex Bailey, a Labour party worker, said she was raped, not by an MP, at a party event in 2011 and a senior Labour official discouraged her from reporting it. Jared O’Mara MP had the Labour whip withdrawn while claims were investigated that he had called a woman he met ‘an ugly bitch’. Tulip Siddiq, a Labour MP, said that cases of sexual misconduct cases at Westminster could run into hundreds. Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, was even driven to apologise publicly for putting his hand on the knee of

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 2 November 2017

Poor Gordon Brown. He embodies the problem traditionally associated with being male, which is that our sex finds it difficult to understand human feelings. Mr Brown recognises, he says in his forthcoming autobiography, that he was not suited to a touchy-feely age. Perhaps it was just as well, because once men, particularly Members of Parliament, start touching and feeling they get into even more trouble, and discover — often too late — that not everyone they touch and feel welcomes it. They are, you might say, groping in the dark. Once upon a time, a high percentage of women understood this defect and usually forgave the opposite sex. But now

Dot Wordsworth

Medicine

John Farquhar of Salisbury writes to say he is irritated. He is not just irritated, he has long been long irritated, which is either a virtue or a vice, depending on the irritant. In his case, the grain of sand in the oyster is the pronunciation ‘by those in the medical fraternity’ of medicine as ‘medcin’. He’d like to know whether this is an affectation — French perhaps — or whether it has some justification. Mr Farquhar’s name may not be irrelevant here. It’s a good Scottish name, pronounced ‘farkar’, deriving from Celtic elements meaning ‘man’ and ‘dear’. Now in Scotland, even 100 years ago, the predominant pronunciation of medicine

Taki

High life | 2 November 2017

I have a message for the London mayor, Sadiq Khan: you and your policies stink! While the fuzz are busy scanning the internet for racist or sexist material, crime in the capital is up by six per cent over the past 12 months and the police — handicapped by PC orders from above — have made 20 per cent fewer arrests. Statistics show youth violence and murder soaring in London, with the latter up by 84 per cent on last year. But here’s a story that’s not a statistic. Last week, my little girl Lolly was viciously attacked and robbed near the World’s End pub on the King’s Road after

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 2 November 2017

The French countryside around here is teeming with wild boar. They visit the shack at night to eat the pansies and nose up the flower-beds, and their violent flare-ups over a disputed morsel wake us up. Standing about in the lane the other night, blocking it, was a 25-strong gathering of them. They ranged from cheerful little tackers to daft adolescents to suspicious old bruisers. And when we take the old dog on her daily walk, we hear them thrashing about in the tinder-dry undergrowth on either side of the track. Our neighbours advise taking a stick with us at this time of year, to fend off an attack, but

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 2 November 2017

Q. Twice in one week I have been found unready for my guests. Occasion one: in the garden, finishing my lunch. A knock at the front door. Standing there, smiling expectantly, a groomed guest to play bridge at 2 p.m. The time was 1.40 p.m. Occasion two: upstairs, changing for a 2 p.m. meeting at my home. A knock at the front door. I let my two guests in, still wearing my dressing gown. The time: 1.40 p.m. Your ruling, please. Is there a too-early time for someone to arrive? — Aggrieved hostess, Chichester A. No one should arrive even one minute early. Regarding time-keeping, we should all take our lead

Melissa Kite

Real life | 2 November 2017

‘The colour of this kitchen is inspired by a blend of heather, bracken and the mountains of the Isle of Skye,’ says the brochure. ‘Oh, sweet Lord,’ I think. ‘I just want a kitchen.’ Five months into the renovation and my fondest wish is simply for it all to be over before Christmas. But for that to happen I must stop browsing endless catalogues making preposterous claims about MDF units evoking the magic of the Isle of Skye and order a kitchen from the only place that doesn’t threaten to bankrupt me. I end up in a trade joinery centre where the gamekeeper has a mate, and the keeper stands

Toby Young Toby Young

How I was turned into a free speech martyr

I had the unusual experience last Sunday of appearing on a panel to defend free speech having been the victim of censorship 24 hours earlier. As Claire Fox, the chair of the event, said: ‘We are lucky enough to have our very own free speech martyr on the panel.’ Martyr is putting it a bit strongly, but I was ‘no platformed’ as a result of expressing a verboten point of view. What made it quite upsetting is that the organisation responsible was Teach First, an education charity that aims to recruit top university graduates into teaching and which I have always supported. Indeed, it is because I am sympathetic to

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 2 November 2017

Call me middle-aged, but the days when I enjoyed playing bridge all night are long gone — which is why I opted out of last weekend’s 24-hour marathon at the Young Chelsea Bridge Club. Thankfully, 27 brave pairs did play, starting at midday on Saturday, and ending at midday on Sunday (without a break). By all accounts, no one struggled — apart from poor David Muller, who had heroically offered to direct. Without the stimulation of playing, he fell asleep at his desk a few times — meaning the usual cry of ‘Director!’, became a crescendo of cries: ‘Director! Director! Director!!’. Four of the ‘pairs’ chose to enter as a

Raymond Keene

Chigorin lives

Nigel Short, who challenged Garry Kasparov for the world title in 1993, has made a reputation for employing slightly offbeat openings in order to derail opponents who are unused to non-standard situations. As part of his repertoire, Short has a penchant for the ancient Chigorin Defence, and has even employed a version of this in a game against Kasparov himself. Earlier this month Short triumphed handsomely in the Negros Open in the Philippines, taking first prize with 8 points from 9, well clear of the runners-up, Karen Grigoryan and Nguyen Duc Hoa, who finished on 7. In round one, Short wheeled out the Chigorin to great effect. Fronda–Short: Negros Open,