Society

In springtime in our family, we always have the same old argument: where should we go on our summer holiday (I know, I know — we should have booked it months ago). Every year I make the same suggestion, and every year I’m shouted down. ‘Let’s go back to West Middlewick Farm,’ I say, more in hope than expectation. ‘No! There’s nothing to do there!’ reply my wife and teenage children. ‘But that’s exactly why I like it,’ I protest, before we go and book an overpriced villa in Spain or Italy. This year, however, I’m feeling a bit more optimistic. The exchange rate is rotten, the British weather is

As humans we are endlessly called upon to make decisions based on the information we have, and we are defined by those decisions – as individuals, in business and as a society. Living in the ‘Age of Information’, one would hope that people’s decisions would be more informed and less biased, more based in fact and less on emotion. But instead it seems increasingly that the opposite is true. At what stage did the knowledge economy go from boom to bust? The Age of Information seems to have proliferated into the ‘Age of Information Overload’, with a torrent of data being disseminated indiscriminately to vast, unknown audiences. In an increasingly

London has historically been the place to go for young creative types. These days, renting damp warehouses and staying in bad relationships just because being in a couple makes life cheaper are among the many grim choices some make just to be there. But they wouldn’t have it any other way. The thought of settling in a parochial university town or returning home to Little Borington is the closest thing to death imaginable. The peak age for moving to London is 23, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – shortly after graduation. Young Londoners accept high housing costs relative to pay as a trade-off for fun and potential.

For the latest competition you were invited to take inspiration from the recently published Walt Whitman’s Guide to Manly Health and Training and supply an extract from a similar guide penned by another well-known writer. While Whitman extols the benefits of stale bread and fresh air and cautions against eating between meals, Fiona Pitt-Kethley’s John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester advocates a rather less ascetic approach: ‘Swiving’s the only manly exercise/ To tone the glutes and work the inner thighs/ No bench presses, go press a wench instead./ Roll up your yoga mat and go to bed.’ In a small but distinguished entry Mike Morrison takes £30; his fellow winners are

I would direct you to Liddle passim for why we are now in this state of chaos. Even if Theresa May hadn’t run the worst election campaign in living memory (again, passim) she still wouldn’t have increased her majority by much at all. I knew that as a fact, an absolute certainty, on the day the election was called, and explained why, no matter that the polls were showing a landslide. The decision to call an election was arrogant and complacent — and so was the subsequent campaign. None of us may want the additional chaos of a leadership election, but nonetheless, there should be one. She is, as I

With the election dominating the news, this week I focus on the strongest chess player to have entered Parliament. Marmaduke Wyvill was MP for Richmond Yorkshire, and he won the silver medal in the very first international tournament, which was organised by Howard Staunton to coincide with the Great Exhibition of London in 1851. Stylistically, Wyvill was a student of Staunton, and he favoured the king’s side bishop fianchetto and a delayed action to challenge the centre from the flanks. Notes based on those by Imre Konig in Chess from Morphy to Botvinnik (Hardinge Simpole).   Marmaduke Wyvill-Lowe: London 1851; English Opening   1 c4 e5 2 e3 c5 3 Nc3