Society

Friday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Are old white men really to blame for climate change denial?

Funnily enough, you don’t come across too many pieces in the Guardian blaming black people for crime or women for bad driving. The newspaper would perhaps consider itself a pioneer in trying to drive out racial and gender stereotypes from daily life. It seems a different matter, though, when it comes to the inadequacies of white men, or, more specifically, elderly white men, to throw in a bit of ageism as well. An extraordinary piece in today’s Guardian tries to link what it calls ‘climate denial’ to race, gender and age.      Let’s leave aside this rather oddly-expressed phenomenon —  I have yet to meet, or even hear of, anyone who denies

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The Uber ban is a pitiful howl against a changing economy

Eight days. That’s how long you have left to enjoy Uber if you live in the capital. Transport for London, a body that should really replace ‘for’ with ‘against’, says it will not renew Uber’s operating licence when it expires on September 30.  It’s a victory for the cabbie lobby, which cannot match the private hire app on price or convenience. How much easier to hector government into shutting down the competition. It’s a win, too, for fans of over-regulation, who have been out to get Uber for some time now. They are aficionados of rigidity and Uber was frustratingly fluid, its business model less susceptible to the impositions dreamed

Steerpike Steerpike

The new test for true Corbynistas: do you support the Uber ban?

Forget power to the people, today it’s power to black cab drivers! Transport for London has announced that Uber will not be issued a new private hire licence, with London mayor Sadiq Khan ‘welcoming’ the decision. This means no more Uber in London – though the decision will be challenged in the courts. So, as 40,000 drivers worry about their income and 3.5 million Uber customers consider the effect on both their finances and travel plans, take heart that true socialists will at least be happy. Earlier this year, Labour’s Rebecca Long-Bailey said using Uber isn’t morally acceptable – and today Paul Mason has crowned the decision a ‘brilliant victory’ for the Labour movement: Brilliant

Thursday

Taki

High life | 21 September 2017

As everyone who stands up when a lady enters the room knows, the once sacrosanct rules of civility throughout the West have all but disappeared. The deterioration in manners has been accelerated by the coming of the devil’s device, the dehumanising iPhone, as well as by phoney ‘art’ and artists such as Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons. I don’t know why, but Warhol is a bugbear of mine. He always treated me politely, featured me favourably in his magazine Interview, and referred to me in a good light in his diaries. Perhaps me being violent back then — he headlined a cover story with a reference to me being a

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 21 September 2017

I got off the plane at Changi still pleasantly sedated by Xanax, passed through the ‘nothing to declare’ channel, and there, waiting with my name on a signboard, was my guide for the next four days. Joy was short, middle-aged and had a low centre of gravity. She was Chinese, she said, pleased about it. A minibus and driver were waiting at the kerb. ‘Get in!’ said Joy. I did as I was told. We drove to the centre of Singapore just in time for the Garden Rhapsody light and sound show. ‘Look! Supertrees! Can you see them?’ she said. You couldn’t miss them. Towering above and around us were

Melissa Kite

Real life | 21 September 2017

BT have just put the phone down on me for asking them to stop sending me junk mail, which is a bit much really. I rang the customer services number to ask if they would please unsubscribe me from all the emails they’ve been sending since I became a wifi customer of theirs. ‘You’re driving me mad with these emails,’ I explained, and truly I was at the end of my tether. Every day, the same message arrives in my inbox, warning me I have only days left to take advantage of a special offer on BT Sport. I wouldn’t mind but one of the things I spent countless precious

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 21 September 2017

I’m writing this from Stuart Wheeler’s beautiful villa in Tangier, in the hills just above the bay, where for a week every September he hosts a high-stake rubber bridge game. There are sometimes one or two new faces, but usually it’s the lucky old regulars who return, like Patrick Lawrence, Alexander Allfrey, and none other than the great Andrew Robson. This is my sixth visit, and I love it: the company, the food, the booze, the distant call of the muezzins. Of course, Andrew’s presence adds an extra layer of magic: it’s a treat to play with and against him, even if he does win our money, and even more

Dot Wordsworth

Shocking bad hat

My husband complains that the disposition of teenagers in London is one of mocking hostility. I seem to suffer less from such encounters, and console him by saying it was ever thus. In the 1790s ostlers’ boys would shout ‘Quoz!’ to disconcert an uncertain-looking passer-by. It was a word of doubtful meaning, perhaps connected with quiz. A generation later, young loafers would call out ‘Oh, what a shocking bad hat!’ — enough to instil doubt in the most carefully dressed shopman or clerk. Neither men nor women were seen out in public without a hat. The locus classicus for the phrase is in a book with a title perhaps more

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 21 September 2017

Q. Last year my husband and I stayed with a much-loved, but slightly airy-fairy friend in her house in Tuscany. Flights, tips, presents, a hire car and house-sitters were already costing us rather a lot, but she insisted we went out to (quite expensive) local restaurants for lunch four days out of five to experience the regional cuisine. She let my husband pay each time. I felt this was overdoing it, especially as we had to pay for her, her husband and her three adult children, and they have had plenty of hospitality when staying with us in England. Mary, can you rule? Moreover how can we avoid it happening

Toby Young Toby Young

The mystery of socialism’s enduring appeal

One of the mysteries of our age is why socialism continues to appeal to so many people. Whether in the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia or Venezuela, it has resulted in the suppression of free speech, the imprisonment of political dissidents and, more often than not, state-sanctioned mass murder. Socialist economics nearly always produce widespread starvation, something we were reminded of last week when the President of Venezuela urged people not to be squeamish about eating their rabbits. That perfectly captures the trajectory of nearly every socialist experiment: it begins with the dream of a more equal society and ends with people eating their pets.

Raymond Keene

Bronstein’s legacy

Last week I focused on the games and somewhat tragic career of the ingenious David Bronstein. Before his time the King’s Indian Defence was viewed with a certain degree of suspicion, not least because of the early and gigantic concessions it makes to White in terms of occupation of central terrain. It was Bronstein who resurrected and then espoused that previously neglected defence, paving the way for later practitioners, such as Tal, Fischer and Kasparov. Nowadays,the KID has become one of the main highways of opening theory, along which both grandmaster and neophyte may travel, secure in the knowledge that the defence is essentially sound. A new book, The King’s

Raymond Keene

no. 475

White to play. This position is from Jobava-Nepomniachtchi, FIDE World Cup, Tbilisi 2017. Can you spot White’s winning coup? Answers to me or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk by Tuesday 26 September 2017. 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 … Rg1+ Last week’s winner Julian Pope, South-West London

The Spectator

Letters | 21 September 2017

Christians betrayed Sir: Michael Karam’s article (Ya Allah!, 16 September) is timely. Many Westerners seem to be unaware that there is such a person as a Christian Arab (a Christian who speaks Arabic as their first language), yet there are millions. At the time of the Crusades, Christians were a majority in the Near East. In 1914 about 25 per cent of the Near and Middle East was still Christian. The percentage is now much lower because events have forced massive Christian emigration, especially to North America. The serious consequences of this ignorance were not only felt by the Christian Iraqi removed from a flight after another passenger heard him

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 21 September 2017

Home Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, issued a manifesto for a ‘glorious future’ for Britain outside the European Union as ‘the greatest country on Earth’. This was seen as a challenge to Theresa May, the Prime Minister. People like Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, and Kenneth Clarke, the Tory arch-Remainer, said he should have been sacked. Mr Johnson’s lengthy piece in the Daily Telegraph came six days before a big speech on the subject promised by Mrs May, in Florence, before the next round of Brexit negotiations. He declared that Britain should pay nothing for access to the EU single market. Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, went on

The Spectator

A fallen idol

Few world leaders have fallen from grace as quickly as Aung San Suu Kyi. The Nobel prize-winner, who also holds the US Congressional Gold Medal for her bravery and peaceful resistance to Burma’s military junta, now stands accused of aiding and excusing the suppression — even the genocide — of the Rohingya Muslims, more than 400,000 of whom in recent weeks have fled from Burma, which elected her leader nearly two years ago. There have been calls from her fellow Nobel laureates for her peace prize to be annulled. The UN has described action against the Rohingya as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’ and complained that its observers have

Pabulum

2328: Second coming

6A and 42 (whose unchecked letters give IDEA) combine to suggest the title of a novel. Remaining unclued lights give the forenames (in one case a nickname) of six of its characters, whose surname (5) will appear diagonally in the completed grid and must be shaded. Elsewhere, ignore two accents.   Across 1    Interceder tried maxi getting dressed (9) 9    Sloth-like nursemaids? (4) 11    Decorum in good session with spirits (10) 12    Terrier requiring food (4) 14    Drink Charles imbibed as dyspepsia cure (6) 18    Gross aristo snubbed knight (4) 20    Kay sat fiddling with classy kimonos (7) 21    Decay infecting maple pedestal (7) 23    Content of burrito cooked in

Sabuhi Gard

When is the best time to exit the London property market?

Owning a property in Central London is a dream for some, but a burden for others – if you are an accidental landlord, that is. An accidental landlord? But that I mean you were lucky enough to buy a property 20 years ago, then decided to move out of London – and were left wondering what to do with it. Rent it out? Sell it? Only a mad man would want to sell a property in London? Right. Wrong. Recent figures from property website Rightmove showed that this year, asking prices for homes in London have recorded their biggest annual fall so far this decade – having dropped on average by £18,000

The Spectator

to 2325: Hard task

The theme was PIGS.   First prize J. E. Green, St Albans, Hertfordshire Runners-up Michael Moran, Penrith, Cumbria; John M. Brown, Rolleston on Dove, Staffordshire

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Cabinet’s Brexit negotiation

Theresa May will give her Brexit speech in Florence today safe in the knowledge that she finally has the full backing of her Cabinet – at least, until the warm prosecco comes out at party conference. After a difficult week, Cabinet ministers today met on Thursday a two-and-a-half hour meeting where approval was given. In an attempt to demonstrate unity, the two poles of the Cabinet’s Brexit debate – Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson – left No 10 together. Whether this new Cabinet unity can last is another matter entirely. It’s expected that May will use the speech to propose a transitional deal with the EU of up to two years