Society

Thursday

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2323: Alphabetical jigsaw

Clues are presented in alphabetical order of their solutions. The solutions have then to be fitted into the grid, jigsaw-fashion. A    Striving for scope backing number one (8) A    Tense lover short of money (6) B     Child’s first book and game (10) C     Mark in vehicle beside French joiner (5) C     Made money around outhouse (6) C     Work together and endlessly train before start of tournament (5) C     He always gets the sack (7) C     Long knives trimmed members (7) D    Could be an oxide, almost, or toxic liquid (6) D    Had Cressida in charge mixing sugars (13) D    Medic with work in decline (4) E     Very odd, as always,

Sabuhi Gard

The financial crisis, ten years on

It has been ten years since the start of the global financial crisis, and much has been written about whether the crisis of 2007 has changed the financial system… whether lessons have been learned, and so on. Frankly, lessons haven’t been learned and if the UK doesn’t play its cards right, there could be another financial crisis looming thanks to Brexit. A ‘brain drain’ has already started in the City of London’s financial district, UK house prices are slowing down as many high net worth individuals (HNIW) head back to Europe, and you can’t even buy a cheap bar of chocolate because of Brexit. Pass me the ‘chocolate orange’? Perhaps

John Blake

Ignore the scaremongering – A-level reform was badly needed

No one receiving their A-level results this morning can fail to be aware that the first of the coalition government’s more rigorous exams were sat this summer. Whatever their individual results, students – and parents – should be pleased with a new system which is more reliable and a better preparation for university. They should make sure to ignore the scaremongering from those opposed to the whole education reform project of recent years. That’s not to say that students and parents are all delighted with their experience of these reformed qualifications. There have been frequent complaints of insufficient support from exam boards, a lack of sample assessment materials and inconsistencies in the content of questions.

The Spectator

to 2320: Crossings Out

When BRIDGE is added to the unclued Across lights and FORD to the unclued Down lights (including each of the three components in 1 Down), they all become names of British towns. First prize  Alan Hook, Beverley, Yorkshire Runners-up  Chris Butler, Borough Green, Kent; Peter and Jeannie Chamberlain, Rushden, Northamptonshire

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: The real modern slavery

On this week’s episode, we’re looking at whether the ‘sex trade’ is a form of sanitised modern slavery. We also ask whether the Tory leadership battle is a phoney war and if university education is going downhill. In this week’s magazine Julie Bindel looks at the sex trade, decrying what she sees as an attempt to suffocate the essential human rights of women by supporting the legalisation of prostitution. Are we too soft on this issue? And are the women involved trapped in a form of modern slavery? Julie joins the podcast to discuss, along with Rachel Moran, author of Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution. As Julie writes: “In the midst of all the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cricket’s traditionalists should embrace the day-night Test

Stereotypes die hard. Consider the summer game, for instance. It is axiomatic to complain that cricket is a desperately conservative game, run by fuddy-duddies, inimitably hostile to reform or change or modernity.  If anything the pad is on the other leg; there are times when cricket’s rush to attract new audiences leaves one suspecting that the game’s presiding officers think the sport’s current audience is part of the problem. If you like things the way they are and have been you’re an obstacle to progress. Sometimes, at least in darker moments, you think cricket’s administrators are so caught up in and obsessed with the need to attract new fans they’d

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Books Podcast: Robert Lowell’s centenary

For this week’s podcast, in celebration of Robert Lowell’s centenary year, I’m joined by the critic and writer Jonathan Raban — who not only knew this titan among American poets of the last century, but lived in his basement, and found himself contributing to literary history when Lowell took to consulting him, on the hoof, as to how to revise his sonnets. Jonathan talks about the rise and fall of Lowell’s reputation, how his madness affected his art, how Lowell caused him a year of non-speakers with Ian Hamilton, and the enduring greatness of the verse. Plus, how it all started with a manic lunch in an Italian restaurant… And

William Cook

Germany’s booming economy paves the way for another Merkel victory

With the German elections now barely a month away, the Bundesrepublik remains beset by worries about terrorism and immigration. Yet, just like the river in the song, the German economic juggernaut just keeps rolling along. The latest GDP figures are even better than expected – 0.6 per cent growth in the second quarter – the best year on year rate since 2014, and the twelfth consecutive quarter in which the German economy has grown. Other Eurozone countries have reported healthy figures, too. France grew by 0.5 per cent, and Spain reported a rise of 0.9 per cent – its strongest result for three years (the British economy grew by 0.3

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 19 August

Wine merchants Mr Wheeler are in the midst of a vast sale as they amend their list and move on to more recent vintages. I’m delighted to say that we are the lucky beneficiaries, for there are heart-warming discounts on some seriously tasty vino. There are well over 100 wines in the sale and the following six are my pick of the pops. They are likely to sell out fast, though, so I urge you to fill your boots at the earliest opportunity. If you’d like to see what else is in the sale, visit mrwheelerwine.com. First, the extremely toothsome 2015 Terredirai Prosecco Extra Dry (1). If you’ll pardon the

Justin Marozzi

Boxer shorts

Chaps, be honest. Have you achieved nether-region nirvana? Twenty years ago I had reached the summit of underwear style and comfort but was  haunted by the fear that one day I would come crashing down from these Elysian heights. My brand would go out of business and I would be confronting knicker nemesis. And sure enough, a while ago my fashionista friend Kitty Go duly reported that Regatta of Manila, purveyor of the world’s most fabulous baggy boxers in the jauntiest fabrics, was no more. The crisis had struck. Let’s waste no time on jockeys, Y-fronts, briefs or those execrable jersey cotton hybrids or clingy lycra atrocities beloved by the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The phoney Tory leadership war

When a new MP is offered a job as a parliamentary private secretary for a cabinet member, it’s often a test to see if they really would do anything to get into government. It involves running errands, spying on colleagues, ferrying messages around the Commons and planting inane questions for backbenchers to ask in the chamber. But in this hung Parliament, another duty has been added to those of the Tory PPS: to report anyone who might look as if they’re running for leadership. The Tory whips’ office has asked every PPS to inform them if any minister is behaving suspiciously — giving grand speeches about the state of the

Julie Bindel

The ‘sex worker’ myth

In the midst of all the outrage about modern-day slavery, usually vulnerable men forced into manual labour, there is actually a far worse form of abuse going on in the UK. It happens in every city, town and even village. It’s endemic to every culture and region of the world, and yet these days we justify it in the name of ‘liberation’. We’ve become accustomed to thinking of prostitution as a legitimate way of earning a living, even ‘empowering’ for women. We call it ‘sex work’ and look away. We should not. For the last three years I’ve been investigating prostitution worldwide to test the conventional wisdom of it being a

Ashley Writtle

Varsity blues

A vast cohort of bright young things have secured their university places with A-level success this week. But things are not so rosy at the universities they will set off to join: after 25 years of rapid expansion, the sector is drifting away from both the core principles of education and the world of work. A few figures illustrate the problem: 2.3 million students are in higher education; 47 per cent of young people are in university; 51 per cent of A–level students will begin undergraduate study aged 18. And almost three quarters of them will get a 2:1 or a first. What exact distinction does a university degree confer? True,

Roger Alton Roger Alton

What has the Premier League ever done for us?

Football’s back, I’m afraid, and, in the imperishable words of David Mitchell, every kick in every game matters to someone, somewhere. Still, it’s the Premier League’s 25th anniversary, so a good time to take stock. There’s no doubt that with Sky’s help the PL has sexed up the English game and moved it once and for all from being the preserve of the working man. When I started going to matches half a century or so ago, the stadiums were awful, the food terrible, and the football not that great. A game could be intimidating; not for the fainthearted, or women, or people who weren’t white. Now that has changed

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

My son and the back-crackers of Harley Street

All along Harley Street, charlatans and medical experts have set up side by side with no obvious way to tell them apart. The same wide steps lead up to the same glossy front doors, all with prestigious brass knobs. Each separate house is itself a layered stack of quacks and docs: radiology one floor above absence healing, flower therapy down the corridor from paediatric ENT. The magnificent Harley Street address confers a blessing on every dubious therapy. Perhaps it has a placebo effect all of its own. I know the street quacks well, or used to. My mother had a horror of antibiotics and would pack us off to Harley

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

In my other life, I’m a water engineer

Friends arrived last week to find me in a mudhole, inside a cave-like tunnel into the hill, fiddling around with our spring-fed water supply. Hearing their car, I slithered out to greet them, covered in slime like a monster from the deep. It would be natural to say this took them by surprise. It did not. They know me. Since infancy I’ve loved playing with water. Every river I could dam, every channel I could dig, every pond I could drain or fill, every stream I could divert, every castle wall I could build against the encroaching tide, seemed to point to a promising career as a water engineer. Sadly

Peter Jones

Frater, ave atque vale

As his obituaries pointed out, my brother David made a name for himself with his unrideable bicycle; his ‘perpetual motion’ machine — a bicycle wheel still rotating in a frame on our mantelpiece (it attracted 1.1 million hits on a German website); and his theory that the arsenic found in Napoleon’s hair and fingernails was down to his wallpaper. The papers naturally got all this wrong (‘Napoleon killed by wallpaper’ they intoned, as did Andrew Roberts), and the image of the potty prof emerged. In fact, his purpose was serious. He was equally serious about our children — after a failed marriage, he had none of his own, to his

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The hormone that makes you a liberal halfwit

People who feel unkindly disposed towards economic migrants are chemically imbalanced, according to a study from the University of Bonn. More specifically, they are deficient in oxytocin, a neuropeptide hormone sometimes known as the ‘cuddle drug’ because of its ability to turn normal human beings into simpering halfwits. Psychologists ran a series of studies in which Germans were asked how much money they would like to give to, say, Tariq and Mohammed, who have just arrived here from Syria. ‘Nothing at all, unless they intend to spend it on a ticket home’ is of course the correct response, and indeed many Germans initially concurred with this. However, after they were

Lucy Vickery

Bowing and scraping

In Competition No. 3011 you were invited to submit a disgustingly flattering poem in heroic couplets in praise of a contemporary person of power. You were at your bootlicking best this week: Donald Trump, Anthony Scaramucci, Xi Jinping, Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin were all on the receiving end of some serious sucking-up. Bill Greenwell’s tribute to Justin Trudeau caught my eye: ‘When all around you, everyone’s a pseudo,/ How gracefully you rise, dear Justin Trudeau…’. As did David Silverman’s love letter to Kim Jong-un: ‘How do you solve a problem like Korea?/ Ask Kim Jong-un, he’s sure to make it clear.’ Closer to home, Alan Millard and John Whitworth