Society

Saturday

D Reilly

Conor McGregor is destined to beat Floyd Mayweather

Middle age is OK by me. National Trust membership, a Waitrose loyalty card, lying on the sofa drinking red wine and yelling at the telly — since I turned 40, this stuff all just feels right. But by a mile, the best consolation of middle age I’ve found is the cagefighter Conor McGregor and living vicariously through his kicks, punches and verbal smackdowns. How dull my previous enthusiasms for cricket, tennis and football now seem by comparison with the heroic derring-do of this 28-year-old killing machine, a former plumber from Crumlin in Dublin. It’s not just the sheer honesty of the sport he has mastered or the megawatt charisma he

Toby Young Toby Young

Ignore the half-wit experts – the new GCSE marking system is as easy as 1,2,3…

The amount of nonsense being talked about the new GCSEs in English and maths, whereby exams have been graded 9-1 rather than A*-G, is astonishing. The new grading system is ‘gibberish’ and will cost young people jobs, according to the Institute of Directors. The NSPCC thinks greater differentiation at the top end, with 9 being worth more than A*, will take a terrible toll on children’s mental health, while Mary Bousted, the General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, says the new system is ‘inherently ridiculous’. ‘To put 1 at the lowest and 9 at the top when the grades go alphabetically in a different order from A*

Mary Kissel

What has happened to Trump’s ‘America first’ policy?

So much for Donald J. Trump, ‘America first’ isolationist. Gone is the man who, as a civilian, repeatedly endorsed a speedy withdrawal from America’s longest-running war (2012 tweet: ‘Afghanistan is a complete waste!’), who railed against George W. Bush’s intervention in Iraq and advocated leaving Syria to the whims of the Russkies and others. On Monday night, in his first nationally televised address as Commander-in-Chief, Trump declared that he was ordering more troop deployments to South Asia, for an unspecified period of time, to fight the war in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan commitment isn’t the only puzzler. There’s Trump’s bombing of a Syrian airport to enforce an international weapons of mass

James Mumford

How to reform the care home system

The care home residents had been left on the landing in wheelchairs. That was the sight that greeted me as I walked up the stairs of the nursing home I was visiting in Wembley, north London. From above, sawdust fell as builders blithely went about their business, fixing the roof. Apart from the drilling there was no noise. No one cried for help. No one complained. It was as if no one expected anything different. The abandonment of the elderly in residential care was driven home recently by revelations of the full extent of failing homes. This year, forty per cent – yes, forty per cent – were found wanting by

Friday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The interesting histories behind the Rathbones and Smith & Williamson merger

The proposed marriage of two mid-sized wealth managers, Rathbone Brothers and Smith & Williamson, has not made City pulses race. But it will create a business with £56 billion under management, following a trend of sector consolidation in search of economies of scale that kicked off with the merger of Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management. And though the new couple’s names won’t mean much unless you already happen to be their clients, they have interesting histories. Rathbones began as a timber-trading venture in Liverpool in 1742 and is the family firm of a dynasty of Quaker social reformers, including the formidable proto-feminist Eleanor Rathbone (1872–1946). Smith & Williamson, an

Toby Young Toby Young

This year’s exam results for free schools prove Michael Gove was right

As readers of The Spectator will know, I have been banging the drum for free schools for eight years – almost as long as Michael Gove, who first started talking about them in 2007. But it has been hard to persuade people of their virtues without any results to point to. Education is plagued by crackpot theories and un-evidenced policies and free schools were often dismissed as just another fad. Until this week. Now, at last, the advocates of the free schools policy have some results to point to – and they are spectacular. Last week, King’s College London Mathematics School, a specialist sixth form college that opened in 2014,

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Philidor’s heir

There was a time when France was the dominant power in world chess. When Howard Staunton commenced his remarkable series of match victories in the mid-1840s, his ascent was seen as an assumption of the sceptre wielded by that great 18th-century master of the game, André Danican Philidor. After Philidor came Labourdonnais, who was succeeded by St Amant, and it was Staunton’s annihilation of the French champion at the Café de la Regence in Paris in 1843, which heralded the end of French hegemony over the chessboard.   It is true that Alexander Alekhine, the mighty Russian champion, represented France in the chess Olympiads of the 1930s, but he was anything but a

Raymond Keene

no. 471

White to play. This position is a variation from Vachier-Lagrave–Nepomniachtchi, St Louis 2017. How can White make a decisive material gain? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 29 August 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 e6 Last week’s winner John Boulton, Norwich

The Spectator

Letters | 24 August 2017

In defence of General Lee Sir: In your leader ‘America’s identity crisis’ (19 August) you state that ‘When General Lee emerged as a leader of that rebellion [the secession of the Southern states], we said that he had no cause that stood up to scrutiny.’ The irony is that Lee did not disagree with that view. Unlike Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders, he was opposed to secession and believed that the Union should be kept intact. Nor was he an enthusiast for slavery. A slave owner by proxy, he appears to have loathed the experience. In 1856 he wrote to his wife saying that ‘In this enlightened age, there are

Peter Jones

The big business of teaching

As expected, the prospect of charging £9,000 (and rising) per annum, per student has universities abandoning any pretence to maintaining standards in favour of piling ’em high. Ancient ‘universities’ knew all about it. Ancient education was private. A city might pay a ‘lecturer’ a small retainer, but he made his money through the fees he charged. But since all lecturers taught the same thing — rhetoric, with a view to a career in politics and law — each was in a constant, often literal, battle to attract students and stop them defecting. We hear of lecturers urging their students to waylay ‘freshers’ as they arrived in port and drag them

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 24 August 2017

Q. I am in my seventies and my husband is in his nineties. The other night we had two couples to dinner. However, when they arrived (separately), we both realised we had forgotten their names, so when I brought the second couple into the drawing room I was incapable of introducing everyone to each other — they were meeting for the first time. This set the evening off to a terrible start, but our memory failure was no reflection of our affection for our guests or of our general brain power. Mary, what would you have done in these circumstances? — Name and address withheld A. When the second couple arrived,

Toby Young Toby Young

As easy as 1, 2, 3…

The amount of nonsense being talked about the new GCSEs in English and maths, whereby exams have been graded 9-1 rather than A*-G, is astonishing. The new grading system is ‘gibberish’ and will cost young people jobs, according to the Institute of Directors. The NSPCC thinks greater differentiation at the top end, with 9 being worth more than A*, will take a terrible toll on children’s mental health, while Mary Bousted, the General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, says the new system is ‘inherently ridiculous’. ‘To put 1 at the lowest and 9 at the top when the grades go alphabetically in a different order from A*

Taki

High life | 24 August 2017

When the Germans smuggled arguably the world’s most evil man into Russia 100 years ago, they did not imagine the harm they were unleashing on the human race. Once Lenin had prevailed, he decided to forge a new consciousness, New Soviet Man, as the Bolshies called it, someone who would overcome ‘the antinomies of subjective and objective, body and spirit, family and party’. Leave it to a horror like Lenin to design a new human being (although a certain Austrian tried to emulate him less than 20 years later) and you get Yakov Sverdlov, who ordered the murder of the Tsar and his family, and the hanging of their dogs.

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 24 August 2017

My mother has various chronic illnesses and finds it almost impossible to remain both immobile and awake during the day. At night she can’t sleep owing to hallucinations caused by her Parkinson’s medication. I think she is also subject to a general delusion that the house is overrun with mice. There is hardly a drawer or cupboard without a wizened lump of cheese set in a trap. Otherwise, she is sane and serene and while her forgetfulness is infuriating to her, its origin doesn’t seem to be organic. She’s 87. I’ve been staying with her for the past few days. Also visiting is my mother’s sister, aged 91. Apart from

Melissa Kite

Real life | 24 August 2017

Darcy is high-maintenance, so I decided to leave her in the posh livery yard, with its luxuriant shavings beds and 24-hour butler service. Being the great-granddaughter of Nijinsky, she expects to be accommodated in style and is apt to become disconsolate if left in a field for longer than a few hours. However Gracie, the skewbald hunter pony, was plumb disgusted with the five-star competition stables. As soon as they came down off the lorry, she looked at the pin neat surroundings, the gleaming dressage horses prancing around the arena, and emitted a little snort of disdain. ‘Pah!’ I could have sworn she said. The next afternoon, I arrived at

Dot Wordsworth

Sixteen-hundreds

I was puzzled by the caption to a picture in the Times Literary Supplement. The picture showed a model of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The caption said that it had been made in the ‘late 1600s’, but it was clear from other evidence that it dated from the later 17th century. I had supposed that the use of 1600s to mean the whole century was an unlearned usage embraced by people easily confused by being presented with the term 17th century for years beginning with 16, or, on their behalf, by those who talk down to them. In Italy, they manage these things differently, quattrocento referring

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 24 August 2017

The ‘Lightner double’ is perfectly named: a bolt out of the blue which strikes fear into your heart. There you are, having bid confidently to slam, when suddenly one of your opponents pulls out the red card. Eek! It’s a Lightner double, which means they want their partner to make an unusual lead: either the doubler has a void and can ruff, or wants dummy’s first-bid suit led (partner needs to work out which). The point is that without the double, the killing lead might never be found. I used to assume it was a clever made-up name, until I discovered it really was the invention of one Theodore ‘Teddy’

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 24 August 2017

Home Big Ben ceased sounding for a planned period of four years, thanks to a decision by the Speaker and two Commons committees. The silence was attributed to the need to protect the hearing of workmen restoring the Elizabeth Tower, though experts on the bell and on previous restorations saw no reason for it. A game of hunt-the-issue was begun when Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, was obliged to resign as shadow minister for women and equalities after writing a piece for the Sun that began: ‘Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.’ The Pensions Regulator charged Dominic Chappell with failing to

Columba

2324: In the frame

Each of twenty-one clues comprises a definition part and a hidden consecutive jumble of the answer including one extra letter. The extras spell a definition (two words, one hyphened) of two titles clued without definition and six (three of which consist of two words each) reading clockwise round the perimeter. Letters in corner squares and those adjacent to them could make EIGHT, SO FUNNY.   Across 11    Quiet journey, not tense (5) 12    Convict loses work (4) 13    Excellent, acceptable element (5) 14    Medical student reversed sorcery (7) 15    Movement during session with Aussie, turning, dismissing one (10) 17    Spent time handling levy (5)

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Is Islam antithetical to western values?

I just thought you ought to see this article, in case you hadn’t already. Granted, it’s from a journalist who has been demonstrably wrong on almost everything he’s written since the Iraq War (He liked the war. He thought the war was great. He said it would all work out nicely). But even so, this is a stretch too far. Because one Imam is opposed to enforced marriages, and some other Muslims might be quite courteous from time to time, that means Islam is not antithetical to western values? How does the chap exist within this delusion. When will the oxygen run out?