Nicholas Soames may be MP to one of the safest Conservative seats in the country — with a majority of 24,286 — but that doesn’t mean the Tory grandee is taking anything for granted. Winston Churchill’s grandson has been snapped out on the campaign trail — travelling by horse, natch: https://twitter.com/Tim_R_Dawson/status/864093380028100610 No doubt the horse is as pleased by the MP for Mid Sussex’s recent weight loss as the man himself…
I don’t normally glean insights for my personal finance columns from police dramas on TV, honest. Recently, though, I caught up with series one of Line of Duty. One of the plotlines explored the middle-class money dilemma of our time: how much a good parent should shell out for their kids. A decent officer was corrupted, not through drink, drugs or gambling, but because he needed money for his daughters’ ruinous private school fees. This is not the kind of thing you can imagine happening to DCI Gene Hunt or Dirty Harry. But then, back in the Life on Mars 1970s, parenting wasn’t even a verb, let alone a competitive
I have been called every name under the sun by a great many people since my defence of Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger was published in the Spectator on Thursday. Naturally, most of the abuse has been online, but a little came my way on more traditional media. A caller to BBC Radio Ulster, for example, branded me ‘disgusting’. My favourite insult came from Piers Morgan, whom I admire tremendously. Without any trace of irony, he dismissed me to his six million Twitter followers as an ‘agent provocateur’. But perhaps, coming from him, this wasn’t really an insult. According to the vast majority of my abusers, my crime was not my
After a tricky week for Jeremy Corbyn and his team, the party hopes to refocus its efforts on Labour’s official manifesto launch this week. But Mr S fears a new hire to Corbyn’s election team could distract from the message. Mr S understands Unite chief of staff Andrew Murray is being drafted in to help with the final stages of Labour’s general election campaign. When Steerpike contacted Corbyn’s spokesman on Friday about the move, they poured cold water on the claims, but the Huffington Post has since cited Labour sources confirming that he will be taking on a central role. Alas, Mr S is told the decision by John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn to bring Murray — a former
I must protest at the Sun’s sacking of Kelvin MacKenzie. As shop steward for the small trade union of columnists who were once editors, I can state categorically that the editor, not the writer, is ultimately responsible for what is printed. In no way, shape or form will my members be scapegoated by the boss class. It is irrelevant how offensive MacKenzie’s column was (unless, which no one has suggested, he was concealing material facts from his editor). The editor published it. If writers are to be made to swing for editorial decisions or inattentions, there soon won’t be any writers left. This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes,
All publicity is good publicity, right? Wrong. The United Airlines controversy last month showed just how quickly poor crisis management can decimate company shares. And we financial journalists know as soon as we mention our job titles when making a customer complaint, we usually receive a positive outcome, such is the corporate terror triggered by a whiff of bad press. But now the internet is making it possible for anyone to kick up a stink in a most public fashion. Recent research from comparison site Gocompare found that UK companies have paid out £65 million in compensation to customers who took to social media to complain about services and products.
Are there any words which have such an affinity as ‘NHS’, ‘IT’ and ‘cock-up’? Older readers might remember how the Department of Health blew £10 billion of taxpayers’ money on a computer system which was eventually abandoned. Today comes news that two dozen hospitals have been affected by a massive hack of computer systems. Patients in Stevenage and Blackpool have been told not to visit their local A&E departments unless they are desperate. Operations have been postponed. Phone systems have gone down and doctors are unable to prescribe drugs. The culprit is a piece of ‘ransomware’ which seems to be capable of locking computers which it says will only be
This week’s Best Buys, provided by Moneyfacts, are Five-Year Fixed Rate Buy-to-Let Mortgages.
Four important events have taken centre stage over the past few weeks. These were tournaments in Shenzen (won by Ding Liren), Zurich (won by Hikaru Nakamura), Karlsruhe (which witnessed a massive triumph for Lev Aronian, who came in ahead of Magnus Carlsen) and Shamkir. In this last, the local matador Shakhriyar Mamedyarov seized the laurels ahead of the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik and the current world no. 2 Wesley So. This week, an overview of these four competitions. Aronian–Vachier-Lagrave: Grenke Chess Classic, Karlsruhe 2017 (see diagram 1) Although material is level, Black’s extra queenside pawn is useless. Aronian now finds a way to decisively activate his kingside pawn
White to play. This is from Kramnik-Adams, Shamkir 2017. How did Kramnik complete his rout of the black position? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 16 May 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 Rxf7 (1 … Kxf7 2 Qxc7+ Kf6 3 Qxc6 is overwhelming) Last week’s winner Martin Dlouhý, Czech Republic
Q. My 23-year-old son has taught himself to play the piano, learning the theme tune to The Truman Show without lessons. But it is the only thing that he has learned, and now he plays it every time he walks through our hall, driving the whole family mad. How can I end this purgatory without denting his confidence or his enthusiasm for music? — S.H.,Woodborough, Notts A. Buy your son an electric keyboard with headphones so that he can develop his potential privately in his own bedroom and hopefully increase his repertoire. Q. I’ve met too many people and now need to cull some of the peripheral admirers. How can
I’m due to debate the philosopher A.C. Grayling on Saturday about whether there should be a second EU referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal. It is part of a two-day event being held at Central Hall, Westminster, on ‘Brexit and the political crash’. It is billed as a ‘convention’, an opportunity for all sides in this debate to discuss Britain’s future, but the reference to the ‘political crash’ is a giveaway. Brexit isn’t a revolt against out-of-touch elites or even a new departure that may or may not be good for the country. No, it is a ‘crash’, as in ‘car crash’ or ‘economic crash’. In reality, the
Six Storeys on Soho is in a slender grey townhouse on Soho Square: a bar, restaurant and club. It is technically art deco, but it feels much older; it grasps back for 18th-century Soho without the typhoid epidemic and the corpses. It used to be a gay bar called the Edge, but the gay bars are closing in London, victims of a new epidemic called Grindr. Now it feels like Mary Poppins’s house after she lost hope. I came to the Edge with my friend the artist Sebastian Horsley, who wore purple suits and a top hat, and made A.A. Gill look slovenly. He kept a gun by his bedside
I laughed, in a sympathetic way I hope, when I read a letter in the Daily Telegraph pointing out that Steve Hewlett, the media commentator who died this year, had admitted ruefully that when he had heard that his cancer was progressive he had thought for a moment this was a good thing. The progressive alliance is this election’s equivalent to the old ‘broad left’, which once inserted foaming revolutionaries into respectable politics. I complained about this label progressive before the 2015 election. Progressive politicians tend to favour progressive taxation, even though the term is merely technical, indicating that the higher the sum taxed (above £80,000 income, say), the greater
Much like the poor, the charity ball has always been with us, but lately it’s turned into a freak. Something is rotten in the state of New York, and the name of it is the Met Gala. Once upon a time, the Metropolitan Museum’s gala ball was fun. Serious social-climbing multimillionaires competed openly for the best tables and for proximity to blue-blooded socialites such as C.Z. Guest and her ilk. Pat Buckley, wife of William F., ran the show with military precision, allotting the best seats to those who had paid a fortune for them, but also to those who were young and handsome and whose pockets were not as
I was sitting between mother and daughter on the sofa, and we were having a ‘wee night’ as Glaswegians put it. Having a wee night roughly means ‘celebrating’. Yesterday the daughter finished the final exam of her English degree. On the low table in front of us were three gin and tonics, two packets of fags, a souvenir ashtray from Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, a packet of transparent French cigarette papers, a plastic syringe with hash oil rammed up one end, a disposable lighter, a portable Bluetooth speaker, and an open laptop. Mother and daughter were taking it in turns to choose music videos on YouTube. So far we’d enjoyed
Well, there were seven of us in this chain, so it was a bit crowded, to paraphrase a princess. We didn’t know there were seven. We thought there were five. Imagine my confusion, therefore, when my house sale and purchase didn’t go through day after day, despite all five lawyers being on the phone to each other in conference calls trying to exchange contracts, and the contracts just refusing to be exchanged. Every day, at 5.30 p.m., my solicitor would call me and tell me it was no go. And the next morning I would ring the estate agents and say I couldn’t understand it. I’ve been under offer since
The longer Donald Trump sits there the better Ronald Reagan looks, not least because he had a sense of humour. The President who told his aides that he should always be woken in an emergency, even if he was in a cabinet meeting at the time, once declared that he wasn’t worried about the budget deficit: ‘It is big enough to take care of itself.’ There were moments during the jumping season just ended when our Twelve to Follow had me worrying about a significant budget deficit. Sad to say, after several highly profitable years, our Twelve to Follow this winter left us, on a £10 win stake for every
I realised long ago that I almost never play bridge with a partner worse than me. Occasionally, I cut a palooka at rubber bridge — but they probably think the same about me. I mainly play with professionals and they always have something kind and constructive to say when the defence goes pear-shaped: ‘Cover an honour with an honour’ or ‘Why did you cover dummy’s Queen?’ ‘Ducking is for experts’ or ‘Why didn’t you duck?’ ‘You must split your honours’ or ‘Why on earth did you split?’ And my favourite, ‘Never lead a singleton trump’ or ‘You had to lead your (singleton) trump.’ It’s properly doing my head in! Today’s
Home After spectacular local election results, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘I’m taking nothing for granted over the next five weeks. I need support from across the United Kingdom to strengthen my hand, and only a vote for me and my team will ensure that Britain has the strong and stable leadership we need.’ The Conservatives increased their number of council seats by 563. Labour lost 382 and Ukip lost all 145 it held, but gained a single one, Padiham and Burnley West, Lancashire, from Labour. In Scotland, the Conservatives became the second party to the Scottish National Party and gained seven seats in Glasgow (where Labour lost control of