Society

Saturday

Roger Alton Roger Alton

What has the Premier League ever done for us? | 19 August 2017

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

The Spectator

Donald Trump and America’s identity crisis

Long before student activists started talking about pulling down statues of Cecil Rhodes, a cultural war was being waged in America over monuments honouring General Robert E. Lee and other leaders of the Confederacy. In 2001 there was a petition to remove some of these statues from the University of Texas on the grounds that their presence might ‘lead people to believe that the university is tolerant of the Confederate ideology regarding slavery’. The arguments that started on campus then branched out beyond it. To some, the statues were a symbol of Southern heritage and pride. To others, they were a monument to racism. In recent years this argument has

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Yet again, Trump’s presidency has conformed to a Saturday Night Live sketch

The statement from the White House makes little attempt to disguise what happened. ‘White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.’ This is pretty much the same form of words used when Anthony Scaramucci was fired by Kelly. Four senior White House aides have now gone in the last five weeks. So it seems that Kelly, a former US general brought in by Trump a few weeks ago, is serious about fixing this dysfunctional White House – and, perhaps more strikingly, Trump seems serious about letting him do so. The clincher

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The historical backdrop to Spain’s terror troubles

Why was Spain targeted by terrorists? asked the Guardian on Friday, a question that is also being posed by other media outlets. After all, Spain has not participated in the Allied bombing campaign in Syria, which according to the Daily Telegraph ‘was seen as lowering the risk that the country would be targeted by Islamic State’. So if foreign policy isn’t to blame, could it be social deprivation, the other favourite excuse trotted out by apologists whenever there’s an Islamist attack in Europe? The identity of the bombers hasn’t been revealed but initial reports indicate that one of the ringleaders was an 18-year-old with an older brother who, judging by his

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Silencing debate on grooming gangs is a foul snub to victims

It’s official: people who talk about the problem of Pakistani men abusing white working-class girls have no place in polite society. Raise so much as a peep of concern about Muslim grooming gangs and you’ll be expelled from the realm of the decent. You’ll be shushed, exiled, encouraged to clean out your polluted mind. That has been the experience of Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham, who quit as shadow equalities minister this week over her Sun article on the gang of largely Muslim men in Newcastle who last week were found guilty of 100 offences, including rape against women and girls. Published last Thursday, Champion’s article said: ‘Britain has a

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Magnum opus

A new book on the ingenious Hungarian master Gyula Breyer ranks, in my opinion, at the very top of chess publications, along with Kasparov’s various mega series, Nimzowitsch’s My System, and Alekhine’s books of his best games. It is a compendium of games, discursive digressions, notes, discreet modern corrections, scholarly research, history, theory and perhaps most impressive of all, Breyer’s philosophy of the art, science and sport of chess. I just have one query, a strange reference by Dvoretsky in his notes to Breyer v. Esser. Tal v. Tolush 1957 USSR Championship seems to be strangely misattributed, with White (instead of Tal) being given as somebody I have never heard

Raymond Keene

No. 470

White to play. This is from Breyer-Esser, Budapest 1917. White has a multiplicity of tempting options but the best move forces mate in nine. What is it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 22 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 Rc5 Last week’s winner Boris Alperowicz, South Nutfield, Surrey

Taki

High life | 17 August 2017

As Jacob Rees-Mogg said in a different context, a happy birthday at my age is a terminological inexactitude. I needed the birthday I had last week like a hole in the head, to coin a brand new expression. Mind you, the miasma of misinformation that deals with maturity never fails to depress. The ancient Greeks did respect old age, but they got old in their late twenties. An 80-year-old in old Athens would be a 250-year-old in today’s world. There is nothing better than youth, and it’s certainly not wasted on the young, Lord Henry. Everything works, injuries disappear after a night’s sleep, a broken heart mends at the sight

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 17 August 2017

On Sunday morning we went, Oscar and I, to a vide grenier in the ancient, picturesque Provençal village. Vide grenier means ‘open attic sale’ — which is the French equivalent of our car boot sale. Oscar had €20 with which to buy homecoming gifts for his Mum and her partner, and his three half-siblings. The stalls were set out under the shade trees of the village boulodrome. Ex-dustman Grandad loves browsing in skips and charity shops and at car boot sales and he was in seventh heaven. At the first stall, I was very drawn to an old hand-tinted framed print of two peasants standing in a furrowed field. The

Melissa Kite

Real life | 17 August 2017

Easier by far to load up my horses and move them to the next village than try to fight the No Horse Riding signs here, I decided. I had been sneaking Gracie out the side gate of the livery yard opposite where I live and along the high street to ride around the nearby woods. Nothing illegal about that. But the fact I found myself sneaking, which is difficult on a horse, so as to avoid angry local Liberal Democrat councillors who like to chase horses away, was ridiculous enough to make me face facts. You cannot keep horses in a village run by sandal-wearing tofu-munchers with an anti-rural bias.

Robin Oakley

The turf | 17 August 2017

‘Racing isn’t a team sport,’ the diehards used to tell us about the Shergar Cup, Ascot’s annual contest for three-rider teams representing Europe, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Rest of the World, and the Girls. How odd then that the annual extravaganza of six handicaps lavishly sponsored by Dubai Duty Free with its frenziedly twirling cheerleaders and belting theme tunes, its jockey team uniforms and its Silver Saddle prize for the top points-winner, should once again last Saturday have attracted a sellout crowd of 27,000, the biggest turnout the course achieves outside of Royal Ascot. The Shergar Cup may not seem entirely natural to those of us who reach

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 17 August 2017

The first weekend of August saw two big pairs tournaments, one in Oslo and one in Eastbourne, with remarkable similarities: both attracted over 200 pairs, both were the same format, Swiss, which means that apart from a random first round you are competing against the pair with the nearest score to you whom you haven’t met before; and after three days and heaven knows how many boards both were won by the same pair as last year! Alexander Allfrey and Andrew Robson in Eastbourne and father and son duo Tor and Fredrik Helness in Norway. Tor probably needs no introduction: he is the brilliant Norwegian multi world champ who has

Toby Young Toby Young

Hunt-the-iPhone was the highlight of my hols

For years, Caroline and I have been squabbling over where to spend our summer holidays. Her ideal is a family-friendly Mediterranean resort where she can lie on a beach reading a paperback, while mine involves renting a car and driving from place to place, staying in Airbnbs and packing in as many ‘fun’ activities as we can. Last year she got her way; this year it was my turn. So we took an easyJet flight from Gatwick to Munich. Admittedly not perfect, given that we were going to Italy, but it was the cheapest deal I could find: £450 all-in, including the kids. A bargain, even factoring in a 6.25

The Spectator

Letters | 17 August 2017

The education gap Sir: It is disappointing that Toby Young (‘Parents, not schools, are key to the knowledge gap’, 5 August) conforms to the ‘Close the gap’ mentality that obsesses Ofsted and leftish thinking in state schools. Young deplores ‘the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged 16-year-olds in England’. I prefer to get away from the tendentious terms ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘non-disadvantaged’ pupils and stick to the idea of high- and low-attaining pupils. Left-inclined schools have various ways of closing this gap in attainment. One is to impose limits on how abler pupils can be challenged. Some secondary schools have gone soft on homework, even banning it altogether except for ‘optional’

Chris Mullin

Diary – 17 August 2017

To the Business School at the University of Edinburgh to be interviewed on the theme of ‘Great Political Disasters’. Main criteria for inclusion: decisions, often taken for short-term reasons, whose unforeseen consequences have echoed down the ages. Everyone will have their own little list, but mine included the Balfour declaration, Partition, Suez, Wilson’s failure to devalue in 1964 (which haunted subsequent Labour governments), Denis Healey’s IMF loan in 1976 (which he later admitted had been unnecessary and which led to the Winter of Discontent and the election of Margaret Thatcher), the poll tax, Iraq and the Brexit referendum (yes, I realise that the jury is still out on that last

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 17 August 2017

Q. Mary, I am what you would probably call a Sloane Ranger. I have great numbers of close friends and I’ve always attended confirmations, weddings, christenings and funerals without even thinking about whether it was convenient. But at my age a lot of friends’ parents are going downhill fast, and I now work. Many funerals will be out of London and require a whole day off to attend. I just can’t do it every week but neither can I let down my close friends. — S.C., London SW11 A. You won’t be the only person who is needed at work and can’t be in two places at once. But you

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Tapas but no phantom

I am always surprised to remember that Andrew Lloyd Webber has taste; it must be remembrance of Cats. I was surprised, for instance, to learn that he once owned Pablo Picasso’s portrait of d’Angel Fernández de Soto, which I always thought of as my Picasso because it looks like my friend Hadrian Wise, who used to come to Merton College bar in his pyjamas. We once rolled a joint as long as The Spectator because he loved The Spectator. High as I was after the Spectator-length joint in 1994, I never thought I would write for it. Neither did he. Now Lloyd Webber, whose masterpiece is Phantom of the Opera,

Dot Wordsworth

Mechanistic insight

No, hang on, don’t turn to Dear Mary yet. This is not as dull as it sounds. It’s just that I was mystified by not having heard of the term mechanistic insight when, to my husband, it was a common as an August blackberry on a Sussex hedgerow. ‘Look,’ he said, shaking some printouts from medical journals. ‘Mechanistic insights are two a penny.’ At first I thought it was simply a silly scientistic way of saying ‘How it works’. For example, one paper had the title: ‘Mechanistic insight into how multidrug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii response regulator AdeR recognises an intercistronic region.’ There is no need to know what any of

The Spectator

Barometer | 17 August 2017

Big bong theory Big Ben, otherwise known as the Great Bell, is due to fall silent on Monday for renovations to be carried out on the Palace of Westminster’s Elizabeth Tower, in which it is housed. Why is it called Big Ben? —According to one version, Sir Benjamin Hall, who oversaw the installation of the bell in 1859, also happened to be nicknamed Big Ben. He made a long and rambling speech on what the bell should be called, whereupon another MP interjected: ‘Why not call it Big Ben and be done with it?’ The comment is not, however, recorded in Hansard. Inside left Pressure groups representing the left-handed held

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 17 August 2017

Home Regulated rail fares will rise by 3.6 per cent in January, bringing the price of annual tickets from Oxford, Colchester or Hastings to more than £5,000. The rise depended on the annual rate of inflation in July as measured by the Retail Prices Index, which had risen to 3.6 per cent; as measured by the Consumer Prices Index it remained unchanged at 2.6 per cent. A passenger train was derailed near Waterloo station but none of the 23 on board was injured. A train from Royston hit the buffers at King’s Cross. Richard Gordon, the author of Doctor in the House, died aged 95. The landlord of the Mallard in Scunthorpe