Society

Thursday

12 Dec 2024

How can we complain about the 2034 Saudi World Cup?

I suppose it is a mild surprise that Fifa didn’t choose Yemen to host the 2034 World Cup, as the bosses of that awful organisation seem determined to make football do a tour of the world’s most primitive and dangerous hellholes. Instead, it’s Saudi Arabia. Of course it is. Over the last ten years the Saudis have been getting increasingly excited by football, first buying up Newcastle United and next buying every famous player aged 30 or over to compete in a league nobody cares about for fabulous wages. Plenty have gone, including Ivan Toney, Demarai Gray and Jordan Henderson. That Fifa does not give a monkey’s about human rights

Matthew Lynn

Allow Shein to list in London

There are, in fairness, plenty of reasons why the City might be reluctant to embrace the Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein. Its disposable fashion ravages the environment; it encourages rampant consumerism; it has admitted to finding child labour in its supply chain. Here’s the problem, however. The London stock market is in such a dire state that it can no longer afford to be picky – and if it turns this one down it will condemn itself to irrelevance. According to reports today, the Financial Conduct Authority is taking longer than usual to approve Shein’s IPO in London, and it is looking into its supply chain after an advocacy group for

Lloyd Evans

Don’t blame this man for interrupting David Tennant

The curse of Macbeth strikes again. David Tennant’s turn as the Scottish psychopath was interrupted this week by a kerfuffle in the auditorium at the Harold Pinter theatre. A play-goer left to visit the lavatory and took exception when the ushers asked him to wait for a suitable pause before resuming his seat. Audience members reportedly ‘kicked off about the disturbance’ as the man tried to re-enter to enjoy the show. Up came the house lights. A stage manager asked David Tennant and his co-star, Cush Jumbo, to return to their dressing rooms while the conflict was resolved. After 15 minutes the show continued, but the man involved is thought

Ross Clark

Ofgem’s standing charge crackdown is a win for the wealthy

At last some good news for owners of second homes: Ofgem has ordered electricity providers to offer tariffs which have no standing charges, but where instead householders pay more per unit of electricity consumed. True, it isn’t second-home owners which Ofgem had in mind when it came up with the idea, rather low income consumers whom it believes are losing out under the current system. But there is no question as to whom will be the biggest beneficiaries: people who only use their properties occasionally. If you visit your Cornish clifftop mansion for only four weeks a year you stand to make a substantial saving. Standing charges have become the

Susan Hill

The strange, beautiful Christmas I spent alone

My parents gave up on Christmas altogether once I left home for university. They had never been people for celebrations and we were a household like Belfast in the religious sense – my father, the Catholic, went to midnight mass; my mother, Anglican, to the parish church at 8 a.m. I alternated, year by year, for the sake of fairness. It was a strained time. As an adult, living in my own place the moment I could afford rent, I never returned home for Christmas Day, but went to various generous friends – the sort of normal friends who had proper festivities, puddings lit with brandy and paper crowns, the

Roger Lewis

Good riddance to 2024

January. When the assisted dying bill comes in, I’ll be first in the queue. Non-stop nosebleeds, Covid-esque symptoms, leg cramps, a cough resistant to antibiotics, and unremunerated press interviews for my Burton/Taylor book. In the old days I’d be in New York, running amok with publicity handmaidens, going on television and racking up bills in the Gramercy Park Hotel. Now everything is done from the back-bedroom here in Hastings, where I dwell in the slum district, my window overlooking immigrants doing their laundry. Paul Bailey went to the trouble of getting his name removed from my acknowledgements. That’s real hatred February. First anniversary of my myocardial infarction, when I collapsed

Lara Prendergast

Don’t ambush parents with activism

As we sat down at the Royal Opera House to watch one of the Royal Ballet’s soloists perform Letter to Tchaikovsky, an announcement began. ‘Tchaikovsky is understood to have been a gay man, who was forced by the conventions of society to marry a woman,’ explained an earnest female voice from off-stage. ‘The music, words and dance describe the pain and guilt he experienced as a closeted queer person… but like many others before and since, the fact that he was queer meant that he had to stay secret about who he really was… It is still illegal to be gay or queer in 69 countries, and queer people continue to

Kate Weinberg

How my father’s bedtime stories shaped my life

It’s half an hour before lights out when my dad arrives at my bedroom door holding Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World. He kicks off his shoes, loosens his tie and wedges himself next to me in my small single bed, his toes waggling in their socks as they regain freedom after a long day in the office. In the evening he smells of the menthol toothpicks he always carries in his top pocket (in the morning, when he drops me off at school, he smells of the spicy pink toothpaste which I once tried and which burned the roof of my mouth). I lie with my head

Ali Kefford

Christmas on patrol with the Royal Navy’s submariners

This Christmas, a Royal Navy Trident submarine will be quietly prowling the seas as part of the Continuous At Sea Deterrent mission. She will have slipped out of HM Naval Base Clyde in Scotland in late August. Her location is a secret, known only to a handful of officers aboard. Even the highest ranks of the navy, such as the Chief of Defence Staff and the First Sea Lord, remain unaware of where their ‘bomber’ is. For the rest of the crew, the submarine’s whereabouts are a mystery, with only the temperature of the water against the hull offering them a vague sense of geography. One captain opened a present

Ronald Hutton

How pagan is Christmas?

Many people today feel an ambivalence towards the history of the Christmas festival. They sense that it has deep pre-Christian roots and yet are also aware that most of the actual customs associated with it are relatively modern. The problem is that both views are correct. Most of the current trappings of the season are Victorian inventions or importations: the cards, the tree, the stocking, the turkey and Father Christmas with his reindeer and his sack of presents. Even local seasonal activities which look genuinely primeval have turned out not to be. Most of the season’s trappings are Victorian inventions or importations: the cards, the tree, the stockings The southern

Martin Vander Weyer

Negroni inflation is out of control

Forty years ago this Christmas I visited Hong Kong for the first time – a few days after the signing in Beijing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that sealed the former colony’s transfer to mainland rule in 1997. It was a moment of apprehension, but at least the timetable had been set. And how lucky I was to have experienced that extraordinary outpost as it was then, in such contrast to what China’s masters have made it now. The Christmas Day service in St John’s Cathedral, overhead fans stirring the turbid air, was a poignant glimpse of Hong Kong’s past. Norman Foster’s Hongkong Bank building, the most expensive in the

Olivia Potts

How to make chocolate salami

For as long as we’ve been serving food, we’ve been unable to resist a bit of culinary deception. Making one thing look like another thing – especially if it makes a sweet thing look savoury or vice versa – seems to have universal comedic value. There’s something Willy Wonka-ish about the visual wrong-footing, the surprise – we find it delightful. I’m not even going to stop you slinging some mini marshmallows in there – it is Christmas, after all There’s a long history here. At medieval and Tudor banquets, the food was entertainment as much as it was sustenance: huge pastries made to look like life-size stags and swans stood

Lisa Haseldine

What carols owe to Martin Luther

It’s 500 years since Martin Luther, along with the preacher Paul Speratus, put together the first Protestant hymn book, the Achtliederbuch, literally the ‘book with eight songs’. Collections of liturgical chants and songs had existed before, but they had never been meant for the congregation – just for choirs. Luther believed collective sung worship in German (as opposed to Latin) was key to spreading the Reformation’s ideas and inspiring converts. What better way to engage worshippers than to include them in the church services they were attending? A catchy, simple melody and words everyone could understand, regardless of status or ability to read, helped too. The Achtliederbuch was very popular

Rory Sutherland and Rick Rubin

‘Judgment is the price of being creative’

Rick Rubin is a legendary American record producer who co-founded Def Jam records, which helped popularise hip hop. He has worked with everyone from Johnny Cash (whose career he is credited with reviving) to Paul McCartney and Kanye West. He sat down with The Spectator’s Rory Sutherland to discuss creativity, Bach, Sherlock Holmes, JFK assassination theories and more. RORY SUTHERLAND: It’s a huge pleasure to see you again. Just for the benefit of older Spectator readers, it’s probably worth defining what a music producer does because it’s ambiguous. People might imagine someone sitting there, adjusting the levels on one of those enormous mixing decks. In fact you never touch any

Lionel Shriver

Why didn’t I read the comments sooner?

I adhere to a pretty iron-clad rule: not only do I avoid the bumper cars of social media, but I don’t read the comments after my columns. Many other journalists avidly lap up reader responses to their work, and there’s certainly something to be said for confronting detractors, thus learning to anticipate counter-arguments and to guard against misinterpretation. But for me – I doubt this makes me unusual – one scornful put-down has a more lasting effect than ten gushing compliments. Forbidding myself from hitting that bottom tab is a matter of self-protection. While writing, I don’t want to lose my nerve, and too keen an awareness of your (potentially

Bruce Anderson

My bottles of the year

This has been the most fascinating political year I can remember. I have even found myself dreaming about politics – and neither the excitements nor the perils are likely to end any time soon. So it might seem self-indulgent to tear one’s attention away from grog. But we all need distraction, even in the spirit of gaudeamus igitur. Looking back over the year’s drinking, I also decided to summon interesting bottles for a meander through pleasant memories. My friend keeps his politics in the closet for he is a Californian who voted for Trump. He should be put in charge of the White House cellar As he has before, a

Tanya Gold

Something out of a Spectator reader’s dreams: The Guinea Grill reviewed

Back to the past: it’s safer there. There is a themed restaurant dedicated to George VI of all people, near Berkeley Square – a sort of Rainforest Café for monarchists who won’t sink to the Tiltyard Café at Hampton Court. I was looking for a restaurant my husband might like – Brexit, meat, maps of the Empire at its height in colour – and I found the Guinea Grill in Bruton Place. George VI isn’t a vivid monarch. He lived in the shadow of queens – one Mary, two Elizabeths – and on film he is always crying, or dying. In The Crown (Jared Harris, marvellous) he lost his lung.

Charles Cornish-Dale

How to turn eggnog into a superfood

Recently, scientists were baffled by the discovery that ice cream is a superfood. Yes, that’s right, people who eat ice cream tend to be healthier than those who don’t. A lot healthier. It’s ‘nutrition science’s most preposterous result’, according to the Atlantic. In fact, there’s nothing preposterous about it, if you actually know anything about the ingredients that go into ice cream. You’ve got high-quality milk protein and fat, sugars and a whole lot of vitamins and minerals. The fats make the protein and the vitamins and minerals more bioavailable – meaning you can absorb more – and they slow the digestion of the sugars, so you don’t get a

Andrew O’Hagan

The Andrew problem: a short story

People offended by name-dropping are absolutely no fun. I’ve experimented with this concept on five continents – OK, four: Antarctica’s social whirl isn’t what it might be – and those who roll their eyes at shocking new developments in the world of celebrity are just the worst. Not content with having zero information to offer, they diminish what is given, and in a more efficient world such bores would be carried at high speed to the guillotine. I take my cue in these matters from the great name-droppers of all time, who, in no particular order, are James Boswell, Pope John XXIII, Lee Strasberg, Truman Capote, Nelson Mandela, Andy Warhol,

Roger Alton

The best (and worst) of this year’s sport

It was quite a year for some of the worst of sport – America’s golfers, already among the richest and greediest men on the planet, wanting a massive extra bung to pitch up for the Ryder Cup and, equally noisome, Bill Sweeney, chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, paying himself £1.1 million while announcing a loss of £37.9 million. That salary included a performance-based one-off payment of £358,000. Performance? Well may you ask. As Francis Baron, a former RFU chief, observed sagely: ‘We are paying stellar salaries for junk-bond performances.’ Fair enough in my view, and that’s not even looking at the England rugby team’s less than stellar showing.