Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 3 August 2017

No reason for subsidies Sir: For believers in free enterprise like me, it was hugely disappointing to read that Sir James Dyson, probably its most impressive UK exponent, has become a champion for taxpayer-funded subsidies for the farming industry (‘I like making things’, 29 July). He argues that they are necessary due to the cost of regulations and because other countries have them. In any global market that UK companies operate in, such excuses for subsidies exist. As Dyson has the biggest farm operation in the UK, his leading the call for the continuation of subsidies to match EU levels should probably not be surprising, but it is still not

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 3 August 2017

Thank heaven I am on holiday! For the past week I have been up until 4 a.m., glued to the BBO coverage of the Spingold Knockout Teams, the main event of the ACBL’s Summer Nationals, held this year in Toronto. In the very first round of 128 there were two major upsets: the Strul team, seeded 4th and the current Reisinger champions, were knocked out by the number 103 seeds; and the mighty Monaco team (previous winners), seeded 14th, lost to team Jolly (I bet they were), seeded 93rd. In the following week, the 60-board-a day knockout culminated in a thrilling final between teams Lavazza and Diamond, won by Diamond

Taki

High life | 3 August 2017

I’ve stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super yachts that terrorise sea life. In fact, dolphins escorted us in to Kyparissi, a tiny village on the eastern Peloponnese 60 kms from Sparta, my grandmother’s birthplace. German and Spartan; not a bad combination, especially if one thinks democracy is a biological contradiction, which I do. Just look at the Remoaners and you’ll see what I mean. Back in the good old days, we Athenians knew how to practise real democracy. All Athenian males over 18, irrespective of wealth or status, had the right to attend the Assembly, which met

Robin Oakley

The turf | 3 August 2017

Khalid Abdullah, John Gosden and Frankie Dettori — owner, trainer and jockey — already figured among the great names of racing. After this year’s Qipco-sponsored King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes they were joined in the pantheon by Enable, the astonishing filly who has been the prime focus of their attentions this year. As she stood in the winner’s enclosure, her flanks heaving with the effort but her intelligent eye still flickering around the gathering of racing’s great and good, both she and we had no doubt that we were in the presence of equine greatness. She has huge ability, she has guts and she has presence. The King

Melissa Kite

Real life | 3 August 2017

‘This situation is Rorke’s Drift,’ said the builder boyfriend, after our proposed renovations were objected to at the parish council’s notorious planning meeting. ‘When you’re faced with 4,000 warriors armed with spears you may as well go down fighting,’ he declared, as we sat in the cottage ruminating on the news from our architect, who had just come back from the meeting. The BB is apt to get even more dramatic than me when we have a fight on our hands, but I actually think he is not far wrong in his use of metaphor. Certainly, I’ve no hard evidence thus far to deploy in arguing against him comparing the

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 3 August 2017

Q. I’m shortly to host a very large family gathering. Everyone will be related to the same ancestor, so we will have at least one subject to talk about — but then what? We will be a disparate group, hailing from different places, professions, generations and walks of life, and with nothing much in common apart from our lineage. Most of us will not have met before. I am worried that the conversation will run dry as we cannot bang on about our ancestor for three full days. —Name and address withheld A. I note you live within driving distance of Bishop Auckland, so during August you can give your

Toby Young Toby Young

Parents, not schools, are key to the knowledge gap

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) has just published a report looking at the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged 16-year-olds in England — and the news is not good. While the gap has narrowed by three months since 2007, it is still 19.3 months. That is to say, it is as if disadvantaged pupils have received 19.3 months less schooling than their peers by the time they take their GCSEs. For the persistently disadvantaged, i.e. those who have been eligible for free school meals for at least 80 per cent of their school lives, the gap is 24.3 months. Most people’s instinctive reaction to this news will be frustration and

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

A menu for the emmets

Tate St Ives is a pale 1980s block, with a fat rounded porte cochère and sea-stained walls. It is the kind of house Iron Man would build if he lived in New Malden, but St Ives has always welcomed money. It is an oddity in the land of cows, pilchards and tin, beloved of retirees, surfers and urban survivalists. You can, for instance, buy a £100 rucksack at a shop called the Common Wanderer, which also sells the book Wildside: The Enchanted Life of Hunters and Gatherers. I suspect this enchantment is news to the Cornish, and always has been. St Ives is a place of tribes then, with at

Dot Wordsworth

Greenland and India

‘Remember what the fellow said — it’s not a bally bit of use every prospect pleasing if man is vile,’ Bertie Wooster remarked. (In this case, the man was Aunt Agatha’s second husband.) Now Bertram was quite widely, if not exactly, versed in the gems of English literature, and older readers will, like Wodehouse’s, recognise the most quotable line from Bishop Heber’s celebrated hymn, ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains’. Language is not only vocabulary and syntax, but also shared references. Wodehouse’s joke works only if we share Bertie’s acquaintance with Heber’s lines. Heber had written them barely a century earlier, in a few minutes one night in 1819, as a hymn

Peter Jones

Beauty and the beasts | 3 August 2017

Doctors have analysed how the mucus of a certain type of slug gives it protection against its being levered off a surface. From this, they have developed a new water-based gel for surgical repairs and wound healing. Aristotle would have been punching the air, had he not been too busy inventing logic, literary critical theory and almost everything else — in this case, biology. In the introduction to his On the Parts of Animals, Aristotle (384-322 bc) contrasted the study of the heavens, which the ancients regarded as imperishable and eternal, with that of the earth. The former, he said, however scanty the evidence, gave most pleasure, in the same

A.N. Wilson

Diary – 3 August 2017

Diana Spencer has been dead for 20 years. I was a journalist on the Evening Standard in those days and she came to lunch at the newspaper a few months before she died. Apart from her blinding charm, and her overwhelming beauty, it was her perfect manners which were striking. She mastered a few details about anyone she met, so that they always felt she was interested in them. It is a great gift. I do not go in for meeting famous people, but that lunch was something very special. I went home in a blaze of love which has lasted to this hour. Conservative-minded people feared her because she

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 3 August 2017

Home Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appeared to wrest control of plans for Brexit from cabinet rivals, while Theresa May, the Prime Minister, was in Italy and Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, was in Australia. Mr Hammond foresaw a ‘transitional deal’ ending by June 2022, when the next general election is due. He said it would be ‘some time before we are able to introduce full migration controls between the UK and the European Union’. Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, insisted that the cabinet had not agreed to a three-year transition. Mr Johnson said he was unaware that Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, had announced a year-long inquiry

The Spectator

Crunch time

For anyone considering a career in economic forecasting, the Bank of England’s inflation report for August 2007 ought to be required reading. A graph illustrating its Monetary Policy Committee’s ‘best collective judgment’ of annual economic growth two years ahead is fixed around a central prediction of 2.5 per cent, with extreme boundaries of 0.8 per cent and 4.2 per cent. But after two years, economic growth was running at –5.6 per cent, and the economy had just completed its fifth consecutive quarter of negative growth. The finest minds of Threadneedle Street could not see two years ahead. In this case, the Bank of England could not even see a few

Columba

2321: Cleaner

One unclued light, defined by the title, is a word that can be divided into three words; each of these defines each of three of the other unclued lights.   Across 1    Unsteady in yard, thrust backward (5) 10    Mixture of metals in roof really worked (10, hyphened) 14    Check sun and tide (5) 15    Terms of reference put back (5) 16    Repeated eccentricity suppressed with removal of king (6) 22    Direction to release soft pedal set down in note (8, two words) 23    Denial? One among many concepts (7) 24    Call containing anonymous smear (4) 25    Robust address in hearing

Mark Piggott

Why do employers think they can treat potential employees so appallingly?

As a freelance journalist, when my main employer of four years called to say they were dispensing with my services without any prior warning, I was shocked but exhilarated. With my skills, I reasoned, it wouldn’t be long before I found a far more attractive job with better conditions and perhaps even holiday and perhaps even sick pay. Luckily our summer holiday in the US was all paid for; with money I’d put aside, I estimated I wouldn’t need to work full-time until September. As there was no particular rush, I spent a couple of weeks firing off CVs, not particularly expecting much of a response, but more to test

The Spectator

to 2318: Groundwork

SOIL (9) — cryptically indicated by ISLAND IN THE SUN (1A), the title of a SONG (40) recorded by HARRY BELAFONTE (43) — defines each of the other unclued lights.   First prize Mrs P. Newbury, Linlithgow, West Lothian Runners-up C. Elengorn, Enfield, Middlesex; Smithies, Vale, Guernsey

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

In defence of Neymar’s transfer fee

A season ticket at the Parc des Princes, home to Paris Saint-Germain, will set you back somewhere between £336 and £2,116, with individual tickets ranging from £25 to over £100, depending on how good your eyesight is. But this is a small price to pay in order to watch footballing luminaries like Edinson Cavani, Ángel di María and Dani Alves light up a league that has long been the sickly cousin of the European superpowers. Indeed, if you’re a PSG fan, this cost will be nothing compared to the phenomenal resurrection, started in 2011, of a European superpower that appeared to be in terminal decline. PSG are on the verge

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Mark Carney’s gospel: give us an interest rate rise, Lord – but not yet

Is there anything more predictable than a Mark Carney press conference? The poor sod in Groundhog Day got to enjoy more variety and suspense. Explaining why, yet again, the Bank of England had decided not to raise interest rates, Governor Carney told us that rates could rise ‘faster than markets expect’. That wouldn’t be all that hard, given that markets have pretty well given up on Carney ever shifting rates. Maybe they believed him the first time, in June 2014, when he said that a rate rise could come ‘sooner than markets expect’. Maybe they were still inclined to take a little bit of notice in July 2015 when he

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Riot chic

On this week’s episode, we talk about “riot chic”, the problem with electric cars, and how women’s sport won our hearts. Is rioting becoming fashionable? That’s what Cosmo Landesman thinks, in the week after Dalston was rocked by unrest. He believes that the middle classes are swarming to these disturbances to express some apolitical anger – so is he right? Cosmo joins the podcast along with Tom Gash, author of Criminal: The Truth About Why People Do Bad Things. As Cosmo writes: “The riot chic crowd seek the euphoric rush that comes from combining violence with the feeling that you’re being virtuous. After all, you’re barbecuing someone’s car or throwing a bottle