The Battle for Britain – 2 February 2017
Society
Thursday
to 2292: Discovery
Thematic names are 1A/22 and 25/34, author of The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. Thematic phrases appear in the shape of a double helix with mirror symmetry around the grid’s central axis. First prize Hugh Dales, Dysart, Fife Runners-up P. West, Birmingham; Christine Twickel, Tidmington, Shipston-on-Stour
Farewell Fillon. Can ‘establishment’ candidates ever win anywhere again?
It’s hard not to feel for François Fillon, the French presidential hopeful whose career is now imploding. He looked destined for the Élysée Palace — until Le Canard Enchainé, the French equivalent of Private Eye, broke the story about him paying his British wife too much to pretend to be his assistant. Sensible, small c conservative, Catholic France had fallen for him, and he was regarded as the perfect moderate alternative to Marine Le Pen. It’s true he had been called ‘Thatcherite’, which is quite poisonous in France, but he could have survived that. With this scandal, which seems small beer by French standards, the wolves are out to get him. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president
Alexandra Shulman’s reign at Vogue will be defined by mediocrity, idiocy and flip-flops
The outpouring of love following Alexandra Shulman’s departure from Vogue was truly touching: she was described as ‘unpretentious’ and ‘very British’ (code for overweight and posh) as the UK fashion industry mourned the loss of this affable leader. Though I’m sure she was a very nice lady, there is something quite perverse about celebrating a fashion editor who could barely find time to comb her hair and was too busy glugging wine to look in the mirror before leaving the house. As the UK’s number one representative for fashion it was her responsibility to look presentable and deliver interesting work and she failed to do either. The correct response to mark
The protests against Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley mark a new low for campus craziness
The movement for free speech on campus was born at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. Last night it died there. In the intolerant screams, smashed glass and fire — actual fire — of the Berkeley protesters who successfully prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking, the ideal of free speech on campus was dealt a fatal blow. It’s undeniable now: the modern western university, once a bastion of thought experimentation, is now one of the most hostile places on earth to freedom of speech and robust debate. It’s tempting simply to ridicule the students and anarchists who gathered in vast numbers in Berkeley last night to insist that Breitbart provocateur
Baroness Trumpington turns to the bottle in the name of liberty
On Thursday afternoon, lovers of liberty and lovers of daytime drinking came together to celebrate Boisdale Life‘s inaugural Libertarian of the Year Awards. As MPs prepared to vote for Article 50 in the Commons, those who had done their bit for individual liberties were honoured at Boisdale Belgravia. ‘I was particularly impressed to hear this chap on the radio defending smoking in cars with children,’ Simon Clark, the director of Forest, remarked as he declared the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Mark Littlewood ‘Libertarian of the Year’. ‘This is an issue we’ve been opposing the past two years and it’s not because we condone it, nobody in their right mind would light a cigar in a small
Where to find free help for your money worries
This week is one of the gloomiest of the year for people who work for themselves because they’ve had to settle up with the taxman. And it’s not just this week they feel the pain of self-employment, or just them who shoulder the burden. The financial impact of the way they work is taking its toll on their families all year round, according to research out today from Scottish Widows’ think tank. It found that one in five people with a self-employed relative say their family member has more financial worries since becoming their own boss, while just as many say they are more stressed as a result of their
PETA’s Warhammer ban reveals the hypocrisy of its fake fur policy
There are lots of problems with Warhammer fans. Bad haircuts, terrible dress sense, to name just two. These aren’t even stereotypes; as a little girl I went to the Games Workshop multiple times with my brothers, so have first-hand experience. Still, I feel strangely defensive over Warhammer because it has been the victim of a vicious smear campaign. PETA has launched the most bemusing of attacks on the brand after spotting that some of its characters wear fur clothing. The Viking-style ‘space wolves’ have caused particular offence. I should emphasise at this stage that the fur isn’t actually real. Warhammer, as its disciples will know, is made out of plastic, which fans lovingly glue together before painting on the finer details –
Books podcast: Michael Rosen on The Disappearance of Émile Zola
Imagine if Dostoyevsky had spent a year or two knocking around Penge. Or if Balzac had sojourned in Stoke Poges. If those great European novelists seem out of place in a provincial English setting, you’ll get a flavour of the comedy and poignancy of Émile Zola: The Upper Norwood Years, as Michael Rosen’s new book could have been called bit wasn’t. The former Children’s Laureate and presenter of Radio Four’s Word of Mouth joins me in this week’s podcast to discuss The Disappearance of Émile Zola: Love, Literature and the Dreyfus Case, which describes the true story of how the great novelist, on the run from the French authorities in
Tesco, housing, motor insurance and debt
After Tesco surprised the City by announcing a £3.9 billion merger with Booker comes the news that the supermarket giant could be forced to dispose of more than 600 stores. Analysis by the data team at The Times has found ‘there are 635 Tesco stores situated less than 500 metres from a shop in Booker’s network of Premier, Londis and Budgens stores, raising fears about the impact on consumers, suppliers and rivals’. In other Tesco news, Tesco Bank current account customers are to receive a guaranteed 3 per cent credit interest on balances up to £3,000 from 1 April 2017 until 1 April 2019. And current account customers will receive more Clubcard points
What the papers say: Brexit ‘lift off’
The period of ‘phoney Brexit’ is over, says the Daily Telegraph in its editorial this morning. After MPs overwhelming backed the Government on the triggering of Article 50 in last night’s historic vote, one thing is now clear: ‘there is no way back’. It’s obvious, the Telegraph says, that whatever happens next, the process is not going to be easy. Sir Ivan Rogers told a Commons committee yesterday that the Brexit negotiations will be the biggest undertaken since the Second World War – and possibly the biggest ever; he’s right, says the Telegraph. But as well as being correct on the scale of the task ahead, the former UK ambassador
Jaipur Notebook
Did Winston Churchill, like Donald Trump, also like to ‘grab them by the pussy?’ Last week at the Jaipur Literary Festival, I was on a panel discussion entitled ‘Churchill: Hero or Villain?’, where the Indian biographer Shrabani Basu told a large crowd that at a suffragettes’ demonstration outside Parliament in November 1910, Churchill, then home secretary, had ‘given instructions for police that they can batter the women and assault the women and sexually assault them as well’. He allegedly told policemen to ‘put their hands up their thighs, they can grope them and press their breasts’. ‘Can I just point out that that is completely untrue?’ I intervened. ‘He at
Protest all you like. I won’t listen until you burn
I think on balance I would prefer people to demonstrate their opposition to political developments — Brexit, the forthcoming state visit of Donald Trump and so on — by setting fire to themselves in the manner of outraged Buddhist monks, rather than simply by clicking ‘sign’ on some internet petition. I think the self-immolation thing carries more force. It is true that a mass conflagration of a million and a half people in Trafalgar Square would, in the short term, greatly exacerbate the appalling smog afflicting London as a consequence of wood-burning stoves. But as most of the signatories of the petition against Trump coming probably own all of those
Wine Club 4 February
Phew, done it! Dry January, that is, and 31 whole days on the wretched water wagon, clinging on by my fingertips. Well, 31 whole days apart from a two-day, champagne-soaked trip to Pol Roger (about which more anon on our Spectator Wine Club website) and three days with the missus in the Loire Valley (ditto). But having spoken to my legal advisers I understand that I’m in the clear. Apparently, because I was drinking outside UK jurisdiction, it doesn’t really count and I can still claim to have had a dry January in this country. Doncha just love lawyers? As a result, I — and I’m sure scores of similarly
The man from nowhere
Before the horrified gaze of its militants, the French Socialist party — which has been a major force in French politics since 1981, and forms the present government — is falling to pieces. There are many reasons behind this catastrophe. They go back to 2005 and the dithering leadership of the then secretary-general, François Hollande, at a time when the party was dangerously divided after the referendum on a European constitution. And they continue up to 1 December last year, when President Hollande, after again dithering for months, announced on national television, in tears, that he had bowed to the inevitable — his own failure and unpopularity — and would
Should Many Clouds have been racing last Saturday?
Few things in sport are more thrilling than a great racehorse giving its all. That’s why the death of that noble steeplechaser Many Clouds on Saturday was so sad, so epic too. Courage is an over-used word in sport, but Many Clouds really was very brave indeed. He won the Grand National on strength-sapping ground in 2015, and at the weekend fought back to beat the best chaser of the present day, Thistlecrack, by a head. Seconds after crossing the line in the Cotswold Chase at Cheltenham, this most magnificent of horses collapsed and died. It was a pulmonary haemorr-hage. Many Clouds had literally given his all. Now his ashes
British placenames
British placenames are so good you can read the map for entertainment rather than navigation. Hardington Mande-ville, Bradford Peverell, Carlton Scroop — they sound like characters in a novel. In fact, P.G. Wodehouse often raided the atlas when writing: Lord Emsworth is named after a town in Hampshire, while a village in the same county gave Reginald Shipton–Bellinger his surname. There’s plenty of silliness out there — Great Snoring in Norfolk, Matching Tye in Essex, Fryup in Yorkshire. Some good old-fashioned smut, too: Lusty Glaze, Pant, Bell End and a couple of Twatts. Kent boasts a Thong — and it’s only a mile or so from Shorne. But enough of
‘Above all else, fun’
Alexander Chancellor’s ‘Long Life’ is over; but it was not nearly long enough. I was feeling rather gloomy last Friday, having just had our old terrier put down, when I opened The Spectator and was immediately cheered up by the first paragraph of Alexander’s column. It was so typical of the way that he often looked at the world, and of his delightfully quirky sense of humour, that he should relate a children’s song to the new President of the United States. Recalling Nellie the elephant and her trumpety-trump, he wrote: ‘I’m hoping against hope that Donald Trumpety-Trump will also say goodbye to the circus in Washington and return to
Tax demand
From ‘Lenders and taxpayers’, The Spectator, 3 February 1917: As to the general financial soundness of the country there can be no question… Indeed, one of our worst economic troubles at the present moment is that many classes of people are in possession of more money than they have ever handled before, and cannot resist the temptation of spending it lavishly. Somehow or other their expenditure on their personal gratification has to be controlled in the interests of the state. A considerable amount of control is being exercised through the power which the government possess of regulating our imports. That power, as we shall presently urge, must be more extensively used
Rules for loneliness
An old acquaintance died recently. A friend of mine, who was closer to him than I was, rang to tell me. She’d known him for 40 years and looked after him at various times when he fell ill. He was diagnosed with cancer three weeks ago and died suddenly in hospital last week. She tried to find out what happened, but as she is not next of kin (he had no relations) she will probably never know. Within the monolith of the NHS, patients, particularly the elderly, are able to disappear from view as effectively as prisoners in the Soviet gulag. If they don’t re-emerge alive, no except a close
