Society

Thursday

Helen Nugent

The UK housing market is in ‘neutral gear’

Mortgage Freedom Day. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Just imagine: no mortgage. I wonder what that feels like. According to Halifax, yesterday was UK Mortgage Freedom Day, the point in the calendar when new borrowers will have earned enough to pay off the annual cost of their mortgage. So not quite the mortgage-free day of joy, but good news nonetheless. Halifax based its calculation on the average annual mortgage repayment cost of £7,968 and the average net annual income of £26,810. However, there is a wide variation in Mortgage Freedom Days across the country. Homeowners in Scotland celebrate March 14, followed by Northern Ireland on March 15

Thomas Marks

Genoa

Some say Genoa takes its name from Janus, the two-faced god of time and doorways. Perhaps. What’s certain is the city has two aspects: the vast industrial port, its docks the bared teeth of the Italian Riviera; and, in the ruched strip of land between the Ligurian Sea and the hills, a bewildering network of alleys, stairways, and irregular little squares. ‘Genoa is the tightest topographic tangle in the world,’ wrote Henry James, ‘which even a second visit helps you little to straighten out. In the wonderful crooked, twisting, climbing, soaring, burrowing Genoese alleys the traveller is really up to his neck in the old Italian sketchability.’ The port has

The Spectator

Let them eat hay

From ‘What ails the House of Commons?’, 21 April 1917: Theoretically no horses kept for pleasure or sport ought to be allowed to be fed with oats at the present time. Such food as can be spared should be kept for ploughhorses and horses used for necessary transport. We are told, of course, that the best racehorses, mares and stallions, must be kept alive to maintain the breed. We agree… There are, however, a great many racing geldings … consuming quantities of oats. There are also a large number of inferior thoroughbreds of all kinds whose only object is the winning of second-rate events. These could either be turned out

Bruce Anderson

A glimmer of hope

I argued that it was unnecessary to have made sacrifices during Lent in order to celebrate its conclusion. It is the thought that counts. Others were less sure, though none of them exhibited the stigmata of austerity. Anyway, we ate some magnificent Pascal pig, plus a delicious lamb which would have been scampering around a neighbouring field during last year’s Lent. The one which we were feasting on and its cohorts have been replaced by some sweet little spring lambs, now playing regardless of their doom. They have all been earmarked for the next phase of their education: in local deep freezes. I pointed out that there was no reason

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

Proud to be a prude

What advice would you give to this modern moral question posed by my friend’s younger sister? A boy at school had asked her to send him a selfie. Nude, naturally. She was dithering. She liked the boy, a sixth-form crush, and was keen to endear herself. But she knew that if she sent a naked picture he’d pass it on to his friends. She had thought of compromises: just her breasts, or her bottom coyly reflected in a mirror. It hadn’t crossed her mind to say ‘get lost’. Then, she explained, he’d tell his friends she was a prude. That, to her, was far worse than the First XI seeing

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Fund a fisherman or finance a film

Crowdfunding is a promising idea, and has created useful products. The Canary home-security system I wrote about recently was funded in this way. One big problem remains, though: how do you reward your early backers if you become too successful? Many of the 9,522 people who provided $2.5 million to fund development of the Oculus Rift headset on Kickstarter were understandably miffed when the company was sold to Facebook for more than $2 billion, of which they received precisely nothing. (I know how this feels — when I was 17, I inherited £200 from a distant relative, the remains of some money his father had made selling the patent for

Lucy Vickery

Cross lines

In Competition No. 2994 you were invited to submit a letter of complaint from a fictional character to his, hers or its creator complaining about their portrayal. There are some long lines this week (blame Poe) and as the standard was high, I’ll step aside to make space for six winners. The excellent entries printed below earn their authors £25 each.   Weak and weary, ever yearning, when the midnight oil is burning; In a rare trochaic meter bygone sorrows you explore. As you sit there ruminating, pondering your woes, I’m stating That I find it nauseating, this obsession with Lenore, For you treat me with derision, eulogise your teenage

Wednesday

Emma Lunn

Your rights if you’re one of the 50,000 passengers kicked off a plane each year

United Airlines will be cursing the day someone had the bright idea of building cameras into mobile phones. Video clips showing a semi-conscious 69-year-old man being dragged from an overbooked plane after he refused to disembark went viral last week, sending the airline’s reputation into a tailspin. For those who’ve been on a really long media-free flight for the past week, here’s what happened. Last Monday passengers boarded flight 3411 in Chicago bound for Louisville, Kentucky. But before it took off, United decided it needed to squeeze in four crew members who needed to be in Louisville for work the next day. It asked for four volunteers to be bumped

Tuesday

Tom Bill

Is it time to take a close look at the prime London property market? Spectator Money investigates

‘It feels like 2010,’ was the verdict last week of one seasoned operator in the prime London property market. What they meant is that after a period of uncertainty and restraint, the smart money is beginning to take a longer, harder look at the top-end of the London market. In 2010, the market was coming to terms with impact from the global financial crisis. In recent years, pricing has been adjusting to higher taxation, a political by-product of the downturn designed to address wider affordability concerns. However the stamp duty increase of December 2014 for £1 million-plus properties, which had the single biggest dampening effect on demand, is nearly two

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: How Project Fear failed to materialise

Exactly a year ago today, George Osborne was busy unveiling the Treasury’s famously doom-laden analysis about Brexit. Now with his six jobs and bulging bank balance the former chancellor is busier than ever. But the worries he spoke of about economic uncertainty have failed to materialise, and the prophecies of misery foretold by Project Fear are nowhere to be seen. The Daily Mail says the Treasury document ‘formed the centrepiece of Project Fear and deployed a barrage of apocalyptic forecasts’ about what would happen if Britain voted Leave. In reality, the paper says, only one in ten of Osborne’s predictions have come true – and the ‘the worst ones have

Monday

Raymond Briggs

Old age isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Don’t get old! Everything takes so long – it’s an hour to get down to breakfast. And I’m not only slow, but confused as well. Sometimes I can’t find a garment I took off the night before, or can locate only one sock (I usually have two). I’ve always been a bare-feet-and-sandals man; I have on my wall a quote by Einstein, ‘I never wear socks, they are useless garments.’ I do so agree with him, but Old Age strikes again. I now have to wear a toe spacer and this falls out if I have no socks on, so I’m locked into a cycle of sock dependency. This is

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Howard Jacobson on Trump: He has the emptiest mind of all

Howard Jacobson awoke to the news of Trump’s victory in November. He had no newspaper column so, what could he do? Write a novel, said his wife, and he did, in six weeks. It is called Pussy, and it is a short and horrifying hypothetical biography of Donald Trump, now an infant prince called Fracassus, born into a noble family of property developers. Fracassus hates words. He hates women. He tweets. Jacobson throws every weapon — every word — he has into Pussy. He is the voice of the metropolitan liberal elite emitting a death rattle, and that is a grave calling. I have loved Jacobson since he wrote this,

Owen Matthews

Syria used to be Putin’s great asset. Now, it’s a huge liability

For Vladimir Putin, Syria has been the gift that kept on giving. His 2015 military intervention propelled Russia back to the top diplomatic tables of the world — a startling comeback for a country that had spent two decades languishing in poverty and contempt on the margins of the world’s councils. At home, the war took over as a booster of Putin’s prestige just as the euphoria over the annexation of Crimea was being eroded by economic bad news caused by low oil prices and sanctions. In the Middle East, Russia was able to show both friends and enemies that it was once again able to project power every bit as

Sunday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

If you want to save the CofE, then get stuck in (and go to church)

Christ is risen; happy Easter all round. It’s a pleasing festival in all sorts of ways, chief of which is that it’s wildly uncommercial, being the Sunday following the full moon following the spring equinox, if I’ve got that right. So, not a usefully neat date like 25 December, and one that retailers find much more difficult to exploit except as a means of flogging lamb legs (folks – lambs have only four legs, but they also come with shoulders, you know, which are even nicer) and obviously, chocolate eggs… though Eastern Christians do it better, with hand coloured eggs, which they get blessed at church. Anyway, it’s still a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Donald Trump is listening to his generals – and that’s great news for Britain

‘Great Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a role’. Fifty-five years on, Dean Acheson’s remark has not lost its sting. British statecraft is, even now, an attempt to lay claim to a place in the post-imperial world. The events of the past few months — Brexit, the election of the most unlikely US president in history and the debate over the Union — all raise the issue of what kind of country Britain hopes to be. The chemical weapons attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria last week has prompted the first foreign policy crisis of this new era. Britain’s role in the response

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

In defence of the Church of England

The Algerian government’s official tourist guide describes ‘the walled town of Beni Isguen — normally closed to foreigners — where the women, clad entirely in white, reveal only one eye to the outside world’. Rod Dreher’s Easter call to devout Christians to separate themselves as a community from what he believes to be the degeneracy of our western culture puts me in mind of that sad, disturbing place. Beni Isguen is one of the oasis towns near Ghardaia in southern Algeria. I visited many years ago and can be sure there has been little change since, for the community has clung to unchanging and uniting beliefs for hundreds of years.

The Spectator

How will the EU cope without Britain?

Many EU officials would like to present the Brexit negotiations as a case of one nervous member, weak at the knees, appearing before a menacing and united panel of 27. But that ignores the political and ideological rifts which are already apparent in the EU. Britain’s departure not only necessitates the creation of a new relationship between us and them; it fundamentally shifts the balance in EU politics. As Angela Merkel has been worrying aloud in recent weeks, the northern European countries which have always tended to take a liberal position on economics and trade are going to have a harder job fighting off the protectionist instincts of the south.

Saturday

Nick Robinson & Charles Moore

Bias and the BBC: A discussion

Last week, Nick Robinson wrote an article in the Radio Times saying Radio 4’s Today programme no longer has an obligation to balance its coverage of Brexit. This led to criticism from Charles Moore that he was, in effect, admitting to BBC bias. The two met for a discussion in The Spectator offices. Nick Robinson: As you’re so fond of pointing out, Charles, most economists, business organisations, trade unions and FTSE 100 chief executives were Remainers. The BBC’s difficulty is that news tends to be about interviewing people in power: scrutinising them, asking tough questions. It’s right that we should go and look for other voices, look for critics. But

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The trial of Kelvin MacKenzie

Kelvin MacKenzie’s baffling compulsion to pick at Liverpool has brought him up a cropper again, with the Sun pulling his latest polemic on Everton FC player Ross Barkley. MacKenzie has compared the footballer, recently victim of an assault in a nightclub, to ‘a gorilla at the zoo’ and added that, in Liverpool, ‘the only men with similar pay packets are drug dealers and therefore not at nightclubs, as they are often guests of Her Majesty’. Liverpool is outraged. Fair enough. Everton has mimicked Anfield in banning the Sun. Why blameless footie hacks should be punished is beyond me, but that’s up to the club. In a fairly extraordinary step, however,

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Our message to Assad: kill a lot more of your people, but nicely. And please spin it out

Let me take this opportunity to join with our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in commending President Trump’s swift and decisive military action against the Syrian government as being ‘appropriate’ — one of my favourite words and one which I like to use every day, regardless of whether it is appropriate to do so. The important thing was not of course the destruction of a few Syrian planes and, collaterally, a few Syrian children. The crucial point is that this moderate and judicious use of expensive missiles ‘sends out a message’ to President Assad. And the message is very simple. We will no longer tolerate Syrian children being killed by