Society

Thursday

2 Mar 2017

Why didn’t I listen to the Old Devil?

When Kingsley Amis won the Booker prize for The Old Devils in 1986, he said that he had previously thought of the Booker as a rather trivial, showbizzy sort of caper, but now considered it a very serious, reliable indication of literary merit. It was a joke, evidently. Indeed, when he said it during his acceptance speech he grinned from ear to ear, just to make it crystal clear that he was being ironic. But it didn’t do any good. In a BBC round-up of the events of the year, the presenter said that Amis had won the distinguished literary prize in spite of having previously disparaged it. This was

Tanya Gold

Rich desserts

Ferdi is a café in Shepherd Market; I write about it only to comfort you, because you are not rich, and so you cannot afford to go there, because you would have to pay £140 for two courses without wine. It probably thinks it is a restaurant, wants to be a restaurant, but it isn’t. Its defining characteristic is claustrophobia, and even bad restaurants allow the critic to breathe as they polish their spite. It is a copy, or satellite, of a fashionable café in Paris. The Parisian Ferdi is popular with fashion models and ‘Kim and Kanye’ (Kardashian and West), which is always a terrible sign. Shepherd Market, in

Dot Wordsworth

Pick

I have long pondered the motive with which Michael Wharton, for long the author of the Daily Telegraph’s Peter Simple column, gave a memorable detail in his second volume of memories, A Dubious Codicil, about the habits of his rival Colin Welch: ‘He had a habit of picking his nose, occasionally tasting the extracted mucus or “bogey”, without any attempt to conceal himself, as most people would, behind a newspaper.’ Since they are both dead, I am unlikely to find out. But I have been piqued recently by another kind of pick, mostly relating to Donald Trump, and now spilling over into British affairs. The choice for one of his cabinet

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 March 2017

Home Sir John Major, the former prime minister, made a speech at Chatham House in which he called the referendum vote for Brexit ‘an historic mistake’. The Lords got its teeth into the European Union (notification of withdrawal) bill. A merger between the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse foundered after the LSE refused a demand by the European Commission for it to sell its Italian bond-trading platform, MTS. Royal Bank of Scotland, in which taxpayers hold a 73 per cent stake, announced losses of £7 billion. Theresa May gave up crisps for Lent. Asked if he would still be Labour leader in 2020, Jeremy Corbyn said: ‘I’ve given you a

Doc

2299: Pieces of Eight

One unclued light is the origin of the remaining unclued lights (three of two words), individually or as a pair. Across 4 Stagnation’s the making of these adversaries (11) 11 It’s for refreshment in moderation — there’s no din (7) 12 Reptile from southern-most headland (6) 13 Nut lovers’ collection in Laurel’s birthplace (9) 14 King of England swapping old money in 37 (5) 16 Motionless, it can make the spirits appear (5) 19 Child beginning to trust stranger gets left imprisoned (7) 21 Note time on Orkney isle (4) 23 Sin from Bible — a run on diamonds (7) 24 Smile and phone, when cycling (4) 25 Corrupt

Michael Heath

The Battle for Britain – 2 March 2017

Doc

to 2296: Men of note

The unclued lights are seven COMPOSERS whose surnames begin with A to G, along with the eighth beginning with H, which is B natural in German notation. First prize Oliver Miles, Oxford Runners-up Miriam Moran, Pangbourne, Berks Tom Eadon, Melton Mowbray, Leicsa

Charles Moore

There’s a simple way of dealing with the BBC’s TV licence bullies

Congratulations to the Daily Mail for exposing the unpleasant methods by which TV Licensing’s staff make people pay their television licence fees. Capita, the company that does the dirty work for the BBC, encourages its employees to use ‘ruthless and underhand tactics’ to collect the money, says the Mail. The paper offers painful examples of the victims — ‘RAF man with dementia, mum in a women’s refuge’. It could have added ‘veteran Spectator columnist’, since these activities were first exposed on this page in 2006, when I got fed up with being pursued by Capita to buy a TV licence for a flat without a television. The Mail correctly identifies

Rachel Cunliffe

In defence of compulsory sex education

There are two ways to protect children from the damaging and misleading depictions of sex they get from online pornography. One is to give them comprehensive age-appropriate sex education, so that they understand porn is not a guide to real life and have the information to process what they see. The other is to ban porn for everyone, adults included. David Cameron’s government tried the latter approach, with mandatory safeguards enforced by internet providers and censorship of adult websites. Now Theresa May’s government, under the guidance of education secretary Justine Greening, is trying the less draconian and more practical approach, by announcing compulsory school sex education that addresses the issues

Laura Whitcombe

Car insurance costs to soar

It’s been a painful week for drivers – and it’s only going to get worse. Insurance costs are set to soar and tough new penalties have been introduced for common motoring offences. Together these could cost drivers hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds. Here’s a look at what’s changed and how you could be affected. Rising car insurance costs On Monday, a change to the way compensation for personal injury claims are calculated was announced by the government that will make it much more expensive for insurers. The ins and outs of the issue make for pretty dull reading (although the Daily Mail has a useful guide here)

Helen Nugent

PPI, incomes, new homes and spending

The Financial Conduct Authority has finally announced a deadline for people seeking compensation over mis-sold payment protection insurance. The City regulator has said that people will have to make their claims before 29 August 2019. In one of the industry’s biggest scandals, banks have set aside more than £40 billion to meet the payouts. Although millions of people have already received compensation, it is thought that many more have yet to lodge claims. The BBC reports that the FCA will conduct a two-year public awareness campaign, starting in August this year. Incomes The Telegraph reports that ‘Britons should brace for two years of stagnant real pay as inflation surges while cautious

Charlotte Gill

Emma Watson’s ‘have your cake and eat it’ feminism is hard to swallow

There’s a real whiff of hypocrisy about Emma Watson’s latest shoot for Vanity Fair, in which she poses semi-nude. Women’s magazines will tell you it’s stunning, artistic, so feminist, and the rest, but the lady doth pose too much, methinks. This is, after all, the gal who’s spent the last three years lecturing others about breaking away from the limitations of gender; who once said ‘with airbrushing and digital manipulation, fashion can be an unobtainable image that’s dangerously unhealthy.’ Yeah, yeah. It’s Watson’s brand of ‘have your cake and eat it’ feminism that has proven particularly bothersome; a variety that has largely been swallowed up by the public, ever since her appointment as the UN Women Goodwill

Roger Alton

Three cheers for rugby’s Italian loophole

A friend was at Twickenham on Sunday sitting not far from the Italian coaching top brass, Conor O’Shea and Mike Catt. After an early tackle, and no ruck being formed, the Italian players ran to take up space in front of the England backs, blocking their attacking options. ‘That’s offside,’ shouted my friend. Catt, who knew her, glanced up. ‘No it’s not,’ he smiled gleefully. And it wasn’t. As the world now knows, the Italians had found a loophole — there couldn’t be an offside after a tackle once neither side formed a ruck. There cannot be many people who care for rugby and applaud the underdog who didn’t secretly

Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 4 March

I adore the wines of New Zealand. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if I had to drink the wines of just one country — taking France out of the equation, of course — then New Zealand would do it for me. There are spectacular aromatic whites from Marlborough, Gisborne and Nelson; soft, smooth and supple Pinot Noirs from Marlborough, Martinborough and Central Otago; and wonderfully sophisticated Bordeaux blends from Hawke’s Bay. There are also fab fizzes and exquisite sweet wines if you can find them. So, just for the heck of it, thanks to an excellent proposed longlist from Mr.Wheeler, we’ve gone 100 per

Douglas Murray

Memory games | 2 March 2017

Poor Paul Nuttall. He seemed to have everything a cheeky by-election victor needed: the outsider vim, the accent, the cap. Then it emerged he had made stuff up about Hillsborough. That was that. He moved from admirable Scouser to tragedy-crasher. In interviews over the years, Nuttall has referred to being at the stadium in Sheffield on the terrible day, and he still insists he was. We shall probably never know why that developed on his website into his having lost ‘close personal friends’ there — something which is not, it seems, true. Yet while it is good fun blowing raspberries and deriding politicians, we should allow them a little understanding

Rosa Monckton

Let my daughter work

Freud said ‘Love and work… work and love, that’s all there is.’ And ‘Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.’ What is life like for people with learning disabilities who have the cornerstone of the love of their parents, but who have little prospect of work? Approximately 1.4 million people in the UK have a learning disability, yet 1.3 million of them are unemployed. Think of the misery that figure represents, the isolation and loneliness. The October 2016 Department of Work and Pensions Green Paper, Improving Lives, states: ‘The evidence is clear that work and health are linked.’ It says that there are 1.5 million people in receipt

Matthew Parris

From now on, I’ll greet Brexiteers with a grin

I’m cheering up about Brexit. The moaning has to stop. Why be downhearted and edgy when you’re confident of your argument? Leavers: you’re all wrong. I’m not totally sure — one never can be — and certainly I could be mistaken: and one day we’ll know. Meanwhile I place my confidence in the judgment of those in British politics I most admire, people like Michael Heseltine, Chris Patten, John Major, Ruth Davidson and Kenneth Clarke; and, sticking to my guns and with a merry two fingers up to the lot of you, I leave you Brexit types to the snarling din emanating from your Brexit cave. Chins up, Leaver trolls

Camilla Swift

Flock horror

Pity the poor sheep. Every other animal has its champions. There are fox fanatics, dog obsessives, campaigners for cat welfare. Pigs, once a celebrity pet of choice, have their supporters, too. But it’s sheep who need friends right now, because they are, quite literally, under attack. My Facebook pals are mostly country types and barely a day goes by without one of them posting a picture of a sheep mauled, often fatally, by untrained, unrestrained city-dwelling dogs. Camilla Swift is joined by Ben Fogle to discuss the plight of sheep: Sheep-worrying used to be quite a minor problem but it is now getting much worse in terms of the number

The Spectator

A model village

From ‘Sir Thomas Acland’s example’, The Spectator, 3 March 1917: In 1912 we discussed the idea — a favourite dream of ours — that some characteristic English village, perfect of its kind but likely to lose its quality in the hugger-mugger expansions of modern enterprise, might be acquired by the National Trust to be kept forever as a specimen, in a changing world, of what used to be… Men freely give pictures and collections of china and plate and furniture to the nation. Why not the grouped architectural works of man? Why, too, should not open pieces of country be given as often as pictures and bronzes and statues?

Jenny McCartney

Star power

The ongoing war between Donald Trump and the Hollywood A-list has entered a new and unpredictable phase. Celebrity criticism of Trump — keenly anticipated as the chewy takeaway from last week’s Academy Awards ceremony — was instead overshadowed by a celebrity cock-up. Thanks to a mix-up of the sacred envelopes, presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway temporarily awarded Best Picture to La La Land, rather than the real winner, Moonlight. The result was an unforgettable tableau of confusion at the ceremony’s crowning moment. Trump had earlier let it be known that he wasn’t watching. Like a kid talking too loudly about his maths project while the others are getting ready