Society

Julie Burchill

Alt-hate

At the start of the year, a Facebook friend messaged me, telling me that she and a chum had been asked to leave their north London book group (how I hugged myself on reading those words!): she for posting a link on Facebook to a Spectator piece by me — pleasingly and rather reasonably headlined ‘The Brexit divide wasn’t between young and old but Ponces and Non-Ponces’; her friend for liking it. I was naturally fascinated, my curiosity driven by righteous indignation and unrighteous glee. I asked for more information and Judith — my penpal’s suitably heroic name —wrote back: ‘The last line from the email of the man who

Three for the road

One of the great challenges in life, writes Richard Ford in Between Them, ‘is to know our parents fully — assuming they survive long enough, are worth knowing and it is physically possible’. Leaving aside the question of whether we can ever know anyone fully, Ford’s knowledge of his parents, Parker and Edna, was limited. They did not survive long enough, or at least his father didn’t. Soon after Ford’s 16th birthday, his father ‘came awake in his bed on a Saturday morning and died’, aged 55, of a heart attack, as Richard administered CPR. Nor were they particularly worth knowing, whatever that means; his description of them as ‘country

Song for Europe

In Competition No. 3002 you were invited to provide lyrics to the European anthem.   The anthem has as its melody the final movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 but dispenses with Schiller’s words. I wondered if anyone might go back to his 1785 ‘Ode to Joy’ and repurpose the following lines: ‘Yea, if any hold in keeping/ Only one heart all his own/ Let him join us, or else weeping/ Steal from out our midst, unknown.’ No one did, though there were frequent nods in the entry to other parts of the ode.   Over to the winners, who pocket £25 each. John Whitworth was an unlucky loser and W.J.

How to navigate the information overload

As humans we are endlessly called upon to make decisions based on the information we have, and we are defined by those decisions – as individuals, in business and as a society. Living in the ‘Age of Information’, one would hope that people’s decisions would be more informed and less biased, more based in fact and less on emotion. But instead it seems increasingly that the opposite is true. At what stage did the knowledge economy go from boom to bust? The Age of Information seems to have proliferated into the ‘Age of Information Overload’, with a torrent of data being disseminated indiscriminately to vast, unknown audiences. In an increasingly

The risks of being a modern landlord

The spate of terrorist attacks in London and Manchester has made many landlords and their insurers nervous about the risks of letting strangers rent houses, flats or even rooms without even closer checks. This is not about getting money upfront, though that can act as a deterrent. No, it is the still thankfully tiny but nevertheless horrific danger that your property will be used as part of a terrorist cell, exposing it to potentially huge damage if an explosive experiment goes wrong, along with the possibility that it will be out of bounds during a police investigation and the neighbourhood’s reputation blackened for years. Until recently, the government was all

The young are tired of London – and who can blame them?

London has historically been the place to go for young creative types. These days, renting damp warehouses and staying in bad relationships just because being in a couple makes life cheaper are among the many grim choices some make just to be there. But they wouldn’t have it any other way. The thought of settling in a parochial university town or returning home to Little Borington is the closest thing to death imaginable. The peak age for moving to London is 23, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – shortly after graduation. Young Londoners accept high housing costs relative to pay as a trade-off for fun and potential.

Spectator competition winners: P.G. Wodehouse’s Guide to Manly Health and Training

For the latest competition you were invited to take inspiration from the recently published Walt Whitman’s Guide to Manly Health and Training and supply an extract from a similar guide penned by another well-known writer. While Whitman extols the benefits of stale bread and fresh air and cautions against eating between meals, Fiona Pitt-Kethley’s John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester advocates a rather less ascetic approach: ‘Swiving’s the only manly exercise/ To tone the glutes and work the inner thighs/ No bench presses, go press a wench instead./ Roll up your yoga mat and go to bed.’ In a small but distinguished entry Mike Morrison takes £30; his fellow winners are

Rod Liddle

I called it! Theresa May has been undone by her pointless election

I would direct you to Liddle passim for why we are now in this state of chaos. Even if Theresa May hadn’t run the worst election campaign in living memory (again, passim) she still wouldn’t have increased her majority by much at all. I knew that as a fact, an absolute certainty, on the day the election was called, and explained why, no matter that the polls were showing a landslide. The decision to call an election was arrogant and complacent — and so was the subsequent campaign. None of us may want the additional chaos of a leadership election, but nonetheless, there should be one. She is, as I

Steerpike

Wanted: a cabinet minister

Theresa May has suffered a humiliating election result tonight after her big gamble backfired spectacularly. The Prime Minister is now in the midst of trying to form a minority government, with the help of the DUP. So, with Labour all over the airwaves calling on May to step down, surely the Conservatives are busy defending their dear leader? Perhaps not. Since this morning, not one cabinet minister has given an interview. In fact, things have got so bad that Andrew Neil has now issued a public appeal on the BBC: Do get in touch if you see one.

Parliamentary moves

With the election dominating the news, this week I focus on the strongest chess player to have entered Parliament. Marmaduke Wyvill was MP for Richmond Yorkshire, and he won the silver medal in the very first international tournament, which was organised by Howard Staunton to coincide with the Great Exhibition of London in 1851. Stylistically, Wyvill was a student of Staunton, and he favoured the king’s side bishop fianchetto and a delayed action to challenge the centre from the flanks. Notes based on those by Imre Konig in Chess from Morphy to Botvinnik (Hardinge Simpole).   Marmaduke Wyvill-Lowe: London 1851; English Opening   1 c4 e5 2 e3 c5 3 Nc3

no. 460

White to play. This is from Wyvill-Williams, London 1851. Can you spot White’s fine winning coup which exploited various tactical weaknesses in the black position? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 13 June or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 … Rxa3 Last week’s winner Aaron Milne, Northwich, Cheshire

The post-truth is out there

In a political ‘post-truth’ world, currently the subject of a slew of books, emotions and personal belief are said to shape opinion more than ‘objective’ fact. But as Aristotle pointed out in his Art of Rhetoric (4th century bc), there are facts only about the present and past; about the future, politics’ main concern, there are only interests and aspirations. Anyone who addressed the Assembly, he said, must know the facts about revenues — sources of income and expenditure, and where to spend and cut; about present and potential military strengths, and in what areas (and the same about other states, so as to know whom to attack and whom

Letters | 8 June 2017

Terrorists’ guilt Sir: A small contribution to the psychological war: when the next atrocity happens, could the BBC and other reputable news media please say that the Isis thugs have ‘admitted their guilt’ in respect of the murders rather than ‘claimed responsibility’ for them? The latter makes it sound like they might be expected to win a prize. Words matter. George Everard London SW1 Corbyn’s ‘principles’ Sir: With regard to Chris Mullin’s article (‘Corbyn for PM?’, 3 June), I disagree that Jeremy Corbyn has led a life consistent with his principles. As an avowed Marxist he clearly saw no future in the Communist party, so nailed his colours to Labour’s

Tanya Gold

Vaulting ambition

To the Ned, as diarists say when they can’t provide a rational reason for their voyage: the colossal banking hall transformed into ten restaurants, or one super-restaurant with ten menus, by the owners of Soho House, who are sucking up all the press coverage the age of churnalism can grant. I cannot yet decide what is more chilling: a Soho House open to all or a Soho House safely hidden behind its semi–weaponised membership criteria. I began to loathe the brand when I saw the table-tennis tables and selfie booths at Shoreditch House. I wouldn’t care if the media class played table tennis and took selfies until their hands and

Not bloody likely

In My Fair Lady, which came out as a film in 1964, 50 years after Shaw’s Pygmalion, they decided to update Eliza’s exclamation of ‘Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi’, which, on the first night in 1914, had ‘brought the house down’ on the lips of Mrs Patrick Campbell, according to the Daily Telegraph review. So at Ascot, Eliza in the film shouts at her favoured horse: ‘Move yer bloomin’ arse.’ In the Pygmalion version, half the joke is saying bloody in a duchess’s accent, but Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza falls out of her trained accent in excitement and shouts in Cockney. It seems odd that bloody

Dear Mary | 8 June 2017

Q. We have received a ‘save the week’ card from friends who take a villa abroad every year. We usually like their other guests but my husband has developed a near-phobia of one of their friends, a man who holds opposing political views from his own and is vocal about them. This man is in great demand socially, probably because he’s single and supposedly eligible, and we suspect he may be going too. My husband says that whatever the result of the election, he can’t face being trapped in a house party with this man for a week and won’t go if he is. I think my husband is behaving

Toby Young

Why I’m backing Corbyn the Great

Comrades. I’m going to tell you why I think Jeremy Corbyn is the right person to lead this country. First of all, I like the fact that he’s not a typical politician. There’s something refreshing about his refusal to play the media’s game. Ordinary politicians are ready with a quote when a big story breaks, but not our Jeremy. He thinks nothing of switching off his phone and spending the day working on his allotment. Instead of talking to journalists on his way into meetings, he runs them over. When he does do interviews, his refusal to be interrupted speaks of a bold, confident leader who’s comfortable in his own

High life | 8 June 2017

New York   Main Street is a place, but it’s mostly an idea. It’s where locally owned shops sell stuff to hard-working townies, as we used to call the locals back when I was at boarding school. The townies had dependable blue-collar jobs in auto plants and coalmines. Their sons played American football hard, cut their hair short, and married their high-school sweethearts. I went back to my old school recently with my old buddy Tony Maltese, a wrestler who never lost a match. We had a nostalgic lunch with the wrestling coach and talked about old times. The feeling was one of community and of having control over your