Society

Thursday

Lucy Vickery

Take five

In Competition No. 2979 you were invited to supply your contribution to a series of parodies of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five stories that have just been published which re–imagine the five as adults — or to give another children’s classic the same treatment. Everyone loves a spoof, it seems, to judge by the phenomenal success of the chart–topping Ladybird Books for Grown Ups. And never one to ignore the siren call of the literary bandwagon, I thought I’d invite you to have a go. On the whole, the standard was high. A.R. Duncan-Jones, Bill Greenwell, Toni Hinckley and Anne du Croz shone and deserve honourable mentions. The winners, printed below,

Wednesday

Helen Nugent

Happy New Year – our rail fares are the highest in Europe

Amid the cacophony of moaning and groaning accompanying this week’s nationwide return to work was an eye-catching headline from satirical site The Daily Mash: ‘So we meet again, Southern tells commuters’. As someone who used to brave the Northern line on a daily basis, I can imagine the impending sense of doom felt by thousands of Southern customers as January 3 edged ever closer. Months of disruption thanks to staff shortages, industrial action and, if social media is to be believed, complete ineptitude on the part of the train operator, is enough to give anyone a New Year hangover. And now, what fresh hell is this? More strikes on the horizon,

Helen Nugent

Mortgages, spending, pay and savings

An increasing number of landlords are having trouble paying their mortgage, new figures have revealed. Money Mail reports that, for the first time on record, ‘the number of buy-to-let homes in mortgage arrears has increased’. That’s according to data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders which recorded a 6 per cent rise in mortgage arrears among landlords between July and September last year.  Spending and borrowing Bank of England figures published this morning show that consumer borrowing rose at its fastest rate in more than 11 years in November 2016. The BBC reports that consumer credit in November increased by £1.92 billion to propel the annual growth rate in borrowing of 10.8

Tuesday

Keith Osborne

Buying a second property: what you need to know for 2017

If you’re planning on buying a second property this year, then help is at hand thanks to Spectator Money. Stamp duty costs, mortgage tax relief changes and the possible impact of Brexit are just a few things to consider when buying a second home, a holiday home or a buy-to-let in 2017. Price versus Value ‘Location, location, location’. This age-old saying still speaks volumes. When searching for a property, you’ll benefit in the long run if you do your homework at the outset. Infrastructural changes have a direct knock-on effect with property prices, as does the weather and local amenities, such as roads, schools and shops. If you can search out areas that

Helen Nugent

Debt, housing, bills and rail fares

January will be one of the busiest months ever for debt charities, according to Citizens Advice and National Debtline. A combination of overspending on Christmas and longer-term financial problems will result in many people asking for money advice this month, The Guardian reports. The paper says: ‘Citizens Advice expects more than 370,000 people to seek help on a range of financial issues including post-Christmas debts over the next two months. National Debtline, which took an average of 715 calls a day in December and helped more than 40,000 people online last month, said it expected January to be its busiest month in several years.’ Housing The Government says that thousands of homes

Monday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Garden villages are a good idea. Let’s get the bulldozers rolling

There are few terms in the English language as irritating as ‘eco-village’ – which is really just ‘housing estate’ dressed up to sound more acceptable to Nimbys. Nevertheless, today’s announcement of 14 such ‘garden villages’ should be welcomed. Concentrating new homes in purpose-built new towns, villages and suburbs, where services and infrastructure are built as part of the development, upsets people who live nearby but ultimately it is the least painful way of accommodating the new homes which are so desperately needed. And this time, please, can we please get the bulldozers rolling. For years, George Osborne used to talk about new towns. But while they got stuck in the

Sunday

Rose Asani

Foreign journalists consider abandoning Turkey after Reina nightclub attack

It’s a sobering start to 2017 for many in Istanbul. Dozens dead and many more wounded after a man in a Santa suit opened fire on revellers at the Reina nightclub. For a city so used to attacks this one seems to have struck a deeper chord, perhaps because it was at the heart of a residential area called Ortakoy, rather than a big tourist mecca. With its narrow winding streets and wooden houses, Ortakoy is normally a pleasant place to sip Turkish coffee and watch ships float by on the aqua blue waters of the Bosphorous. It’s home to an abundance of cafes and trinket shops, but just one

The Spectator

2017’s forgotten anniversaries

2017 is the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution. Other anniversaries include: 50 years Radio 1; first North Sea gas pumped ashore in County Durham; first cash dispenser (at Barclays in Enfield) 100 years First international airmail service (between Brindisi in Italy and Valona, Albania); first use of air raid siren in UK; first sex education film (in the US) 200 years First municipal gasworks, Manchester; Fahrenheit scale; display of Elgin marbles at the British Museum 300 years First druid-revival ceremony, at Primrose Hill at the autumn equinox 400 years Britain’s first one-way street (Pudding Lane, in the City of London)

Mark Mason

The Spectator’s New Year’s Day quiz

The new year is here, so why not kick off 2017 with the Spectator’s New Year’s Day pub quiz, set by Mark Mason. It’s the perfect way to fix a sore head.  Just add water and paracetamol.  ‘I didn’t hit him, but it came close. For reasons best known to him, he came on unwilling to talk.’ That was said by someone who died in January 2016 about someone else who died in January 2016. Which two people? Ingvar Kamprad grew up on a farm called Elmtaryd near the village of Agunnaryd in Sweden. In 1943 he founded something. What? Where, since December 2015, have you been able to find William Shakespeare,

Saturday

The Spectator

What were the worst predictions of 2016?

Some rubbish predictions made for 2016: Nikki, ‘psychic to the stars’: ‘Huge crash at Formula 1 race, killing many; Scottish riots; helicopter will crash into Empire State Building; earthquake in Denmark’. Simon Reich, ‘the man who got almost everything right about the year before’: ‘Donald Trump will not be republican candidate, but yes, Hillary will be Democratic candidate — and will be elected president’. Baba Vanga, blind Bulgarian billed as ‘Nostradamus of the Balkans’, who made her prediction before she died 20 years ago: ‘Europe will cease to exist by 2016 — will be empty spaces and wasteland’. Did anyone get anything right? Da Juana Byrd, ‘psychic and medium’, said: ‘Unless

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Honours have become a debased currency

Lynn Faulds Wood, former presenter of BBC’s Watchdog, says she turned down an MBE because she ‘just wouldn’t accept it while we still have party donors donating huge amounts of money and getting an honour’. Any self-respecting political donor will equally have rejected an honour on the grounds that it demeans the system to have them handed out to every Tom, Dick and Harry who appears on radio and television. Honours have become a debased currency. This time around, 1197 of them have been handed out. There will be another pile in the summer with the Queen’s birthday honours. Carry on like this and there won’t be anyone on the

Ed West Ed West

Star Wars is the perfect analogy for the decline of America

Star Wars is a generational thing and older people think my cohort are mentally subnormal for enjoying it, but it’s been such a part of my childhood that I’m prepared to just set aside that voice in my head telling me it’s nonsense. So I was sad when I came out of the cinema earlier this week, having watched the best Star Wars film in at least 36 years, to hear that Carrie Fisher had died. Rogue One is an interesting example of my theory of Ottomanism. In the most recent Star Wars films the human rebels have been overtly multiracial while the baddies are almost to a man of

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Spectator’s online traffic hits record high in 2016

If you’ve enjoyed The Spectator’s website this year, you’re in good company. Some 22 million have visited our website this year, a record high, and they have read 70 million articles between them. As the below graph shows, this is another record. The odd thing is that we did not, this year, set out to increase traffic. On the contrary, we have tightened our metered paywall. We offer only a few free articles every month before asking people to subscribe to read more. We judge online success not so much by the traffic total (a figure grossly inflated by one-off visitors) but by new subscriptions. Our aim is quite simple: to grow our family of subscribers and to serve them

The Spectator

Portrait of the year | 31 December 2016

January The cost of an annual season ticket from Cheltenham to London rose to £9,800. Oil fell below $30 a barrel, compared with more than $100 in January 2014. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that once his negotiations with the EU were done, ministers could campaign for either side in the referendum on Britain’s continued membership. Junior doctors went on strike for 24 hours. In Germany, women protested in the street after gangs of men of Arab or North African appearance assaulted dozens of women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. David Bowie died two days after releasing an album, Blackstar, on his 69th birthday. February The World Health

Friday

Peter Mckay

My modest wishes for 2017

I would rather not dwell on past prayers. And God’s treatment of Job — killing his ten children, all of his animals and covering his body with boils, purportedly to test his faith — suggests that it might be better not to try His patience with idle, end-of-year prayers. Isn’t Randy Newman on to something in his ‘God’s Song’ — ‘I burn down your cities — how blind you must be/ I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we…’ So, modest wishes instead. In 2017, let’s not claim we’re on ‘a rollercoaster’ while describing some inconsequential personal drama. Or that some achievement ‘hasn’t sunk in

Emma Lunn

Why landlords need protection from rogue tenants

What happens if you wander into Tesco, help yourself to some food and walk out without paying? I haven’t tried it but I reckon those big burly security guards that Tesco employs (well, they do in my corner of South London) will be straight after you. The police will probably turn up blue lights a-blazing, arrest you and it will all end up in court. At best, you’ll have to pay Tesco for the food. At worst, you’ll have a criminal record. But the law works a bit differently when it comes to landlords and tenants. While rogue landlords face various fines and penalties, tenants are seemingly free to fleece

Thursday

Taki

High life | 29 December 2016

What a great year this has been, what a good mood I’m in, why, it’s almost like being in love. The year 2016 will be seen as the worst ever by many patients of Dr Klinghoffer, the famous German psychiatrist who treats those suffering from the extreme distress of post-electoral disappointment syndrome, and a man about to make a fortune treating the poor dears. There are many Brits under the Herr Doktor’s care, and his clinic, situated near Ossining, New York, resembled a British retreat for broken-down thespians following 23 June of this annus mirabilis. Now more American voices have been added, and when I last spoke to Dr Klinghoffer

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 29 December 2016

I drew back the curtains. Yet another absolutely still, sunny day. Early-morning mist lying in the valleys. An echoing report of a distant hunter’s rifle. Another day in bloody paradise. But I was leaving it. After breakfast I was driven to the bus station. ‘Would you like to do me?’ said the young woman behind the desk in the ticket office. (My single word of French greeting had been enough for her to nail me as an English speaker.) Realising her error, she and her colleague at the next window corpsed. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got much time,’ I said. The bus ticket to Nice cost hardly anything. The airport

Melissa Kite

Real life | 29 December 2016

What a fraught, divisive, infuriating sort of year it’s been. It started with me attempting to go on a blind date and being clocked by a speed camera doing 35 in a 30 in the dark on the way home. And on the way to the speed course, obviously, I pranged my car trying to park. I took this to be an omen. The ex-builder boyfriend was duly dusted off and put back into active service. In February, while having two new tyres fitted at a tyre shop in Wandsworth, I found myself being hit on by a jihadist tyre-fitter. We got chatting as I sat in his waiting room.

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 29 December 2016

New Year’s Day is the most depressing of holidays. It doesn’t celebrate anyone or anything worth celebrating. It simply marks the passage from one year to the next, something so predictable and uninteresting that it’s hardly worth mentioning. Yet people see it as a great opportunity to start again, to turn over a new leaf, to make times better and happier than before. It’s an odd moment in which to be optimistic, when the winter is deepening and the debts incurred over Christmas are waiting to be paid. But nothing stops millions from greeting this non-event with wine and song and gaiety as the clock strikes midnight. New Year’s Eve