Society

Thursday

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 25 March

Spectator readers, being wise wine-lovers, are particularly fond of Château Musar, that extraordinary wine born of the Bekaa Valley in the Lebanon. Whenever we offer it in these pages, we promptly sell out. This is surely our best Musar offer yet, thanks to the canniness of our Wine Club partners Mr.Wheeler. As readers will know, Musar only releases its grand vin when it’s deemed ready to drink and the mighty 2006 has only just had the nod, held back while the 2007, 2008 and 2009 all matured before it. The Spectator, in cahoots with Mr.Wheeler, has exclusive first dibs on said 2006 Château Musar, two months before anyone else. Not

Lucy Vickery

A to P | 23 March 2017

In Competition No. 2990 you were invited to submit a poem of 16 lines in which the lines begin with the letters of the alphabet from A to P.   This one proved to be a real crowd-pleaser, attracting not only the regulars but many welcome new faces too. You were at your witty and inventive best, and I offer commiserations to a long list of unlucky losers: Sylvia Fairley, Paul Evans, A.K. Colam, Martin Eayrs, Nigel Stuart, Ralph Rochester and Brian Allgar. Class swot Bill Greenwell, who gave himself an additional challenge by ending each line of his poem with the letters K to Z, earns a gold star.

Matthew Walther

Pressing back

  Washington, DC I hate to admit it, but I think I’m falling in love with Sean Spicer. No doubt Donald Trump’s stocky, gum-chewing, sartorially challenged press secretary will strike many readers as an unlikely object of passion. But it’s hard not to get red-hot for a man capable of inspiring so much outrage among the most boring, self-important people in America. As press secretary, Spicer’s only real job is to run the President’s daily press briefing, one of those bizarre, quasi-official American institutions — like the State of the Union address or the Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn — whose utility no one ever seems to

The Spectator

Up the revolution!

From ‘The Russian revolution’, 24 March 1917: Even now, though the Revolution is young, the Russians have proved that they are fit and worthy to exercise the full benefits of self-government. In the highest spheres of government they had hitherto been always thwarted, but no one who has watched the progress and expanding influence of the Zemstvos and the Municipalities can deny that Russians have long displayed the capacity for local self-government. Such a Revolution as has just occurred was inevitably born in violence, but the violence was much less than might have been expected.

Emily Hill Emily Hill

The importance of being trolled

Ever since a Twitter troll was elected 45th President of the United States, the Twitterati has agonised over who to blame. But since it was Twitter that gave American voters unfettered access to Donald Trump’s brain, they really ought to be blaming Twitter itself. It’s not possible to say anything balanced or nuanced in 140 characters — that’s a format for jokes, insults and outrage. If you want to seize the world’s attention today, you must troll or be trolled on Twitter. And since this is the one skill at which Trump is utterly unrivalled, he’s now busy trolling both America and himself. When a man with barely any followers

Bruce Anderson

The fall of Paris

Paris used to be the most self-confident city in the world. Brash, assertive, boastful: Manhattan claimed to be the best. Cool, elegant, sophisticated, supercilious: Paris knew that it was the best. This is no longer true. Paris has lost its élan, and that has created a love-hate relationship with the UK. Everyone seems to know someone who is working in London. The ones left in Paris cannot decide whether to punish us or join us: to hope that Brexit fails — or to fear that Brexit might fail, and keep able young Frenchmen from job opportunities in London. Flics everywhere, tattiness, tension: one is reluctant to acknowledge the successes of

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

How I learned to love the airport bus

After landing at Gatwick, the plane taxied for five minutes or so and then came to a halt in the middle of an outlying patch of tarmac. I heard the engines wind down. ‘Oh shit!’ I thought to myself. ‘It’s going to be a bus.’ Until then, I had always felt short-changed and mildly resentful when forced to take a bus to the terminal rather than being offered a proper air bridge. Then the pilot made an announcement so psychologically astute that I wanted to offer him a job. ‘I’ve got some bad news and some good news,’ he said. ‘The bad news is that another aircraft is blocking our

James Delingpole James Delingpole

For a real Oxbridge education, go to Durham

‘Should I just have done with it and tell them they’re a bunch of tossers?’ I was on my way to speak at the Durham Union. The motion was ‘This House believes the NHS is out of date’. And, as usual, I was on the ‘wrong’ side of the debate — so why should I even bother? You know beforehand which way the vote is going to go at any university debate these days: the one which enables the snowflakes most easily to signal their virtue. But, on the spur of the moment, I decided to give Durham the benefit of the doubt. ‘I was going to be incredibly rude

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Juncker is now the hardest Brexiter there is

The best thing about being a Remainer is obviously the dinner parties, where we all sit around being incredibly well-heeled in leafy Islington. Bloody love a good heel, I do. And a leaf. Honestly, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Eddie Izzard and Nick Clegg crack jokes at each other in French, as Lily Allen and Matthew Parris do impressions of old people from Northumberland, while in the background Bob Geldof and Professor Brian Cox duet on the piano. It’s almost literally how I spend almost all of my time. Whereas Leaver dinner parties, so I’m told, are just IDS and a Scotch egg. The worst thing about being a

Suzi Feay

Changing lanes

It’s fair to say Sonja Hansen’s life has stalled. Forties, tall and ungainly, veteran of failed relationships, she’s an uncomfortable fit for modern life in bustling Copenhagen. Geographical, spiritual and emotional immobility is expressed in her physical lack of ease, including ‘positional vertigo’ which renders the manoeuvre of the title difficult. Not without a certain quiet defiance, she still feels unable to fire her driving instructor, aggressive, non-stop-nattering Jytta, who won’t let her shift the gears herself. In between bouts of gossip and racist abuse of other drivers, Jytta bellows instructions at her cowering pupil: ‘GREEN ARROW, TURN GODDAMMIT, BIKE!’ In this short novel Nors manages to condense the essence

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Thanks to the people who protect it, Parliament is a fortress

Today was a reminder of the professionalism and bravery of those who protect the Houses of Parliament. I heard an explosion and before I had moved the eight feet or so from my desk to the window to see what was going on, shots had rung out as the police dealt with the situation. The attack today has taken human life, and that is a tragedy. One policeman has died protecting our Parliament and a woman has been killed outside it. But the fact that the terrorists drove a car into people before stabbing a policeman is a reminder that these attackers, who would take as many lives as they

Helen Nugent

Don’t let financial firms take you for a ride: shop around for the best deals

Apathy. In a world where there are countless demands on our time, social media never sleeps and 24-hour news bombards us with stories of doom and gloom, it’s tempting to down tools, reach for the duvet and adopt the foetal position. But an apathetic attitude has consequences, whether it’s missing that crucial deadline or turning up late for work – again. The same is true in finance, as two new studies out today demonstrate. Take the thorny issue of remortgaging. According to L&C Mortgages, the advisory firm, four million UK households are languishing on standard variable rates. That’s more than a third of homeowners. In addition, 3.4 million households don’t

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Wanted: digital guru for The Spectator

Sales of The Spectator are not just at an all-time high, but growing at the fastest rate in 30 years. We’re growing, we need help and are looking for a digital guru to provide it. The job is now known, in the industry, as Head of Product. It’s a rather unromantic way of describing what I’d say is one of the very best jobs in journalism. A new position for us, a senior one, that will give someone the chance to join and shape the magazine at the most successful stage in its 189-year history. Our industry is changing, fast. Last week, for example, set a new record for people

Rachel Cunliffe

The flight ban for laptops is a classic protectionist scheme

First they came for your nail scissors, then your liquids, and now they’re after your electronics. The news this week that the US has banned passengers from taking laptops as carry-on onto flights from ten Middle Eastern airports has sparked horror among the global jet-setting community, which only intensified when the British government promptly followed suit. Smartphones will be allowed, but from now on if you’re travelling from the Middle East you’ll have to make do with an old-fashioned book rather than a kindle, iPad or laptop. We are told that this is for ‘security’ reasons. According to US media sources, the ban was sparked by intelligence suggesting Islamic State

Helen Nugent

Cheque please: cheques to be cleared within one working day

There are many mysteries in life. Where did we come from? Why do I always forget to take my bag for life to the supermarket? Why does the word lisp have an ‘s’ in it? And, in the name of all that is holy, why does it take up to six days to clear a cheque? At least that last one is close to being answered – and solved. The Cheque and Credit Clearing Company (C&CCC), the organisation that manages the cheque clearing system, has today announced details of the launch of an industry-wide image-based cheque clearing system that will speed up cheque processing significantly for customers across the UK. At present, cheques

Jenny McCartney Jenny McCartney

What Martin McGuinness’s eulogisers would like to forget

I never met Martin McGuinness, but I was certainly affected by him from an early age. His decisions, and those of his colleagues on the IRA Army Council, indelibly coloured my childhood. Belfast in the 1970s and ’80s was a grey, fortified city, compelling in many ways, but permanently charged with the unpredictable electricity of violence. Our local news steadily chronicled the shattering of families, in city streets and down winding border lanes that were full of birdsong before the bullets rang out. There were regular, respectful interviews with pallid widows and dazed widowers, and funerals attended by red-eyed, snuffling children tugged into stiff, smart clothes to pay formal respects

Douglas Murray

The morally illiterate obituaries to Martin McGuinness are just what he would have wanted

Well the obituaries for Martin McGuinness are in. And many are as morally illiterate as the man himself could have wished for. For instance, various obituarists have noted that the young McGuinness’s failure as a young man to get an apprenticeship as a mechanic started him off on the road to terror. Few of these eulogists have noted the many people across continents and generations who also failed to get apprenticeships (often for even more sectarian reasons) and yet strangely refused as a consequence to pick up some pliers and an Armalite and torture and kill their way to political power. Other obsequies have been even stranger. Alex Salmond, for

Tuesday

Helen Monks Takhar

Should you say ‘I do’ to a pre-nup?

‘I think pre-nups are brilliant,’ Catherine Zeta Jones told Vanity Fair back in 2000, shortly after marrying Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas. ‘If I were marrying someone of lesser fortune who was 25 years younger, I’d be doing exactly the same thing. Why should Michael be in a position where half of his fortune, which he’s worked bloody hard for, lands in someone else’s lap?’ Unfortunately for some brides, grooms and their families, such pragmatism is rare. After all, when you’re in the heat of wedding planning, as many are at this time of year, the thought of it all ending in court is hardly romantic. Yet it’s clear there’s a

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Martin McGuinness – a man who put the ballot before bullets

Ulster is where memory burns long and forgiveness comes slow. The death of Martin McGuinness will pass without the spilling of sorrow by many Unionists in Northern Ireland and here in mainland Britain, where the IRA’s terror campaign paid regular, outrageous visits, there will be those who mutter a cold ‘good riddance’.  Douglas Murray writes:  ‘[W]hile the eulogists lament the fact that McGuinness hasn’t enjoyed much of his old age, our thoughts really ought to be with the many people who – thanks to McGuinness and his friends – never made it as far as middle age.’ This is undoubtedly true. McGuinness was a terrible man who did terrible things and the good

Helen Nugent

UK inflation jumps to 2.3 per cent raising prospect of interest rate rise

The economists were right. For months now, they have been warning that the Brexit vote and the subsequent fall in the pound would drive up prices. Today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics confirm that consumer prices are rising at their fastest rate for more than three years. According to the ONS, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) jumped to 2.3 per cent in February, up from 1.8 per cent in January and above the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Food prices recorded their first annual increase for more than two-and-a-half years, reaching 0.3 per cent higher in February than a year earlier. With the prospect of an interest rate rise now