Society

Thursday

Taki

High life | 13 October 2016

New York   This is a good time to be in Manhattan, the weather’s perfect, the park and foliage still green, and daylight savings time keeps the days long. New York used to be able to build these beautiful cities within a city, like the Rockefeller Center, but that’s all in the past. The developers have got to the politicians and now have free rein. The city had an opportunity after 9/11 to make a 21st century Rockefeller Center downtown, but a shark by the name of Silverstein preferred profit to architectural achievement, as did another horror, Aby Rosen, who is busy turning uptown ugly. I’ve been walking up and

Robin Oakley

The master of Ballydoyle

The only downside about going racing is irritation born of encountering pig ignorant people who talk through their pockets. Beside me at a Newmarket betting counter on Saturday shortly after Aidan O’Brien had once more dominated the big event of the day, not only winning the Dewhurst Stakes with his Derby prospect Churchill but taking second place as well with his 66-1 pacemaker Lancaster Bomber, was a disgruntled punter who told his companion sourly: ‘One day they’ll find out what he’s giving them.’ I was tempted to remind him of boxer George Foreman’s response when someone asked him if a fight had been fixed. ‘Of course it was fixed,’ he

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 13 October 2016

The Hubert Phillips is one of the EBU’s quirkier knockout tournaments. Firstly every team must contain (and play) at least one male and one female, changing partners after each 10 board stanza. And secondly the scoring is by total aggregate, honours counting, meaning a big swing can easily wipe out all the other results in the match. And so it was in our match against Chris(tine) Duckworth’s team last week. They won the first two sets and we went into the last one 1,300 points down and hoping for a big swing. We got it! This was the bidding in the closed room. My teammate Nick Sandqvist was sitting South,

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 13 October 2016

Six months ago Sally was living in a third floor flat in Glasgow. Then she was thrown into the back of a car, drugged, and driven down to Provence. Since then I had watched with interest how she has adapted herself from life in a Scottish city to the heat, light and alien smells of deepest Provence. Sally is a small to medium sized chocolate brown mongrel with the grey hairs of old age showing on her muzzle. Her brown eyes are calm and intelligent. What she is comprised of is hard to say. Her head, jaw and teeth are from some sort of terrier; her deep chest suggests that

Melissa Kite

Real life | 13 October 2016

Against all odds, I almost got through an entire Brexit dinner with dignity, and without opening the valve in my head which allows hot steam to escape. Almost. Our little Leave Means Leave campaign soiree at a restaurant in Birmingham was going swimmingly until a TV journalist drew up a chair and within seconds started berating one of the guests, a government minister, for not giving a cast iron assurance now that every foreigner living in Britain can stay once we leave the EU. ‘Oh go on! Can’t you just let everyone stay?’ he pleaded with the minister, who was trying to eat his sea bass. ‘I mean, these are

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 13 October 2016

Monty Don, the television gardening presenter, always comes across on screen as irrepressibly cheerful and enthusiastic, but this is a misleading impression. In fact, he gets black moods. ‘It’s no secret that for many years I’ve suffered from depression,’ he said last week at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. He had tried Prozac and cognitive behavioural therapy, but the only treatment that had worked for him was provided by his dog. ‘If you are unwell, physically or mentally, a dog is a huge comfort,’ he said. ‘Dogs heal. There is plenty of evidence to show that.’ I was glad to hear this praise at a time when the word dog is

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 13 October 2016

Home The pound fell against the dollar and the euro, weakening by 19 per cent against the dollar from its level at the time of the EU referendum to lows last seen in 1985. The FTSE 100 index almost beat its highest-ever closing level. There was much unrooted talk about what votes Parliament should have on the Brexit process and when. A spokesman for Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Parliament is of course going to debate and scrutinise that process as it goes on’ and would then perhaps vote on the ‘final deal’. Cuadrilla was given permission by the government to drill four shale-gas wells in Lancashire that would

Prue Leith

Diary – 13 October 2016

To Edinburgh to get married, but first my toyboy groom John Playfair (he’s a mere 69) shows me the city of his birth, which is peppered with his kinsman William Playfair’s neoclassical buildings. Outside the Chambers Museum there is a new, magnificent statue of him by Stoddard. We climb Calton Hill to admire the monument to another Playfair, this time the mathematician and astronomer John, and also his observatory, both built by W.H. Playfair. I’m now a bit daunted at joining the Playfair clan. Next day at sunset we drive as high as we can along Salisbury Crags and up Arthur’s Seat. It seems feeble not to climb the last

Toby Young Toby Young

Sorry, Shami, but you’re wasting your money

I’ve been thinking about poor Shami Chakrabarti and the drubbing she’s suffered since it was revealed she’s sending her son to Dulwich College. She joins a long line of Labour hypocrites who are opposed to grammar schools but choose to send their own children to selective schools. The list includes Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Crosland, Polly Toynbee, Diane Abbott, Harriet Harman and Seumus Milne. My issue with these Labour grandees is not so much the double standards, although that does stick in the craw, obviously, but the stupidity. Why risk their political credibility and, for those that go private, beggar themselves, when there’s little reason to suppose that their

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 13 October 2016

Given all the outrageous things that Donald Trump has done and said already, why has he got into so much worse trouble for dirty remarks about women taped more than ten years ago? He gets away with dog whistle politics but not, seemingly, with wolf whistle ones. Some might say this is because of political correctness; or because his evangelical supporters, while not necessarily offended by his violent views, disapprove of his lewdness; or both. But my theory about sex scandals in politics is that they are not, strictly speaking, about morality. They are tests of how the accused man (or, much more rarely, woman) behaves when attacked. Does he

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 13 October 2016

Q. My father has been on the warpath to eradicate Tineola bisselliella, the common clothes moth. He told me to sort through my dressing room and administer sprays and pheromone strips. He’s finally eradicated them, or at least that’s what he thinks. In truth, I never bothered to go through my own clothes back in May. When I went to pull out a tweed jacket yesterday, out came a skeletal shell which had been savaged by moths. There is an infestation, he will be furious, and I have no idea how to get rid of them without him finding out I’ve been providing a sanctuary all summer. — A.J., Taunton,

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Some like it posh

Daphne’s serves Italian food in South Kensington. (I like the name because Daphne was the name Jack Lemmon chose for his female self in Some Like It Hot, although Tony Curtis — Josephine — wanted to call him Geraldine. I know no one else called Daphne, and I do not need to. Lemmon sated me.) This district, you may recall, is currently a building site, as residents try to dream their houses bigger and their noses smaller; it is a tangle of cranes, personal trainers, tax avoidance, lipstick, adultery and Ferraris swamped with parking tickets. And so Daphne’s, which was a 1980s mini-series restaurant wrought from assorted Nigel Dempster columns

The Spectator

Universities challenged

On the face of it, this year’s Nobel Prize awards have been a triumph for British scientists. No fewer than five laureates come from these shores: three physicists, one chemist and an economist. But before anyone starts praising our higher education system, there is one small snag: all five are currently working at US universities. David Thouless, who was awarded half the Physics prize, has followed a typical career path. After taking a degree at Cambridge, he took a PhD at Cornell University and a postdoc at the University of California before heading back to Britain, where he worked for 13 years at the University of Birmingham. There, he started

Dot Wordsworth

Polari

Of the contribution to English that Polari is claimed to have brought, perhaps naff is the most current-sounding. An older suggestion for its origin, recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary, is from northern English naffu, ‘simpleton’. But, in a refreshing wander through the forest of Jonathon Green’s Dictionary of Slang, which this week went online, I ran into other possibilities. Not only does he record the suggestion that it came into Polari from 16th-century Italian, gnaffa, ‘a despicable person’, he also considers a Romany origin, from naflo or nasvalo, ‘no good’. My shelves had already shrugged beneath the three fat printed volumes of the dictionary Mr Green published in 2010,

Pabulum

2282: Timely

Clockwise round the grid from 21 runs a timely quotation (9,5,3,5,2,7,3,11,5) (in ODQ) followed by the initials of its author, a 2/5. The source is 18/17.   Across 8    Plump for some drinks and a sandwich (5) 9    Law-officer fills ditch for president (6) 10    Passé person knows Beatrix by name (7, hyphened) 12    Classy beaver possibly circling Beehive State (4) 14    Architect produces TV show (10) 15    Not one famous aviator, not one, develops mould (8, two words) 20    Black and gold date plant (6) 22    Piece of poetry in Pabulum’s book (4) 24    Nine bushels of dough or blubber? (3) 27    Papa enthralled by aged mimic (3) 31   

James Poulos

The future looks bright for Libertarians

Not long ago, America’s Libertarians—that’s capital-L, the pros—were ecstatic. Never before had their party nominated such a heavy-hitting presidential ticket. They boasted two former Governors, both credible (but not too credible) ex-Republicans, matching up against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two least popular major-party nominees in history.   Governor Johnson seemed to be living proof that the GOP was sinking fast and the Libertarians offered the viable alternative. For Libertarian lifers who had suffered indignities like the abortive presidential run of Bob Barr (another ex-Republican), Johnson/Weld represented an unprecedented opportunity for unprecedented relevance. Instead, Libertarians have met with a familiar frustration. Despite the manifest weaknesses of Clinton and Trump, far too

Naomi Caine

Why it pays to be in poor health in retirement

Annuity rates are in free fall, which is bad news for anyone who wants to buy a guaranteed income at retirement. The average rate has dropped by 18 per cent in the past year, and by 27 per cent over the past five years, according to figures from Retirement Advantage. Or, put another way: someone with a £50,000 pension could have bought an average annual annuity income of £3,270 five years ago, £2,895 a year ago, and just £2,375 today, suggesting that 2016 will be the worst ever year for annuity rates. Rates are also unlikely to pick up any time soon, what with the economic uncertainty around Brexit and

Georgie Lane-Godfrey

Gstaad: Swiss charm

‘Come up, slow down’ is the official slogan for Gstaad, but they seem to have forgotten one last important phrase — ‘and blow some serious cash.’ For most visitors, money is no object. But Gstaad is making an effort to attract people with less giant budgets. While chalet owners such as Madonna give the resort its showy reputation, there is another side to it — a sleepy Swiss village where the cows outnumber people. Gstaad is picture-postcard pretty. In the village centre you’ll often see a horsedrawn carriage jing-ling around the streets. An old Bernese mountain dog named Nico rides in the passenger seat. And while the streets are lined

Pabulum

to 2279: Where it’s at II

The name was The Spectator. THESP (SARAH BERNHARDT: 37/19), EC (EAST CENTRAL: 36/20), TAT (HEMPEN MATTING: 5/15) and OR (LOGIC CIRCUIT: 35/31).   First prize Eddie Looby, Longbridge, Birmingham Runners-up Rose Llewellyn, London SW10; Trevor Evans, Drulingen, France