Society

Thursday

Harold Evans

Diary – 8 September 2016

At weekends in our summerhouse at Quogue on Long Island, we go out to buy the newspapers and paper-cup coffee at the busy 7-Eleven in Westhampton. Several brisk young Hispanic women serve the long line of customers. Nobody mentions Donald Trump, though his latest vomit about deporting everyone like them is often on the front pages of the papers they hand us. The hurt and angst it must inflict may be mitigated somewhat in New York by the moral clarity of the city’s Daily News editorials blasting Trump as ‘un-American’, and the music video ‘Amnesty Don’, a spoof western mocking his talk of ‘going soft on immigration’. To the rage of

Taki

High life | 8 September 2016

I have a question for you, dear readers: is it me, or is there no newspaper or network in America that tells it like it is any more? Take, for example, the Anthony Weiner case. He is the pervert who keeps sending pictures of his penis to women over the internet, more often than not while in the company of his four-year-old son. If a man like that were married to Donald Trump’s closest assistant, The Donald would have been forced out of the race by now — no ifs or buts about it. But over on the other side, Hillary confirmed her trust in Huma Abedin, a Saudi-raised Muslim

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 8 September 2016

Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir   This morning I was woken just before daylight by the clear ‘ting’ of a meditation bell. The owner of the house was attending to his religious devotions in the little private chapel across the courtyard from my room. He is an ‘Amchi’, I’ve been told, which is a Ladakhi word for the village herbal-medicine man and astrologer. I’ve been staying at his house for two days, acclimatising to the thin air and doing nothing much except looking out of the window at the turbulent confluence, below the house, of the Zanskar and Indus rivers, and at the mountain ranges beyond. I’ve encountered the Amchi just

Dot Wordsworth

Doric

I’d seen The Gruffalo in Latin, so I was delighted when Veronica showed me a version her daughter had been given, in Doric. It begins: ‘A moose tuik a dander ben the wid./ A tod saw the moose, an the moose luiked guid.’ (I take it that every mother knows The Gruffalo by heart. The original starts: ‘A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood./ A fox saw the mouse, and the mouse looked good.’). Although Gaelic (Ghàidhlig) is the distinct language of Scotland, few bother to learn it, and the English-speakers there give the name Scots to various dialects of northern English. Sometimes they call it Doric,

Melissa Kite

Real life | 8 September 2016

What is happening to estate agents? Or let me put it another way. If the professional classes thought they were going to escape unscathed from ‘free movement of people’ then they were wrong. I feel it is only fair to warn the office workers and the suited and booted that their salaries are no longer safe from the Eurovision job contest. I know this because I have been trying to sell my flat for a while and a part of the problem has been that the agent put in charge of selling it was a young girl who, while sweet, lacked the ideal vocab range. I overheard her doing a

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 8 September 2016

There is no cherished assumption that now goes unchallenged. The latest one is that country air is good for you. Ronald Reagan was much mocked when he said in 1981 that ‘trees cause more pollution than automobiles do’, but scientists later surprised everyone by saying that he was at least partially right. And now it is claimed that if you live near to a pig, cow or chicken farm, you might as well be living in Oxford Street. A study conducted by Utrecht University in Holland has found that more Europeans die from air pollution in the countryside than in cities, mainly from the fumes of manure storage and slurry

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 8 September 2016

There are three reasons why I never make ‘psychic’ bids. First, because I’m a wimp. Second, because I often play with partners who are better than me, and I feel it would be arrogant to manipulate the bidding. And third, because you really have to know what you’re doing with psychic bids — and I’m not sure I do. But I know someone who does — Alex Hydes, my partner in the World Mixed Teams which are taking place in Poland this week (along with the Open, Women’s and Seniors). It’s a huge privilege to be on the England team — and to be partnering Alex in particular. He’s a

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 8 September 2016

Q. We recently stayed for a Saturday night with an old friend and were warned before we arrived that my husband’s carer would not be able to join us for dinner as that would make us 13 around the table. We are devoted to our carer and feel that his exclusion was much more to do with snobbery than superstition. For the rest of our stay, our host seemed to find him perfectly agreeable company and we wonder whether, in retrospect, he regretted the exclusion. Should we have insisted he join us, Mary? And do you agree that no sophisticated person could take this superstition seriously? — B.T., London SW5

Toby Young Toby Young

Is Keith Vaz a psychopath?

What’s wrong with you?’ That was the question an American broadcaster asked Anthony Weiner when his New York City mayoral campaign went up in flames in 2013. Weiner, the subject of a feature-length documentary released earlier this year, had just become embroiled in a second sex scandal, the first having derailed his political career in 2011. The extraordinary thing about the second scandal is that his efforts to rehabilitate himself as a public figure, helped by his wife’s decision to stand by him, seemed to be working. He was topping the polls when the scandal broke, which demands the question: ‘Why risk it all again?’ You’d think his experience would

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 8 September 2016

Home David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, made his first statement to the Commons and said that if membership of a single market meant having to give up control of United Kingdom borders, ‘that makes it very improbable’. The official spokesman for Theresa May, the Prime Minister, who was away in China, disagreed, claiming that Mr Davis was merely ‘setting out his opinion’. ‘Saying something is probable or improbable,’ she said, ‘I don’t think is necessarily a policy.’ Speaking in China about freedom of movement after Brexit, Mrs May said: ‘I want a system where the government is able to decide who comes into the

The Spectator

Migrant benefits

Calm is slowly returning to the debate about Britain and Europe. The shrillness of the referendum campaign, and the hysteria from people who ought to have known better, is giving way to an acceptance that the end is not nigh and that things could be as good, if not better, than before. The idea that the British public had somehow voted for a recession is being steadily abandoned. The next stage is to accept that Brexit was not a populist yawp about protecting our borders. It was not a demand to stop immigration, but to manage it better. So when Theresa May rejected an Australian-style points-based immigration system this week,

Doc

2277: Royalty

Having solved the puzzle, solvers are required to highlight a 2×2 square which contains the four letters of the otherwise unclued theme word. This theme word can be paired with five of the unclued lights. The resulting pairs are then defined by the remaining five unclued lights (two of two words), all of which can be verified in Brewer.   Across 9    Islands forming ring — possibly a nice area (7) 11    Tail of forsaken kangaroo was not once in cell (7) 12    Dictator arrests leader of army violently (5) 17    Mac’s own muslin. Not half (4) 20    London university splitting gas particle (7) 21   

Andrew Sabisky

Do ‘tutor-proof’ grammar school tests exist?

As part of its plan to expand the number of grammar schools, the Government has proposed making ‘tutor-proof’ tests. Unfortunately, this is more difficult to accomplish than Theresa May imagines and even if it were realistic, it might not solve the problem of under-representation of poor children in grammar schools. It’s possible to make this argument thanks to the large amount of scientific literature on the effects of practice and coaching on cognitive test performance. This is based on the popularity of such tests in job and educational selection over the decades and the results are both clear and consistent. Practice and coaching do have positive effects. What’s more, coaching has an effect over and above

Mohammed Ashfaq

Confessions of a rent boy

I am not surprised that Keith Vaz has been caught sleeping with male hookers. I’m one myself and so I know that overweight married Asians are our staple. We often joke that without Indians and-Middle Eastern guys, we’d all be broke. They are always married. I’ve always been sickened by the way they betray their wives, but they aren’t paying me for my judgment. There are different types of rent boy. Some are very young, slim and smooth. They are called twinks. I am dark, hairy and muscled, which appeals to certain clients who want a ‘real man’. I’ve been escorting for nearly four years, and I’ve had hundreds of

Eleanour Doughty

Talking heads: The individuality machine

Bedales. A school known for its lack of uniform and its policy of pupils calling their teachers by their first names, it is beloved by some but baffles others. To add to the confusion, its headmaster isn’t the happy-clappy chap you might expect. ‘I’m far from being some kind of trendy character,’ insists Keith Budge, who describes himself as ‘Celtic fringe — half Scots, half Welsh’. Budge — I should probably refer to him as Keith, since his students do — has been the headmaster of the Hampshire school since 2001. ‘I’m just liberal in the sense of wanting education to offer the individual as much freedom as it possibly can,’ he says.

Doc

to 2274: round and round

The unclued lights are stations of the London Underground CIRCLE Line. BAYSWATER is the paired theme-word. Solvers had to highlight TOWER HILL in yellow, as per the Line’s colour on a London Tube Map.   First prize Janet Hill, Brighton Runners-up Gay Roper, Weston Underwood, Bucks; Don Young, Oldham

Charlotte Gill

Young people’s ‘yolo’ spending is a symptom of a much bigger problem

‘You’ve got to stop eating those croissants,’ my parents tell me. I know they’re right, but have they seen the croissants? As crisp as a Hilton bed sheet and golden like the sun. They caution that they’re a waste of money, and I get it. In the early stages of my addiction I forked out £1.50 apiece; then the coffee shop grew hungry for more. £1.75 they demanded. That’s £8.75 a working week. Think of a month’s worth. (You do the maths – because I can’t). I try not to think about the cost. I stuff the pastry into my mouth and close my eyes, the pain crumbling away. Just like all the

Helen Nugent

Current accounts, housing, ISAs and tax avoidance

Consumers are getting better value for money from their current account and benefiting from a more competitive market, according to a new report from the Social Market Foundation published today. The report, A switch in time: The evolution of Britain’s personal current account market, supported by Bacs, has found a 17 per cent fall in bank revenue from personal current accounts over the past eight years – a sign of increased competition in the personal banking market. Most consumers are now paying less for their accounts and receiving more back from their banks through higher interest rates and other bonuses such as cashback on purchases. The savings available through switching

The Spectator

Fire in the sky

From ‘The burning of the Zeppelin’, The Spectator, 9 September 1916: Half London formed the vast proscenium for this tragedy of the air, and saw on the aerial stage the triumph of right over might — saw with their natural eyes David smite Goliath and hurl him in flaming ruin to the ground. Never before in human history had men sat in such a theatre and seen such a curtain rung down from the starry heights above them. But what made this drama of the open Heaven memorable above all record was the cheer that greeted its close. Those who had the inexpressible good fortune to hear that soul-shaking sound