Society

Thursday

1 Sep 2016

Taxi

Old Quentin Letts was on the wireless the other day asking ‘What’s the point of the London black cab?’ Between much shouting from my husband (a sign he is paying attention) I heard an old cabby explain that the word taxi came from its German inventor, whose name was Thurn und Taxis. Really! There is no defeating this blunder, which is all over the internet. In reality taxi came into English from the French taximètre (1905), where the first element represents taxe, ‘tariff’. Taxis are hackney carriages. Autodidact cab-drivers cite an origin from Middle Dutch, in which an ambling horse was called hackeneie. But why did the Dutch call it

Lavatch

2276: Iron Man

Definitions in ten clues contain a misprint; corrections spell out a theme word. Unclued lights are four pairs of words of a kind, each relating to the theme word in a different way. Elsewhere, ignore one accent. Across 11 Like some parasites? See ten in rotten tree house (12) 12 Statesman needs iron, regularly pale (5) 14 Flexible tenures for colony’s workers? (7) 16 Anglicans right, one’s sure to sin (4) 17 Libertine pockets good cosmetic (5) 22 Small horn’s whorl (8) 23 Climber’s average place to drop back (7) 24 Soundness of ship oddly slow across Channel (6) 25 Slat from special row (6) 27 Logical method has

Tove Lifvendahl

Sweden’s refugee crisis

Stockholm For a British boy to be killed by a grenade attack anywhere is appalling, but for it to happen in a suburb of Gothenburg should shatter a few illusions about Sweden. Last week’s murder of eight-year-old Yuusuf Warsame fits a pattern that Swedes have come slowly to recognise over the years. He was from Birmingham, visiting relatives, and was caught up in what Swedish police believe is a gang war within the Somali community. Last year, a four-year-old girl was killed by a car bomb outside Gothenburg, another apparent victim of gang violence. Fraser Nelson and Ivar Arpi discuss the Swedish model for migration on this week’s Spectator podcast:

Heri Joensen

Save the whale-hunt!

Toftir, Faroe Islands Almost twenty years ago I founded a heavy metal band called Týr. Our songs, with titles such as ‘Blood of Heroes’ and ‘Lady of the Slain’, might not appeal to all Spectator readers — but we’ve released seven albums and toured several times across Europe and America. Our album covers depict bloodstained swords and skulls; nobody finds them too upsetting. But when I posted a picture of myself cutting up a whale on Facebook, all hell broke loose. I live in the Faroe Islands, where whaling has been part of our way of life for centuries. Last month, I was working on a long-finned pilot whale the

Michael Heath

The Battle for Britain – 1 September 2016

Lavatch

to 2273: Numbers

Round the perimeter run the titles of three songs from the musical Guys and Dolls, epitomised by SKY (28) Masterson and SARAH (11) Brown, and NATHAN (19) Detroit and Miss ADELAIDE (39): A BUSHEL AND A PECK, IF I WERE A BELL and SIT DOWN YOU’RE ROCKIN’ THE BOAT. First prize P.L. Macdougall, London SW6 Runners-up D.P. Shenkin, London WC1; R.J. Green, Llangynidr, Crickhowell, Powys

Toby Young

Podcast: Is it wrong to ban the burkini?

For about a year now, James Delingpole and I have been doing a regular podcast for Ricochet, the American website dedicated to conservative news and commentary. It’s called ‘London Calling’ and you can hear the latest one here. Among the many topics covered on this episode are the French burkini ban, Robert Tombs’s ‘The English and Their History’, my appearance on Any Questions last week and James’s appearance this week (alongside Diane Abbott). We also talk about the West London Free School and what we did on our holidays.

Rod Liddle

Hey Black Lives Matter UK: here’s some perspective on Glastonbury vs Notting Hill Carnival

Here’s a thing. Shortly after my column for this week’s magazine appeared online, Black Lives Matter UK put out the following tweet: Hey Rod Liddle: where were your calls to ban Glastonbury in order to prevent white-on-white crime? https://t.co/dnktIKwfqT — #BlackLivesMatterUK (@ukblm) August 31, 2016 Rather than answer this sliver of delusional idiocy myself, I’ll leave it to Ken Marsh, chairman of the Police Federation: ‘Last year we had an officer stabbed. This year colleagues were assaulted, abused and spat at. How can that be right? It’s completely and utterly unacceptable. ‘The Glastonbury music festival had 40 arrests this year. Notting Hill had 10 times that amount. ‘Year after year

Simon Read

Borrowing from friends and family can have serious consequences

If a pal turned to you for financial help, would you lend a hand? If you have the cash it’s hard to say no, but for the sake of your future friendship that may not be such a good idea. Money can be the root of all sorts of relationship evils. It’s the cause of many families or friends fracturing and so any planned financial arrangements need to be treated with extreme caution. Research published today by StepChange debt charity shows one in three people who owe money to loved ones reporting negative effects caused by their financial problems. One in 20 says borrowing from a friend actually led to

Helen Nugent

Energy, pensions, property and savings

The gap between the best and worst performing energy firms is the widest ever, according to Citizens Advice. Small energy firm Extra Energy attracted 80 times more complaints than the best performing supplier SSE between April and June. Extra Energy received 1,791 complaints per 100,000 customers, which was worse than its record low of 1,682 complaints in the previous quarter. SSE improved its ratio to just over 22 complaints, the charity found. Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: ‘The latest league table shows some suppliers are getting much better at sorting out their customers’ problems, but it’s disappointing to see others getting worse at dealing with complaints.’ The second and

Tom Goodenough

The latest junior doctor strikes are a sign of desperation

The junior doctors row bubbles on. This time, medics will walk out for five back-to-back days starting on September 12. Predictably, Jeremy Hunt has condemned the strike; and the BMA is blaming Jeremy Hunt. It’s a bitter and somewhat dull stalemate which will bore many for its endless intransigence. Yet beneath this, it’s clear this latest industrial action will cause chaos: the strikes comes at such late notice that contingency plans put in place before industrial action earlier this year will not have been made. The strike is messier, too, for the increasing remoteness of a sensible compromise being struck. The BMA’s Mark Porter dismissed the 73 concessions made by

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The Swedish model. How not to welcome refugees

For a certain type of social democrat, no country gets them quite as hot and bothered as Sweden. As Toby Livendell writes in this week’s Spectator cover story, Sweden has long regarded itself as a humanitarian superpower, taking in 650,000 asylum seekers in the last 15 years. But by far the biggest issue is integration. And this was brought to stark British attention last week when a Birmingham schoolboy was murdered with a grenade in Gothenburg. So, what has gone wrong in Sweden? To answer that question, Lara Prendergast is joined on the Spectator podcast by Fraser Nelson and Ivar Arpi. Ivar says: ‘Basically the Swedish idealism ran into a

Roger Alton

Club cricketers: Zimbabwe needs you

Make sure you tell everybody about Zimbabwe,’ said the lady at our block of flats in suburban Harare as we set off on the long journey to the Eastern Highlands and another match, this time at Mutare. We are a ramshackle and elderly cricket team, though we have pulled in a couple of youthful ringers, one an Oxford Blue and another a former Test-match 12th man. But it is a long time since a real England team toured this country — a few ODIs in 2004 I think. Gordon Brown blocked a tour of England by Zim in 2008, and I am told that David Cameron personally made sure that

Lucy Vickery

North and South

In Competition No. 2963 you were invited to submit a poem about the North or the South or one comparing the two. -Tennyson’s lines ‘bright and fierce and fickle is the South,/And dark and true and tender is the North’ (from ‘The Princess: O Swallow’), which inspired this challenge, produced a wide-ranging and exhilarating entry that took me from the bridge table to North Korea and beyond. The winners earn £25 each. Frank McDonald pockets £30. In the north there’s a fish with a serious wish To break out and be queen of the sea, And she tells all the others we’re sisters and brothers Who ought to get

Hugo Rifkind

Dear God, am I going to start liking Ed Balls?

What the hell is going on with Ed Balls? Back in the horrible doldrums of the last Labour government, he was the most reliable total bastard around. There was Gordon Brown himself, of course, throwing phones at people and using his special sinister voice when he spoke about children, and Damian McBride, who had a reputation for being the nastiest spin-doctor there ever was, although he only ever texted me twice and actually quite nicely. Balls, though, was the spirit animal who tied the whole thing together. So many years later, it is almost impossible to convey how weary and stale that government was by the end. How it seemed

Matthew Parris

My fascist moment on the ship of failures

There are no roads from the Peruvian river port of Iquitos, but the rich take aeroplanes. Those who cannot pay to fly may pay the premium for the 40ft motorised express canoes that take only a day to roar to and from the upriver port of Yurimaguas with its bus station. But losers in the global race cannot afford speed. For them there are only the big, slow, hot, lumbering cargo boats: nearly four days’ journey from Iquitos to Yurimaguas. So the moment a passenger walks up the gangplank and strings their hammock between the iron rafters of the open–sided deck, we can guess he or she is not one

The Spectator

Churchill’s privilege

From ‘Mr Churchill’s misfire’, The Spectator, 2 September 1916: There is nothing that democracy so much hates as unfair privilege, and Mr Churchill has enjoyed and has utilised an unfair privilege in getting himself in and out of the Army at his arbitrary will… The public now fully understands that his influence on our political life is almost wholly bad because it is wholly dissociated from any motive except that of personal advancement. He would, indeed, now be powerless either for good or for evil, were it not for the fact — or what appears to be the fact — that he still retains useful friends within the Cabinet who afford to him

Nicholas Farrell

Italian Notebook

Lido di Dante, Ravenna When the earthquake struck in the dead of night at 3.36 a.m. — the Devil’s Hour — I was in front of my computer in what used to be the cow shed. This is the only time of day when my six boisterous children and their high-voltage Italian mother are not around. The insects, attracted by the light, are worse at night but they can be killed if necessary. As for the toads (we have biblical numbers that emerge from the underworld at night via the open glass doors), I quite like them. Even though there are three on the coat of arms of the Devil

Lloyd Evans

First aid

In the 1980s, supermarkets stocked a fruit juice named ‘Um Bongo’ with the strapline ‘They drink it in the Congo!’. This is the starting point for Adam Brace’s examination of Britain’s relationship with the Congolese (whose word ‘mbongo’ means money). A group of do-gooding Londoners host a festival to celebrate the Congo’s culture and history but they rapidly become mired in controversies about age-old injustices and white-to-black ratios on steering committees. The Congolese party includes a few rogue terrorists whose death threats the British publicists find rather glamorous and titillating. The characters rarely reach beyond the obvious. The Londoners are bloodless yuppie go-getters. The Congolese are suspicious, chippy and mistrustful.

Rod Liddle

Why don’t black lives matter at the carnival?

I do not get out very much these days, but the glorious weekend weather persuaded me that I should spend a pleasant afternoon watching people stabbing each other at our annual celebration of stabbing, the Notting Hill Carnival. I go most years and enjoy the street food, the music and the sight of white police officers with fixed rictus grins ‘getting down’ with some vast-mammaried semi-clad mama, their helmets askew and rivulets of sweat running down each crisp white shirt. And of course the violence, the violence. I am delighted to say that in this regard 2016 did not disappoint, with more than 400 people arrested and five stabbed —