Society

Thursday

3 Nov 2016

Post-Brexit

Staring at a brown envelope, my husband said: ‘I’ll deal with that post-breakfast,’ and then laughed as though he had made a joke. In his mind it was a play on words, the unspoken words being post-Brexit. It is true that no one is safe from that phrase these days. As a compound adjective, it’s not so bad: post-Brexit prosperity. As an adverb, it sounds awkward to me: prices rising post-Brexit. The word Brexit itself was established as more than a passing vogue only after the referendum, I think. It had been invented in 2012, on the pattern of the portmanteau word Grexit ‘Greek exit’, and while the prospect of

Toby Young

Looking after Leo

I’ve just spent a day looking after our one-year-old vizsla and, to be blunt, I have some sympathy with Michael Heseltine’s decision to strangle his mother’s alsatian. Not that my wife is out of town. Rather, I’ve just got a new job as director of the New Schools Network, a charity that helps groups set up free schools, and Caroline argued that because I’ll now be spending so much time away from home I am morally obliged to take on the lion’s share of dog duties before I start. My responsibilities began with a walk in Gunnersbury Park. Now, to be fair, this isn’t a monumental chore. Gunnersbury Park is

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 3 November 2016

Q. Some elderly friends of mine love to entertain in their London club on their visits, but a problem arises when their London friends want to reciprocate. Recently one of these gave a special dinner for them in her flat, taking enormous trouble with the food. However, the stress of getting there — they are both infirm and had to hire a car with a low chassis and then climb stairs — exhausted them. Restaurants are problematic due to noise and mobility issues. How do we return their hospitality? — E.S., London W11 A. Hotels are always superior to restaurants as hosting venues for the fragile. The solution is to take them

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 3 November 2016

Home Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, said he would stay on for another year when his initial five-year term ends in 2018, to ‘contribute to securing an orderly transition to the UK’s new relationship with Europe’. More than 150 Conservative MPs, including cabinet ministers, voted to appoint Keith Vaz, a Labour MP, to the Commons Justice Select Committee, even though he had left the Home Affairs Select Committee when a newspaper revealed an alleged scandal involving rent boys. Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, told the Commons that he had assured Nissan, which decided to continue operations in Sunderland, that Britain would seek trade for the motor

The Spectator

A passage to India | 3 November 2016

When a Prime Minister flies off abroad with a few business-leaders it is seldom worthy of comment. Such trade missions tend to achieve little, beyond generating headlines intended to flaunt politicians’ pro-business credentials. But with the impending departure of Britain from the European Union,-Theresa May’s visit to India next week, accompanied by Sir James Dyson and others, has huge significance. For the first time in four decades, a British Prime Minister can discuss doing trade deals — something which we have until now been forced to contract out to officials in Brussels. Mrs May has chosen her destination shrewdly. With its rapidly expanding economy and the gradual liberalisation of economic

Lavatch

2285: Characterful

Unclued lights are three groups of three words of a kind, each group relating differently to a theme word. This theme word appears in the grid (8 letters, reading across) translated into the appropriate language and must be highlighted. The unchecked and cross-checking letters in the nine theme words are DARN HANDSOMELY arranged. Across 1 What protects vehicle’s front (8) 8 Met seven gnomes (4) 11 They perform tricks poorly in suits, and so change (12) 12 Reticent type’s penned one statement (5) 14 People against capturing a rook in trees (7) 17 Standing shocking treatment after hesitation (5) 18 Trifling dramatic genre Milan staged (7) 23 Cause more

Martin Thomas

Vicar, can you spare a dime?

‘I am a Messianic Jew,’ says the jittery young man at the rectory door. He is pale and drawn, with a close-shaven scalp and several days of bristles on a sharp chin. The bloodshot eyes search for me swimmingly. ‘A Jew, a Messianic Jew,’ he emphasises. I should have a clever rejoinder, but I am assessing if he has a knife so I only manage, ‘Ah yes, and how can I help?’ ‘Is this you?’ is thrown back at me, as he jabs his finger at the screen of his phone and then holds it up to my face like a mirror. I admit my identity (an image from our

Michael Heath

The Battle for Britain – 3 November 2016

Lavatch

to 2282: Timely

The perimetric quotation (referring to October), AMBIGUOUS MONTH, THE MONTH OF TENSION, THE UNENDURABLE MONTH’, is followed by DL, the initials of its author, Doris Lessing, a NOBEL LAUREATE (2/5). The source is the novel MARTHA QUEST (18/17). First prize Christopher Hanafin, Adare, Co. Limerick Runners-up Sara MacIntosh, Darlington, Co. Durham; C.J. Ellis, Rochester, Kent

Ella Whelan

Glamour’s ‘women of the year’ awards are a feminist farce

Glamour magazine has announced its annual women of the year awards, and, this year, they’re naming a man of the year too. Paul Hewson – or as we know him, the prat in glasses, or, Bono – has been given the award for being one of the ‘most outspoken advocates for women and girls’. Glamour certainly knows how to create a headline. Last year, it was transgender athlete Caitlyn Jenner who won woman of the year; this time round the magazine has gone for a smaller, less stylish, but equally annoying bloke to grab some attention. It was Bono’s ‘Poverty Is Sexist’ campaign, which draws attention to the fact that ‘powerful

Brendan O’Neill

The tough fight for democracy has begun

This week, national treasure David Attenborough joined the post-Brexit pile-on of the plebs. Should the little people really be trusted to make decisions about complicated matters like the EU, he asked? You know the answer: of course we shouldn’t. We’re too dim. We don’t have as many degrees as him. The point of parliamentary democracy, he says, is that ‘we find someone we respect who we think is probably wiser than we are’ and then we trust them to ‘ponder… difficult things’. That’s far preferable to asking people who’d prefer to go to a funfair than the National Gallery — he really says this, in reference to a quote from Ken

Matthew Lynn

The Bank of England made a mistake. It should have admitted it

The currency has been devalued by more than 30 per cent. Interest rates have been pushed all the way up to 20 per cent. The IMF is standing by with an emergency package, and capital controls and dollar rationing have been maintained. It has been a heck of a morning for the pound – although, fortunately enough for most us, the Egyptian rather than British one. Over here, it has all been rather quieter. The Bank of England, as most people expected, has stuck with its decision over the summer to take rates all the way down to the 0.25 per cent. It now looks inevitable that it will hold

Nick Hilton

The Spectator podcast: Breaking the Bank

On this week’s podcast, we discuss the fraught relationship between Mark Carney and Theresa May, the similarities between the sieges in Mosul and Aleppo, and why we all have to wait so long at the airport. First up, this week saw Bank of England Governor Mark Carney announce that he would be stepping down from his post in June 2019. This was the conclusion to a troubled few weeks that started with the Prime Minister’s party conference speech, in which she spoke of the ‘bad side effects’ to recent monetary policy. So what’s the future for Carney and the Bank of England? And will May need to recalibrate her relationship

Helen Nugent

The City watchdog is to scrutinise overdraft charges, but it may be too little, too late

It’s about time. The city watchdog has announced it will take action to improve competition in the current account market. Let’s face it, current accounts are a bit rubbish, aren’t they? Many offer 0 per cent interest no matter the balance, overdraft charges can be extortionate, late payment fees are astronomical and, despite years of industry pleas, switching accounts is still seen as a pain in the neck. To add to customer woes, back in August the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published a number of recommendations aimed at shaking the retail banking industry, including ordering banks to share customers’ information with third parties from 2018 to make it easier for

Helen Nugent

Overdrafts, BHS, debt and pensions

A decision by the competition regulator not to recommend a cap on excessive overdraft charges could be re-examined, the Financial Conduct Authority says. In its report on bank accounts published in August, the Competition and Markets Authority decided against a cap on charges. The BBC reports that the FCA has now announced that it is to examine the issue in detail itself. It said the inquiry could look at a compulsory limit on overdraft charges. BHS The Pensions Regulator has launched enforcement action against Sir Philip Green and other former owners of BHS, according to the BBC. The regulator said it was seeking redress for BHS’s 20,000 pension scheme members

Charlotte Gill

The truth? Most women can’t ‘have it all’

Many of my friends are terrified of having babies. It’s the childbirth process that frightens them. And once upon a time I would laugh at their concerns and say something, like: ‘yeah, but it’s all worth it.’ Because I love babies. But now I’m terrified of them too, for different reasons. I was recently asked to prepare a talk on the gender pay gap. With an open mind, I spent hours combing over research – to find out if my sex is really underpaid, and – if so – why this is. I came to the conclusion that babies aren’t a good idea for any woman who values her career. Indeed, not the cutest

Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 5 November

We’re with my alma mater Berry Bros & Rudd this week featuring some of their excellent own selection wines. I was quite bowled over by their quality, as indeed I was by the generosity of wine director Mark Pardoe’s discounts. In fact I strongly recommend you start your festive stockpiling right here, right now. Why wait until the week before Christmas to buy Berrys’ scrumptious own selection red burgundy for £16.50 when you can buy it from this page right now for £13.95? Not all fine fizz comes from Champagne. Nope, some of it still comes from where it all started: Limoux in southern France where, in 1531, the monks

Kate Chisholm

Music matters

There’s nothing new about Radio 3 tearing up the schedules, temporarily abandoning regular favourites such as Private Passions, The Early Music Show, Choral Evensong in search of creative freedom. Its first controller was not just given permission but instructed by the director general, Sir William Haley, to ignore the demands of Big Ben and the news schedule in favour of allowing concerts to run on beyond the hour and to be heard just as they would have been in the concert hall, with ‘live’ operas broadcast in full from Paris or New York. There was to be ‘no annotation’, no commentary on the music that had just been heard. Pauses,

Martin Vander Weyer

It’s time for Hammond to send a ruthless hit squad into RBS

The new series of The Missing is surely the gloomiest television of the year. But it has nothing on the endless saga of RBS, which seems to use the same disturbing time-shift device: whenever there’s a horrible new plot twist, you have to spot whether we’re in 2008, 2011 or today. The crippled bank, still 73 per cent state-owned, has lost £2.5 billion in the first three quarters of this year, having just paid out another £425 million in ‘litigation and conduct’ costs chiefly relating to mortgage-backed securities hanky-panky in the US. Since its bailout eight years ago, it has lost considerably more than the £46 billion of taxpayers’ money

Rory Sutherland

How to carry less baggage

One fairly reliable rule of thumb is ‘never buy anything at an airport if you can help it’. Something about the peculiar atmosphere of airports makes people act in strange ways. I used to find myself buying plug adapters simply because they were a slightly different colour from the ones I already had in my bag. Other people seem strangely eager to buy giant Toblerones.-Lufthansa once even asked scientists to investigate why in airport-lounges and on aircraft, people became far more disposed to drink tomato juice than anywhere else. Finally, and most baffling of all, who the hell buys luggage airside? Buying a suitcase before you go through security might