Society

Thursday

28 Jul 2016

Dear Mary | 28 July 2016

Q. Every summer, just when England is at its loveliest, we have to pack everything up and make a stressy journey to go and stay with someone who has a house abroad. I can understand people wanting to repay hospitality, but we really don’t care about cutlet for cutlet. More to the point, we have our own lovely garden and pool. Yet when someone invites you six or seven months ahead, how can you say no without hurting their feelings? — Name and address withheld A. Bare-faced honesty has done the trick for one popular but plain-speaking society figure who replies to such invitations: ‘Obviously we like you very much or

Dot Wordsworth

Wow!

Veronica has become quite an addict of Twitter, just as the rest of the young are forsaking it. ‘It’s easy to hide from the trolls and death threats,’ she tells me encouragingly, ‘but there’s one thing that annoys me.’ The one thing is a cliché serving as click-bait for fellow twitterers. It takes the form of the exclamation: ‘Wow! Just wow!’ The hyperbole seldom lives up to expectations, and even when it does, it is diminished by having expressed the emotion in second-hand language. I was surprised to find that wow does not belong to the 20th-century world of Batman’s Pow! and Bowie’s son Zowie. It far predates the ‘wow

The Spectator

Letters | 28 July 2016

Better Europeans Sir: There are many reasons why a majority of people in the UK voted to leave the European Union. Among them was certainly not a wish to be inhospitable and uncooperative with our fellow Europeans (Leading article, 23 July). Now it is even more important that EU nationals in Britain should have their status respected and not be used as a bargaining point in future relations with Brussels. Nor should we forget the considerable contribution that so many of them make to our national wellbeing. Furthermore, what about the two million or so UK nationals living and settled in many parts of Europe? Are they to be ignored

Anonymous

2271: I’m not here or there

All but one of the unclued lights can be preceded by the same word, large or small. Solvers are requested to highlight the other thematic solution which does not follow this pattern. Brewer confirms the theme. Across 3 Acrylic pot he refashioned in copper and iron compound (12) 11 33 returning after the usual time (4) 12 Accountant’s car by hill (7) 16 Educated, but lacking a CD for reviewing piece of music (5) 18 Not much life in a cell? (6) 20 Grim heartless Ron set out first (5) 23 Sleep in it, though it’s really not fitting (5) 25 Record gold obstacle as US ornament (7) 26 Another

Doc

To 2268: In state

The unclued lights are US STATE CAPITALS. First prize Stewart Jones, Winchester, Hants Runners-up John M. Brown, Rolleston-on-Dove, Staffs; Gareth Davies, Langstone, Newport

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator Podcast: Summer of terror

In a week in which both Germany and France have suffered terror attacks, the question of the relationship between Islamic terrorism and Europe’s refugee crisis is once again rearing its head. In his Spectator cover piece, Douglas Murray argues that whilst the public knows that ‘Islamism comes from Islam’, Europe’s political classes are still refusing to tackle the problem at its core. So how can we bridge this gap between what politicians are saying and what the public are thinking? And does Europe have to come to terms with a new reality of domestic terrorism? On this week’s podcast, Douglas Murray speaks to Lara Prendergast. Joining them both to discuss

Laura Whitcombe

How to survive the financial fallout of starting a family

I’m standing at the edge of a financial precipice. I’m a 32-year-old woman doing a job I love. I’ve been beavering away solidly for 10 years and I’ve been working hard to climb my way up the career ladder. After starting out in London surviving on a pitiful cub journo’s salary, I now earn enough money to pay my bills, do and buy what I want – within reason – contribute to a pension and put a little bit away each month. But within the next three months, all that will change. I’m pregnant and my first baby is due in six weeks. I’m one of the hundreds of thousands

Alec Marsh

The government can’t ‘phase out’ Latin from the English language

In his essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell famously exhorted writers to be cautious of allowing ready words or prefabricated phrases to affect whatever it was he or she wished to articulate. ‘Let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about,’ he wrote. Seventy years on, Whitehall Mandarins have spoken. ‘We promote the use of plain English on GOV.UK,’ writes one of their number from the Government Digital Service, announcing a new policy on which words cannot be used on government websites. ‘We advocate simple, clear language. Terms like eg, ie and etc, while common, make reading difficult for some.’ As a result, ostensibly to make

Jonathan Ray

Our lunch with Vega Sicilia

Jonathan Ray looks back on a fine Spectator Winemaker Lunch with Vega Sicilia. An excellent lunch in the Spectator boardroom today as Antonio Menéndez, managing director (sales and marketing) of mighty Vega Sicilia hosted the latest in our series of Spectator Winemaker Lunches. Vega Sicilia in Spain’s Ribera del Duero has an extraordinary reputation and is regarded as Spain’s one and only ‘first growth’. It’s most celebrated wine is its ‘Unico’ which can sell for hundreds of pounds a bottle although the Vega Sicilia group also owns four other wineries and produces 13 different wines. Today we were treated to a perfect snapshot of the range with five wines. We

Jonathan Ray

The Spectator Wine School

This 8 week course has now begun. If you are interested in joining another one of our Wine Schools please email wineschool@spectator.co.uk. The Spectator Wine School is a chance to be tutored by the best in the wine business. It is aimed at enthusiastic beginners and anyone who wants to know more about the main wine regions. Over eight weeks, the magazine’s Wine Club partners will each give a class on their specialist region. The final session will be a tasting hosted by Pol Roger Champagne. Course description The course will last 8 weeks and the maximum capacity of each class will be 20 people, ensuring individual attention. The Wine School is for beginners and wine enthusiasts who’d

Jonathan Ray

The Wine Bores Competition: the results

We had some very fine answers in our competition to find the perfect collective noun for a group of wine bores. You might recall that the best my confreres and I could come up with during the wine bores’ dinner that kicked off the initial discussion [see: Struggling to serve wine in the right order] was a ‘bunch’, a ‘pontification’ or a ‘slurring’ of wine bores. Readers more than outdid us. My fellow judge, James Simpson MW, the managing director of Pol Roger (UK), and I had a merry chortle going through the answers although I have to say that some of the ruder ones (not for repetition in a

Bruce Anderson

Felines and Figaro

I know little about human medicine: still less about the animal equivalent. So I had always assumed that vets were failed doctors, who had to make their living in muddy byres at 4 a.m., managing the cow through a difficult pregnancy while trying to avoid her hooves. The other evening, at a dinner party full of cat owners, I heard an entirely different version. Everyone had horror stories about the cost of cat medicine. The winner was a girl whose moggy’s treatment had cost over £1,000, including the price of three days in a cat hospital. There had been an uncovenanted benefit. When Daphne came home, she displayed gratitude, or at

Rory Sutherland

Aspirin should be reassuringly expensive

Last year, those rationalist killjoys at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission prosecuted Reckitt Benckiser over four products: Nurofen Migraine Pain, Nurofen Tension Headache, Nurofen Period Pain and Nurofen Back Pain. Their gripe was that ‘each product claimed to target a specific pain, when in fact it was found that they all contained the same amount of the same active ingredient, ibuprofen lysine.’ These variants were often sold at a higher price than the basic brand, despite being pharmacologically identical. I am sure the ACCC have their chemistry right; their psychology, however, is wrong. For me, Nurofen didn’t go far enough. I want to see even more specific variants: ‘I

Mary Wakefield

Pokémon Go? I wish it would

Monday morning: one hand trapped beneath the fat and guzzling midget, with the other I idly opened the gates of hell — meaning I downloaded the game Pokémon Go. Pokémon Go is an ‘augmented reality’ game. It requires you to trot about in the real world, staring at your smartphone so as to find and ‘collect’ coloured goblins from different locations. Perhaps that doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but it’s the most successful phone game there’s ever been. On the day I played, more than 75 million people had already downloaded it, and when I first opened it I too became obsessed. A day later, however, I suspect it of being

Mark Edmonds

My pedigree chum

The backlash has been brutal, unforgiving and, in common with the left’s reactions to so many things, almost hysterical in its hot-blooded fury. My crime? Starbucks shares? Casual racism? Advocating military action in North Korea? No, I have just bought a puppy, a pedigree puppy — and not just any pedigree, but an aristocratic-looking Cavalier King Charles spaniel — the apotheosis of canine privilege. Here’s a sample of some of the more printable rants from north London friends and colleagues. It makes dispiriting reading. ‘That dog looks very posh… what’s wrong with a mongrel?’ ‘I’m shocked and disgusted…’ ‘Why didn’t you get a rescue dog… disgraceful… you are encouraging selective breeding…’. But

Damian Thompson

Mass murder

On Tuesday morning, an 85-year-old man was forced to his knees while his throat was slit by Islamic fanatics. The murder of Father Jacques Hamel in the church at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, has been recognised by western public opinion as an act of unspeakable barbarity. One could say that the facts speak for themselves. But for Catholics, this atrocity possesses a special horror. Father Hamel was killed while re-enacting the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. That is the essence of the Catholic Mass, which — unlike Protestant commemorations of the Last Supper — is presented to the faithful as the same sacrifice offered by Jesus. Douglas Murray and

Anne Applebaum

Trump ♥ Putin

Spy novels and James Bond movies; post-war Vienna and East Berlin; Manchurian candidates and Third Men. The pop culture of the Cold War era created a set of stereotypes about hostile foreign intelligence services, especially Russian intelligence services, and they still exist. We still imagine undercover agents, dead drops, messages left under park benches, microphones inside fountain pens. It’s time to forget all of that, because the signature Russian intelligence operation of the future, and indeed of the present, is not going to unfold in secret, but rather in public. It’s not going to involve stolen documents, but rather disinformation operations designed to influence democratic elections. It’s not going to

Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 30 July

We’ve some wonderful summery wines this week, each one from France. Not deliberately so: it’s just that these six wines — from Alsace, Loire, Bordeaux and beyond — were easily the best in our tasting. And I reckon they show that France on song is pretty much unbeatable and (thanks here, I admit, to some very generous discounts) great value. First, the 2015 Sauvignon de Touraine, Domaine Bellevue (1), a lemon-fresh, really rather tropical Sauvignon Blanc produced but a stone’s throw from the dreamiest of all Loire Valley châteaux: Chenonceau. Patrick Vauvy is the fourth generation of his family to make wine in Noyers-sur-Cher and his wines are noted for

Martin Vander Weyer

Rough justice for Sir Shifty, but MPs have got him bang to rights

Not even your quixotic columnist is prepared to mount a full-on defence of Sir Philip Green this week, following the publication of the joint select committees’ report on the sale and collapse of BHS, and committee chairman Frank Field MP’s description of Green himself as ‘much worse’ than Robert Maxwell. What I would say, however, is that if you’re really interested in this story, read the actual report — rather than the knockabout précis of it in the Daily Mail, which has renamed Green ‘Sir Shifty’ — and form your own judgment, both of the extent of Green’s culpability in the loss of 11,000 BHS jobs and the devastation of

Nick Cohen

Enemies of history

At the start of the 21st century, no one felt the need to reach for studies of ‘third-period’ communism to understand British and American politics. By 2016, I would say that they have become essential. Admittedly, connoisseurs of the communist movement’s crimes have always thought that 1928 was a vintage year. The Soviet Union had decided that the first period after the glorious Russian revolution of 1917 had been succeeded by a second period, when the West fought back. But now, comrades, yes, now in the historic year of 1928, Stalin had ruled that we were entering a ‘third period’ when capitalism would die in its final crisis. As the