Society

Thursday

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 19 May 2016

Q. My super successful son kindly gave a birthday dinner party for me in a glamorous London club. I have never used scented candles — I worry about the fire risk and, more recently, about the alleged particulates. No scent beats fresh air. So what should I make of the fact that when I unwrapped my presents the following morning, I found that 20 out of the 50 were scented candles? I am not the sort of person who takes offence, but are my friends trying to tell me something? — Name and address withheld A. Since you don’t have to rip off the packaging in front of the donor, candles

Toby Young Toby Young

My soppy, dopey, deadly predator

Leo, the Hungarian Vizsla my wife brought home unexpectedly last year, is approaching his first birthday and not getting any easier to manage. Caroline decided to buy him on the spur of the moment because she ‘liked the way he looked’, by which she means he looks like her. Not the face, obviously, but his figure — thin, athletic, muscular, big ears, big feet. Indeed, she was walking Leo in Gunnersbury Park a few days ago when another dog -walker, spotting them together, burst out laughing. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen an owner who looks more like her dog,’ he said. This may have been his attempt at flirting

Pabulum

2261: Long jump

Six unclued lights are examples of ‘3/4/18’ (four words in total, ignore an apostrophe), a quotation (in ODQ) whose author’s surname (7) will appear diagonally in the grid and must be shaded. Elsewhere, ignore an accent.   Across   11    Tony and Charlie amid ducks beside Yellow River (7) 12    Men declaimed European decree (6) 13    Ignorant leader nun converted (9) 14    Put back small branch on tree (5) 19    Unlocking device averting an awkward situation (7) 23    Hollow tree’s healthy we hear (7, hyphened) 24    Mailing of eighteenth letter sealed by First Minister (4) 30    Maybe cavalryman chopped up Bursera (7) 31    Mother Hubbard’s instrument (4) 32    Units built

Pabulum

To 2258: Perimetrical jigsaw

The perimeter quotation is from L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, in which Leo, Marian and Ted are the main characters. First prize Robert Hirst, Twineham, West Sussex Runners-up Peter Moody, Portchester, Hampshire; Willie Hamilton, Exeter

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Government accepts rebel amendment on Queen’s Speech to stave off defeat

So Number 10 has yielded and decided to stave off the Queen’s Speech rebellion by accepting the rebel amendment to it, thereby stopping the first defeat of a government on its legislative programme since 1924. A spokesman said: ‘As we’ve said all along, there is no threat to the NHS from TTIP. So if this amendment is selected, we’ll accept it.’ So job done, rebellion gone. But it is still a bloody nose for the government from eurosceptics, who are forcing the Prime Minister and the rest of the executive to support something that regrets that they failed to table a bill exempting the NHS from something they have been

Bruce Anderson

Nicholas Soames’ Twitter account is a miracle (and so is his diet)

Miracles are not ceased. A few years ago, a kindly educational therapist took pity on John Prescott and set out to devise a way to reconcile the Mouth of the Humber and his native tongue. He came up with Twitter. That explains the restriction to 140 characters, barely room for Lord Prescott to commit more than three brutal assaults on the English language. A hundred and forty was too much. Twitter did not cure John Prescott. But it did gain pace among the young — and, the miracle, with Nicholas Soames. Nick is one of the funniest men of this age. With Falstaff, he could say (he could say a

Laura Whitcombe

My current account is rubbish but I’m not switching

Your current account provider is probably rubbish value for money and you’d be better off switching banks. That’s the message the Competition and Markets Authority put out earlier this week. The watchdog reportedly spent £5 million on a lengthy report that took ages to write, £5 million to do what I just did in one sentence that took seconds. Maybe the CMA should have hired me to pen the report and saved the taxpayer a fortune. But I digress. Of course, the CMA is correct in its findings and consumers really should be more aware about the value their bank account offers them and the merits of switching. The savvy ones

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What now for Jeremy Hunt?

The junior doctors strike will be remembered not only as the first time in NHS history that a complete walk out took place, but also for its viciousness. Both the British Medical Association and the Government can share their blame in this. Jeremy Hunt’s threat to ‘impose’ contracts on junior doctors was unhelpful in its forcefulness, even if his frustration was understandable. Whilst the rhetoric used by the BMA has also scarcely painted the association in a good light. Junior doctors may have had their concerns about patient safety but this was also a dispute about pay and to suggest otherwise was disingenuous. It seems, at last however, that an

Helen Nugent

Money digest: today’s need-to-know financial news | 19 May 2016

A ‘digital revolution’ was at the heart of the Queen’s Speech yesterday, including a new legal right to fast broadband under plans to bring rural areas and unconnected households into the 21st century. That’s according to this morning’s front page of The Times. The paper reports that a law enshrining the right to broadband will mean that up to a million people in rural areas, who have long suffered terrible coverage, can demand a better service. It brings internet connectivity into line with the right to get electricity, telephone and postal services. Other measures in the speech included the capping of exit fees for savers who want to access their cash under new

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Hillary’s America

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. What should we expect from a Hillary Clinton presidency? The Democrat frontrunner is now the firm favourite to win the White House, assuming that she can defeat her Republican rival Donald Trump. But what would her victory mean for America? In his Spectator cover piece this week, Christopher Buckley says one of Hillary’s prevailing characteristics is her ability to bore. He also argues that Clinton’s politic shapeshifting over the years may have enabled her to stand the test of time, but it’s also

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Obama’s last great battle is in the bathroom

Who’d have thought that one of Obama’s last great battles would be over toilets? Last week he issued a strict warning to schools saying that transgender pupils must be allowed to use whichever loo they choose. Girls or boys who feel they’re trapped in the wrong body have, in some states, been required to widdle according to their biological sex. No more, said the President. No child left behind in the wrong restroom. This was an arrow aimed straight at the heart of the conservative South. Back in March, North Carolina passed a law requiring people in schools and government buildings to use the loo matching the sex recorded on

Gary Bell Qc

A QC’s guide to cocaine

As a defence silk, I come across some surprisingly intelligent drug dealers. Many of them are highly entrepreneurial and driven, and I’m often left wondering what they might have achieved if only they’d chosen a different career. Sharp operators are drawn to the narcotics trade because vast profits can be made in very little time. But then the consequences of failure, especially at the heavyweight end of the market, are rather worse than a tumbling share price. And we all make mistakes. I was recently involved in a case where a criminal mastermind had been jailed for 15 years for heroin importation, but had kept on running his empire from

The Spectator

Bus battles

From ‘The softening of street manners’, The Spectator, 20 May 1916: Generally the public opinion of the ’bus entirely upholds the conductor. The influence of the tyrant is too strong to allow of protest, but now and then cases of rebellion occur, and bold females who consider themselves slighted vow that they will write to the company. But an ordinary ’bus-load contains no such heroines…. Sometimes, however, the will of the passengers prevails by reason of unanimity. A few nights ago a drunken soldier got, late at night, into a West End ’bus. The conductor civilly asked him to get out. The man began to argue, and a number of elderly

Christopher Buckley

The age of Hillary

Predicting what might happen in a Donald Trump presidency is easy. Day 1: A fabulous, really great inaugural, the best ever, with amazing entertainment by fabulous, top people. Day 2: War with Iran. Day 3: War with North Korea. Day 4: Mexico builds a wall to keep out Americans. But let’s not go there. (Please.) Let us instead conjure what four years of a Hillary Clinton administration might bring. After all, she is, despite the media-led panic about Trump’s improving polls, still strong favourite to become the 45th President of the United States. So what would Hillary’s America look like? Well, we could start with some predictions about the legislative fate

James Delingpole James Delingpole

What’s making Remain campaigners so tetchy?

Like a lot of keen games-players I’m a stickler for the rules. This is not because I’m an especially honourable person; merely a recognition that without a rigorous structure and a sense of fair play, a game can be no fun and winning can afford no satisfaction. I feel much the same way about politics. Take Hilary Benn’s recent contribution to the Brexit debate, wherein he professed to have taken grievous offence at Boris Johnson’s use of the word ‘Hitler’ in an article about Europe. As was perfectly clear from the context, the reference was dropped in lightly and unhysterically in the service of an unexceptionable point. So the game

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

How your brain buys a sofa

Almost every popular commercial product owes its success to two different qualities. First, it does the job it is ostensibly designed to do pretty well. Secondly, it has some quality that you might call ‘limbic appeal’. It delights or soothes our unconscious mind in ways which defy objective measurement. Much as it delusionally believes that it runs the show, the power granted to conscious reasoning within the brain is that given to a slightly colour-blind, utilitarian man when he buys a sofa with his wife. The man may have his own preferences, but he has a minimal role in the selection, involving as it does many complex factors that defy

Bruce Anderson

Nicholas the miraculous

Miracles are not ceased. A few years ago, a kindly educational therapist took pity on John Prescott and set out to devise a way to reconcile the Mouth of the Humber and his native tongue. He came up with Twitter. That explains the restriction to 140 characters, barely room for Lord Prescott to commit more than three brutal assaults on the English language. A hundred and forty was too much. Twitter did not cure John Prescott. But it did gain pace among the young — and, the miracle, with Nicholas Soames. Nick is one of the funniest men of this age. With Falstaff, he could say (he could say a

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 19 May 2016

   Nairobi The gangsters hadn’t heard of Brexit. ‘What is this “Breaks it”?’ they asked my friend hours after kidnapping him at gunpoint. At dusk my mate had been driving in Nairobi, with the Wings song ‘Band on the Run’ playing. He pulled over to answer his mobile when a man appeared at his side with a pistol. After letting him and two others get in, my friend was directed to an insalubrious Nairobi postcode, frogmarched up five floors and then beaten on the arms and knees with a golf putter. Big Gangster emptied his pockets and went carefully through his iPhone emails, messages and contacts list. ‘They got to

Lucy Vickery

Wild thing

In Competition No. 2948 you were invited to step into the skin of a species of your choice and provide an account of the experience. In his fascinating, funny book Being a Beast Charles Foster attempted ‘to learn what it is like to shuffle or swoop through a landscape that is mainly olfactory and auditory rather than visual’. As a badger he took up residence in a hole and ate earthworms (they taste of ‘slime and the land’). And as an urban fox he ‘lay in a backyard in Bow, foodless and drinkless, urinating and defecating where I was, waiting for the night and treating as hostile the humans living