Society

Thursday

11 Aug 2016

Long life | 11 August 2016

A hoo-ha has broken out in the city of Oryol, south-west of Moscow, over a proposal by the officials there to put up Russia’s first ever public monument to Ivan the Terrible. This 16th-century czar had some major achievements to his credit — particularly the expansion of Russia’s territory and welding it into a united state — but seems nevertheless to deserve most of the excoriation that history has bestowed on him. There is some uncertainty about whether he actually killed his son and heir as is usually claimed; but he was definitely drunken and paranoid and given to wild swings between spasms of violent cruelty and bouts of self-loathing

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 11 August 2016

Here’s a bridge tip you won’t find in a book — one which the wonderful Gunnar Hallberg gave me. You’re declarer and a suit is led; dummy comes down with something like 8643, and it obviously doesn’t matter which card you play. Instead of routinely playing low, you should ask for a ridiculous, random card — say, the six. ‘The six?’ your partner (dummy) will ask, looking confused. ‘The six,’ you should repeat, emphatically. This has the effect of 1) making the opponents think you’re a scarily good player, and 2) distracting them from their defence while they try to work out why you might need to ‘unblock’ that particular

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 11 August 2016

Those who want to revive grammar schools are accused of ‘bring backery’ — the unthinking idea that the past was better. But many of their accusers suffer from the rigid mindset of which they complain. They say that grammar schools ‘condemned most children to failure at the age of 11’, and that, even at their peak, grammars catered for less than 20 per cent of the school population. Why assume that the return of grammars must re-create either of these things? Grammar schools grew up, historically, in different ways and at different times. Then, in the mid‑20th-century mania for uniformity, they were standardised and, in the later 20th-century mania for comprehensives, almost

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 August 2016

Home The government floated the idea that individuals might receive payments in areas where fracking was approved, or where housing developments gained permission. Grammar schools might also be revived, it was suggested. Failing to go ahead with the Hinkley Point nuclear power station could damage China’s relationship with Britain, its ambassador Liu Xiaoming wrote in the Financial Times. A 19-year-old Norwegian of Somali origin was arrested after the fatal stabbing of an American woman in Russell Square, London. Tanveer Ahmed, 32, from Bradford, was jailed for life or a minimum of 27 years, after admitting the murder of Asad Shah, an Ahmadi Muslim by religion, outside his shop in Glasgow,

Toby Young

The problem with grammar schools

By rights, I should be one of those Tories who is passionately in favour of grammar schools. After all, I went to one myself. My attachment to them should be particularly strong because before arriving at William Ellis in Highgate I went to two bog-standard comprehensives and failed all my O–levels apart from English Literature, in which I got a C. The only other qualification I left with was a grade one CSE in Drama. William Ellis was the making of me. Had I not got in, I doubt I would have ended up at Oxford. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not a passionate opponent of grammar schools either. I wouldn’t

Dot Wordsworth

Honorificabilitudinity

My husband told me with glee that Nicholas Byfield had a great big stone ‘like flint’ in his bladder, weighing 33 ounces, which ‘exceedingly afflicted’ him for 15 years, until it killed him in 1622, aged 44. It did not stop him writing about the Epistle to the Colossians and remarking that Christ’s divine nature is ‘incircumscriptible in respect of place’. This is doubtless true, but most interest has focused on the length of the word. In 1900 James Murray, the great editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (to the new history of which by Peter Gilliver I keenly look forward), completed the section I–Infer. ‘Those who are interested in

Raymond Keene

Surreptitious subversion

After the vote to leave the EU it is time to reclaim the good old English names for traditional openings such as the Ruy Lopez and the Centre Counter. Foreign subversion has gradually altered the correct name for the Ruy Lopez (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5) to the less evocative Spanish Opening, while the Centre Counter (see this week’s game), which was good enough for Howard Staunton when he played Paul Morphy, was quietly changed on the continent to the Scandinavian Defence. I see no reason whatsoever why our Viking cousins should be able to lay any claim to the naming of this defence. This week, a

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 11 August 2016

Q. I live in Balham but work in Mayfair. Twice recently I have had to take whole days off work to wait in for deliveries of online purchases that could only be scheduled for ‘some time between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.’ My son says this is the hidden price I must pay for shopping at low-cost outlets. I have a cleaner but she doesn’t work a 12-hour day. What do other people do? —J.F., London SW12 A. Other people have had the sense to make friends with retired neighbours. Many of these long for the chance to get away from their partners and sit quietly reading in a neighbour’s

Raymond Keene

no. 421

White to play. This position is from Steinitz–Chigorin, World Championship (Game 4), Havana 1892. How did White finish off? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 16 August or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Qxc8+ Last week’s winner Feliks Kwiatkowski, Haywards Heath, West Sussex

Pabulum

2273: Numbers

Clockwise round the perimeter from 3 run the titles of three items (1, 6, 3, 1, 4, 2, 1, 4, 1, 4, 3, 4, 5, 6, 3, 4) from the same source, the title of which is epitomised by the four unclued lights. Ignore two apostrophes. Across 8 Slowly cycling with a bouquet? (5) 9 Party hit the roof in court (6, hyphened) 10 Man feels relaxed and gets angry no more (8) 12 Poet’s precious metalon the other side of Scotland (4) 14 How airlock puzzled tireless toiler (10) 15 Silkworms stupidsort uses (8) 20 Dish with oomph is round cuddling that man (7) 21 Small group of cells

Fraser Nelson

Sales of The Spectator: 2016 H1

The UK magazine industry publishes its circulation figures today, and there is good news for The Spectator: the highest sales ever in our long and illustrious 188-year history. Our web traffic has hit an all time high: we broke 4m monthly unique users during the referendum campaign, which is quite something for a ‘paywalled’ publication. But traffic comes and goes. What matters is whether the new readers like what they see and, when they encounter the paywall, decide to join us. They are now doing so in record numbers. As a result our subscriptions are soaring. Our print sales figure now stands at 56,632 for the first half of this

David Gelber

The first favela

Where are you going?’ demanded the boy on the wall. A walkie-talkie clipped to his denim shorts crackled, but there was no sign of a weapon. ‘The English Cemetery,’ I answered. He slid down. ‘You need to go back that way. Take the road on the right.’ The street in question was a dustbowl where diggers flattened the ground for the tramlines that should have arrived in time for the Olympics. But no, he insisted, there was no way of reaching the cemetery through the favela. There are favelas and there are favelas, and the mesh of houses, shacks and alleys that extends across Morro da -Providência, above the English

James Delingpole

Christopher Biggins and the fall of civilisation

Suppose you’d invited me round to dinner to celebrate my engagement to your daughter, which do you think would be more offensive? If a) I got violently drunk, threatened all the male guests, abused the women doing the catering, shoved my tongue in my hostess’s ear, hurled a bottle through the window, felt up all the bridesmaids under the table, then retreated to the jacuzzi to shag your daughter’s best friend? Or b) if I made a mildly tasteless quip about the Holocaust? There’s only one correct answer and it is, of course, b). We know this thanks to the latest series of Celebrity Big Brother, whose makers have peremptorily

Pabulum

to 2270: Hard

Seven unclued lights were names of VERSE-MEN (22) minus one letter: VI(R)GIL (1A), BRO(O)KE (15A), BRID(G)ES (16), DON(N)E (9), S(P)ENDER (21),(W)HITMAN (30) and PO(U)ND (34D). Title: Hard(y). First prize Mrs C. Turner, Highgate, London Runners-up F. J. Bentley, Tiverton, Devon; Alexander Caldin, Salford, Oxfordshire

Laura Whitcombe

Nuisance neighbours sink UK house prices by £17,000

How I long for a detached house with a drive – and, more importantly, no neighbours. My current abode is a three-bed semi with no off-street parking. It’s a free parking street but before you think I’m boasting, it’s also close to three primary schools, has a corner shop and most of the residents seem to be building loft extensions. Taken together, it adds up to pretty painful parking. It gets even worse when one of the tank-driving neighbours is home as he frequently takes up two spaces, which is particularly vexing when I’ve got a boot full of heavy groceries and there are no spaces near the house. Then

Helen Nugent

Housing market, insurance hikes, pension woes and debt problems

The UK housing market ran out of steam after the Brexit vote, but could take off again over the next 12 months, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. A Rics survey showed house price rises slowed significantly in the three months to the end of July. The surveyors said new buyer enquiries, home sales and new instructions all fell over the period. The number reporting price increases dropped to its lowest in three years. They outnumbered those seeing price falls by 5 per cent, compared to 15 per cent in June. And the survey found prices had fallen outright in London, East Anglia, the North of England and the West Midlands. Insurance Insurers

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The memory gap. Is technology taking over our minds?

Smartphone ownership is predicted to hit 2.5 billion by 2019 and 60 per cent of internet traffic now comes through our mobile devices. But does the world becoming more reliant on handheld gadgets to guide us in day-to-day life come at a price? In her cover piece this week, Lara Prendergast claims that we are outsourcing our brains to the internet and that technology is taking over our minds. On this week’s Spectator podcast, Lara is joined by Isabel Hardman, Charlotte Jee, Editor of Techworld, and Professor Martin Conway, head of psychology at City University. On the podcast, Lara tells Isabel: ‘I do think it’s having an effect on me

Mark Palmer

In defence of dinner parties

In or out? Almost two months on and I’m afraid the great debate shows no sign of abating, certainly not in our divided household. And while we’ve had several referendums over the matter, the result is always a stalemate. The only upside is that this argument has nothing to do with Brussels. It’s far more rudimentary. The battle in Palmer Towers is whether we eat in or out when wanting to see friends. My wife Joanna — who, as it happens, was for In over the country’s EU membership — is a firm outer, while I, who voted Out on 23 June, am a determined inner. As with the EU

Lucy Vickery

Summertime

In Competition No. 2960 you were invited to submit a poem on the theme of summer in which the last two words of each line rhyme. It was only after the entries started coming in that I realised that my sloppy wording meant that the brief was open to interpretation. In most submissions, the last two words in a line rhymed with one another, which is what I had intended, but a few of you supplied poems in which the last two words in a line rhymed with the last two in the line below. Either approach was admissible, and variety made the comp all the more pleasurable to judge.

Rory Sutherland

When more data makes you more wrong

In a one-day international against Australia last year, Ben Stokes was dismissed for ‘obstructing the field’, a rule rarely invoked in-cricket. The bowler had thrown the ball towards the wicket (and hence near Stokes’s head) in an attempt to run him out. Stokes raised his hand and deflected the ball. After some discussion between the two on-field umpires, and a referral to the third umpire, Stokes was given out. What was most interesting was the difference in the conclusions people reached depending on whether they watched the replay in real time or in slow motion (you can find both on YouTube). Seen at speed, his raising of his hand looked