Society

Thursday

17 Oct 2024

The joy of weight loss

It was a few months ago. I was coming back from my morning walk with Greta in Battersea Park, so it can only have been half past ten in the morning. A familiar neighbourhood figure zigzagged recklessly across the road towards us. He had something like a sense of purpose about him. Telling a stranger that his avoirdupois could give G.K. Chesterton a run for his money counts as a hate crime ‘Have you got –’ he paused and reckoned – ‘£5? To get something to eat?’ Five pounds seemed an ambitious amount. I thought I’d answer the implied request and not the question he’d actually asked. ‘I’m not going

Tanya Gold

A teashop like no other: Sally Lunn’s Historic Eating House reviewed

Sally Lunn’s is a teashop in Bath. It sits in a lane by the abbey, and the Roman baths. Paganism and Christianity jostle here: Minerva battles Christ, who wins, for now. Sally Lunn’s calls itself ‘the oldest house in Bath’ (c. 1482). It is rough-hewn, with a vast teal window and pumpkins on display. The pumpkins might be plastic. I don’t know. Tourists queue in the hallway behind a large wooden cutout of a woman who might be Sally Lunn. She is a semi-mythical woman: the Huguenot refugee Solange Luyon, who came to Bath in the 1680s with brioche in her hands. No one knows if she really existed. At the

Melissa Kite

How I found Love on Airbnb

‘My name is Love,’ typed the help assistant, ‘and I’m a member of the Airbnb community support team.’ I was using one of those chat boxes, where someone from the company you’re grappling with, embodied in a flashing cursor, interacts with you in print on a live chat screen. I am kind and polite, I thought. No one has ever really given me credit for that before Now, I’m a big fan of the chat box. The chat box works when all other forms of customer service fail. Chances are you will get much better service if you stop expecting companies to speak to you on the phone, and start

Dot Wordsworth

There’s nothing rude about the word ‘titbit’

Virginia Woolf submitted an article to Tit-Bits at the age of eight. It was rejected. The experience might have hurt her. With her sister Vanessa and brother Thoby she had built an imaginary world in their family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News, modelled upon Tit-Bits. Writing as an adult about George Eliot she said: ‘She is as easy to read as Tit-Bits.’ In Flush, her imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog, she used the common noun: ‘They tempted him with caresses; they offered him titbits; but it was useless.’ There was nothing rude about Tit-Bits (beginning in 1881 as Tit-Bits from all the interesting Books and Newspapers of the

Robin Oakley

My horse betting farce

Somebody up there doesn’t like me much at the moment. The bank insists that two cash machines which failed to deliver me £400 actually did and is charging me accordingly; Mrs Oakley’s entire cooking range has to be expensively renewed because no one will replace a cracked induction hob; and when our sewage pipe blocked the other evening I couldn’t contact the drain company because the village’s telecoms chose that hour to go offline. ‘Those who don’t change their minds get stuck in a rut. You have to be open-minded in this game’ So it continued at Newmarket last Saturday. On a visit to Ralph Beckett’s Kimpton Down yard three days

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 19 October 2024

Being a bridge pro is a dream job – I mean, how many people get to make a living playing a game they love? My friend Ollie Burgess is one of the best pros in London; he’s in constant demand, and deservedly so. He really enjoys playing with clients, especially those who have an aptitude for the game and are keen to work and improve. It’s obviously more frustrating playing with people who (to be blunt) don’t have a knack for bridge and never will. But even that can pose a fun challenge. To try and compensate for their mistakes requires skill and inventiveness, and Ollie has both in abundance.

The Spectator

The futility of Martyn’s Law

There have been few acts of terrorist violence on British soil as grotesque as the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017. An Islamist extremist, Salman Abedi, detonated a bomb at an Ariana Grande concert killing 22 and injuring 1,017. An evening of enjoyment for hundreds of young people turned into a spectacle of wanton cruelty. The law does nothing to address the real state failures that have allowed extremism to flourish One of those who died was 29-year-old Martyn Hett. His mother, Figen Murray, has campaigned ever since for legislation to better protect potential victims of terrorism. This week the Commons debated the measure she has fought for – the

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Weight loss jabs and England’s German manager

Home Neither Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, nor Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ruled out a rise in employers’ contributions to national insurance in the Budget on 30 October. The annual rate of inflation fell from 2.2 to 1.7 per cent. Starmer backed an idea by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, to give fat unemployed people injections of weight-loss drugs in a scheme involving a £280 million investment from Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company that makes the diabetes medication Mounjaro. At the International Investment summit, the Chancellor announced that the UK Infrastructure Bank will become the National Wealth Fund. But the government came up with only £5.8

Olivia Potts

The secret to making great oysters Rockefeller

There’s nothing more intriguing than a closely guarded secret recipe. Coca-Cola and KFC are two famous examples, with the precise ingredients for the soda syrup and special coating kept in guarded vaults: the story is that those who hold the information aren’t allowed to travel on the same plane in case of disaster. Lea & Perrins, Angostura Bitters and Chartreuse all keep their products’ make-up secret. Making sure the butter is the brightest of greens is as important as any of the individual components Nobody knows the recipe for oysters Rockefeller – or at least nobody knows the original recipe. It was created in 1889 at Antoine’s restaurant in New

Richard Dawkins

My problem with the American election

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have chosen an election year for my American book tour. It’s not that I dislike elections generally. And – praise be – a population of 300 million Americans has managed to raise one presidential candidate who is not a convicted felon awaiting sentence. No, my problem with American elections – and it viscerally distresses me every four years – is the affront to democracy called the electoral college. I’ve done the maths. The electoral college can hand you the presidency even if your opponent receives three-quarters of the popular vote. Of course that’s a hypothetical extreme. The familiar reality is that campaigns ignore all

Tom Baldwin

Does anyone know what Keir Starmer is thinking?

Even at the best of times, Keir Starmer has remained tantalisingly out of reach for those who crave simple definitions. Before the election, he consistently defied demands to set out a big vision or draw straight dividing lines. He’s always more comfortable with ambiguity and complexity. As he liked to say during the final days of the campaign, ‘There’s always a “but” with me somewhere.’ Now, of course, he really isn’t having the best of times. All those ‘buts’ are piling up. The ill-disciplined briefing battle within his team appeared to elevate office politics above real politics. The Treasury decision to means-test pensioners’ winter fuel allowances was inept. Most damaging

James Heale

Inside the race for the Chancellor of Oxford

What do we mean these days when we talk about the British ‘establishment’? When Henry Fairlie coined the term in 1955 – in The Spectator, of course – he defined it as ‘the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised’. A lot has changed in the past 70 years. The influence of the monarchy has diminished, the class system no longer holds sway, party politics is almost unrecognisable. Yet the idea of the establishment retains its powerful allure and, in the election of the next chancellor of Oxford University, we see how much it still matters to Britain’s 21st-century elite. Dons complain of candidates inviting

Rod Liddle

Should we prioritise the LGBTQI community when disaster strikes?

Are homosexuals and transgendered people more at risk from natural disasters than the rest of the population? I dare say there is a robust tranche of right-of-centre opinion which holds that they are indeed more at risk and that by and large this is a very good thing. Natural disasters are sometimes called ‘acts of God’ and those of a deeply conservative disposition may be inclined to see them as a punishment from the Almighty for grave transgressions of a sexual or gender nature. It is God doing what God does best – a spot of appropriate smiting. When organisations talk about equity, they mean privileging one group over another

Charles Moore

Why won’t David Lammy help Jimmy Lai?

As I write, the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is flying to China. So I am only guessing when I say that I expect he will ‘raise’ the case of Jimmy Lai, the newspaper publisher, businessman and Democratic party supporter, a British citizen. Mr Lai has now been imprisoned in Hong Kong for four years with his numerous trials not yet completed. ‘Raise’, yes, but not as in ‘do anything about’ the situation. So far, the best the Foreign Office has done is to ‘request consular access’ to Mr Lai. China has refused this on the grounds that it does not recognise dual citizenship (which is irrelevant since Mr Lai has never

Wednesday

16 Oct 2024

Druin Burch

I’ve seen too many deaths to think that assisted dying is a good idea

Over my quarter-of-a-century of being a doctor, I have overseen thousands of deaths. For a busy hospital physician, this is not an unusual number. Helping people die is a core part of our job. In the Commons today, the Assisted Dying Bill gets its first reading. But the debate about this bill is missing a crucial detail: assisted dying is already something of a reality. For those in unsalvageable agony, I like to think it happens almost automatically. Neither people, nor the NHS, being perfect, there will be errors and omissions. But I’m confident that assisted dying, in a sense, happens often already, and I speak from experience. As junior

Peter Jones

Boris Johnson is no Pericles

Boris Johnson’s Unleashed imagines him, like Cincinnatus, leaving his plough, saving Rome, and returning to it. But given that Boris is among the international elite, perhaps Alcibiades (c. 451-404 bc) would fit him better. Athenian elites had long had connections with the other power-brokers of the classical Greek world, Sparta and Persia. Born into such a family, the young Alcibiades, at the death of his father in 447 bc, was placed in the care of the great Athenian statesman Pericles, who chose Socrates as his mentor (we are told he tried to seduce Socrates but failed). A charismatic and handsome young man, he led a life of ‘lawless self-indulgence’ but,

Mark Nayler

Meet England’s octogenarian matador

It’s a sunny October morning at a bull-breeding ranch north of Seville, and 82-year-old Frank Evans is preparing to step into the ring. Born in Salford, Evans is one of the few British men ever to become a professional bullfighter, or torero. There is something of the retired rock star about him. He is dressed in the traditional matador’s outfit of black trousers, white shirt and red-and-black waistcoat. Although a little frail, he is toned. His thinning hair is dyed brown but still reaches his shoulders. ‘There are a million people in the local cemetery who’d love to have my eye problem’ Evans and I are here for a tienta

Jawad Iqbal

Labour’s crackdown on hereditary privilege is hard to stomach

Do our new Labour rulers ever pause to think about how something they say or do might look to others? Do they consider, even for a nanosecond, how their behaviour in office or in private stacks up with the public positions they take, or how all this might look to ordinary voters outside the confines of Westminster? The whiff of brazen political hypocrisy – one rule for us and another for everyone else – hangs like a cloud over the new government. It goes some way towards explaining why this summer’s donor scandals, involving free clothes, spectacles and tickets to Taylor Swift concerts, have resonated so strongly with the public.

The Spectator

What does Britain ‘owe’ Caribbean nations in reparations for slavery?

Still afloat Transport Secretary Louise Haigh nearly lost Britain an investment in an expansion of London Gateway docks by calling P&O a ‘rogue operator’ and imploring us all to boycott its ferries. The company, owned by DP World since 2006, was once considered by the UK government to be the most trustworthy shipping line around. As the Peninsula Steam Navigation Company, it built its reputation on a contract awarded by the Admiralty in 1837 to carry mail to Spain and Portugal. Three years later it was also awarded the contract to carry mail to Egypt, adding the name ‘Oriental’ to its name. By 1914 it was carrying mail to India.

Mary Wakefield

Did Hitler really ‘have some good ideas’?

One of the many good reasons to want every new generation to study the second world war is that it forces you to confront your own cowardice. Last weekend, my husband and I went to Prague – the first time we’ve been away together since the birth of our son eight years ago. We wandered the city and ended up crying in a church crypt – as you do on a romantic mini-break. The church was the Czech Orthodox cathedral of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius and, as we discovered after we had entered, the scene of the final, bloody showdown of Operation Anthropoid, the mission to assassinate SS Obergruppenführer