Society

Friday

13 May 2016

Can we really trust the economists on EU immigration?

A recent Coffee House blog quite rightly noted that many British people are concerned that high levels of immigration have hurt their jobs, wages and quality of life, and noted too that this anxiety is understandable as workers have had a rough ride in recent times. Yet the authors, self-styled data-crunchers from the LSE, say that ‘the bottom line is that EU immigration has not significantly harmed the pay, jobs or public services enjoyed by Britons’. One might think that the lack of harm, let alone significant harm, is a poor argument for anything. On pay, real wages are little different from a decade ago. The counterfactual — which surely is

Jeff Prestridge

It’s not an Equitable Life, Henry

When Equitable Life is no more – and it won’t be long before the death bell tolls – there will be a belter of a book to be written about all the shenanigans that have taken place at the mutual. Although the savings institution goes back more than 250 years, it is the last 20 years that are the most entertaining and lurid. Over this period, customers’ savings have been pillaged, policyholder has been pitted against policyholder, greed and incompetence have shone in the boardroom (nothing new there, ed) and there have been love affairs at the highest level (a certain former chief executive falling in ravenous love with a

Helen Nugent

Money digest: today’s need-to-know financial news | 13 May 2016

If like me you’re plagued by Payment Protection Insurance phone calls, then it may interest you to know that cold callers have made at least £5 billion by bombarding the public with nuisance calls and texts. According to a report by MPs, failures by the Government and the City have encouraged the growth of the claims management industry, which makes up to 84 million unwanted calls a week. MPs on the Public Accounts Committee said that these firms are permitted to pocket as much as a quarter of PPI refunds. Almost half of all nuisance calls are from companies wanting to manage PPI claims, according to consumer group Which?. Consumers can complain

Thursday

12 May 2016

Raymond Keene

Magna cum laude

World champion Magnus Carlsen has taken first prize in the Norway tournament at Stavanger which finished last month. Carlsen had dominated proceedings but was briefly derailed by a loss to the triple Olympiad gold medallist Levon Aronian of Armenia, who eventually emerged as the runner-up. As so often, Carlsen pulled a rabbit out of the hat in the last round, overcoming Eljanov to secure first prize. Scores (out of 9) were: Carlsen 6; Aronian 5½; Vachier-Lagrave, Topalov and Kramnik 5; Li and Harikrishna 4½; Giri 4; Eljanov 3 and Grandelius 2½. Aronian-Carlsen; Norway Chess, Stavanger 2016 (see diagram 1) Carlsen’s only vague hope here is 26 … Bh3,

Raymond Keene

No. 408

White to play. This position is a variation from So-Kasparov, St Louis 2016. What is White’s quickest kill? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 17 May or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7681 3773. 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 Rxd6+ Last week’s winner Bruce Annat, Honley, West Yorks

Peter Jones

Rome, racism and Sadiq Khan

‘Racism’ refers to the belief in racially determined inferiority, most often recognised in body-type, about which, by definition, nothing can be done. It is hard therefore to see why accusing London mayor Sadiq Khan of sharing platforms with terrorists was ‘racist’. It was simply a comment on the company he kept. The ancients are often accused of racism. The Roman architect Vitruvius, for example, said that southerners living in hot climates were intelligent but cowardly, while northerners were mentally slow but brave to the point of foolishness. Obvious racism? Far from it. A Greek doctor, following the same train of thought, gave the game away. He asserted that in Asia

Taki

High life | 12 May 2016

New York It was the best of times — downtown — and the worst of times — uptown. Let’s start with the horror near the park: cranial atrophy, unrelenting grossness, overarched and overgrown eyebrows, posterior-baring bondage outfits, and de haut en bas attitudes were the order of the night. Never has a museum site been more desecrated by a freak show, and the Met — maybe the best museum in the whole wide world — should be ashamed of itself. A great institution such as the Met always needs funds, but allowing a freak show of publicity-starved clowns is not the answer. Let’s take it from the top. The Metropolitan

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 12 May 2016

How do you persuade your pleasant dinner guests to go home when they will stay into the early hours if not evicted? I once fell asleep and awoke at 3 a.m. to find our two friends still here! They had seen me nod off in my chair, but hadn’t thought to leave of their own free will. — C.P., Lawford, Essex Slip out of the room and dial on your landline *55*0303#. Then return. Three minutes later a BT robot will call. Cry: ‘Who on earth could that be ringing in the middle of the night? Oh my goodness it must be an emergency for them to be ringing in the

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 12 May 2016

On Sunday we were invited for lunch at Chez Bruno, an unbelievably posh restaurant in the south of France. At Chez Bruno all the dishes, even the ice-cream desserts, are flavoured with truffles. Resting on the gate pillars as we drove in were two gigantic stone truffles, and next to the entrance was a long painted fresco of the Last Supper, with Bruno’s face superimposed on that of Jesus and 12 Michelin-starred chefs as his apostles. In the carpark a dignified old gent stepped in front of the car. His job was to park it for us. I took my foot off the clutch thinking the gears were disengaged, but

Melissa Kite

Real life | 12 May 2016

Hello, Cydney spaniel here. She’s lying in a darkened room so I’m to tell you what happened. To cut a long and very shaggy dog story short, the car failed its MOT. And we had to use public transport. I’ve been telling her that Volvo is shaking like no doggy’s business when she brakes, but will she listen? Turns out the suspension is shot to pieces. So she leaves the car with a mechanic in the country, near where the horses are, and tells me we’re getting a ‘train’ home. My best mate, the gamekeeper, drives us to the station where we walk up and down a lot of steps.

Robin Oakley

Twelve to follow | 12 May 2016

It has been a little like scraping from the plate as slowly as possible the last traces of Mrs Oakley’s exquisitely sauced vitello tonnato; like draining reluctantly the last glass of our best Condrieu: this year I never wanted the jumps season to end. Sprinter Sacre came back to his best, Richard Johnson finally won the jockeys’ title, Paul Nicholls gutsily collected his tenth trainers’ championship. But if the joy of jump racing is continuity, the attraction of the Flat lies in its sense of renewal. As sleek would-be contenders started strutting their stuff in the Classic trials, as the first precocious two-year-olds bounded excitedly on to the scene, I

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 12 May 2016

It’s the beginning of May and I have a feeling I am about to write the same opening sentence as I have for the past eight years: the Schapiro Spring Foursomes is undoubtedly the best teams tournament in England. Held in Stratford, it’s a double knockout format and this year it was won by Alexander Allfrey’s (mainly) English National team who, rather unusually, lost a life in the first round. Bravo to them for holding on to their second precious life for the next four days. Today’s hand is about knowing your percentages, working out how to play the hand correctly according to those percentages and then losing ten IMPs

The Spectator

Barometer | 12 May 2016

Secrets of the stars The astrologer Jonathan Cainer died after beginning his last horoscope for his own star sign: ‘We’re not here for long. So make the best of every moment.’ Why do people believe horoscopes? — In 1948 psychologist Bertram R. Forer gave each of his students what he said was a unique assessment of their character and asked them to rate it for accuracy. The average rating they gave was 85%. — The assessments were in fact identical, and cribbed from horoscopes in newspapers. The students, Forer suggested, wanted to believe the descriptions and so blinded themselves to their vagueness. Old debts The Nationwide Building Society said it

Tanya Gold

Soho in Somerset

It is summer and the listless metropolitan thinks of grass. It cannot afford to stay at Durslade Farmhouse, Somerset, a branch of the Hauser & Wirth art gallery that serves food and plays cow noises in a former barn as authentic country folk rip their eyeballs out. Locals talk about Durslade Farm as a child that died. I think it is a Holocaust memorial for cows, but oblivious. Babington House is the country branch, and it is open to members, their friends, and hotel guests. There is a a spa called the Cowshed that sells ‘Lazy Cow’ and ‘Moody Cow’ beauty products (misogyny masquerading as irony), a restaurant and a

Dot Wordsworth

Sadiq Khan’s virtues

The new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he wanted ‘the most transparent, honest and accessible administration London has ever seen’. It sounds lovely, especially if the Underground is cheap too. Mr Khan’s are a very 21st-century triad of virtues, though honest might sound old-fashioned. It would once have appeared on a housemaid’s reference: ‘Diligent, sober and honest’, i.e. not lazy, drunken and thieving. We now grow sceptical of politicians who begin replies by saying ‘To be honest’ (as if this was a rare departure). Honesty once measured outward respectability, as reflected in a Tudor description of Eton as ‘an honest Colege of sad Priestes, with a greate nombre of

Toby Young

These heartless Europhile snobs

One of the interesting features of the Brexit debate is that it has laid bare a schism in British society which runs much deeper than the conventional Labour-Conservative divide. On the one hand, we have the prosperous, educated elite, mainly based in cities and university towns, who are liberal on social issues, pro-immigration, believers in free trade and internationalist in outlook. On the other, we have the white working class, clustered in areas of economic stagnation, particularly seaside towns, who are socially conservative, anti-immigration, suspicious of free trade and staunchly nationalist. This isn’t a perfect summary. Dan Hannan, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove fall more naturally into the first category,

Ruth Davidson

Diary – 12 May 2016

On Thursday morning I’m woken by day three of a tension headache firing tentacles up the back of my neck and the base of my skull then burrowing into the cortex beneath. I am drenched in sweat, with dread balled in my stomach. My back throbs thanks to the ire of a decade-old spine break that has never fully healed. I spit blood, mixed with toothpaste, into the sink. My skin has broken out into the kind of volcanic fury not seen since my teenage years and my nails are bitten down to stumps. I love election campaigns. But polling days are their own special torture. Scots will have had

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 May 2016

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, made a speech in the British Museum warning of war if Britain left the European Union: ‘And if things go wrong in Europe, let’s not pretend we can be immune from the consequences.’ George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that if Britain left, house prices would go down. The government changed its policy, announced during the budget, of turning all schools into academies. The government changed its policy of denying admission from Europe of unaccompanied children originating in countries such as Afghanistan and Syria. Mr Cameron was heard on television to say to the Queen at Buckingham Palace: ‘We’ve got some leaders

Columba

2260: B & B

One clue lacks a definition part; its answer is a film title. One unclued light (three words) is the title of a song in the film, and one unclued light (two words) is the name of its singer. The first word of the song’s title defines three unclued lights, and its third word defines three unclued lights. Ignore an accent in one unclued light. Across 9 State answer in sorrow, not right (4) 11 Appeal to follow dull guru working for footballer (10, two words) 14 Give respectful title to gods, loud in song (6) 17 Social event in place I like (5) 18

Columba

2257: A spree | 12 May 2016

SHAKESPEARE — indicating the action required to create 9, 11, 32, 18 plus 24, and the puzzle’s title — is the name of Matthew Arnold’s poem from which the perimeter quotation is taken. First prize Peter Wilson, Kettering, Northants Runners-up Miriam Moran, Pangbourne, Berks; John Light, Addlestone, Surrey