Society

Thursday

17 Mar 2016

Low life | 17 March 2016

I walk into the King Bill at eight o’clock and the usual young Friday-night crowd is in and the spirit is already moving. Whether this is due to the fatness of the moon or the availability and quality of the drugs on sale this evening, I couldn’t say. Whatever the cause, everyone is lit up and loved up and a curious unity prevails. The jukebox is up loud and I’m greeted left and right as I push my way between the friendly, relaxed faces in search of one in particular. I spot Trev sitting down at the head of the pub’s top table with half a dozen of his young

Melissa Kite

Real life | 17 March 2016

Diamonds are for ever. Plumbers take a lifetime. They never finish. No job is too big or small for them to not finish it. All I wanted was a new kitchen tap unit. The hot tap needed a washer fitting but, according to Tony the plumber from over the road, there is no point fitting a washer. It’s more work than it’s worth. The thing to do is to rip out the old taps and fit new ones, which he can do almost more cheaply, but certainly no more expensively, than fitting a washer. Fine, I thought. The old taps are horrible anyway so new taps it will be. Tony

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 17 March 2016

My time as a duck-keeper seems to have come bloodily to an end. I have had ducks on my pond for some years now, and I have kept buying new ones to replace those that have got murdered. This stretch of South Northamptonshire may look rather cosy and suburban, but it’s ruled by the law of the jungle. Not a day passes without some creature viciously killing another. Only a month or so ago there were 13 ducks on my pond. Then there were eight. Then there were five. And now there is only one, an Indian Runner drake that stands forlornly on the base of a statue in the

Robin Oakley

Farewell to Fergie

Writing a Turf column before the Cheltenham Festival, as the Spectator schedule requires, which you are reading only after the four-day jump-racing bacchanal has concluded, was a problem. I could neither revel in the moments of glory some equine fighter pilots will have enjoyed nor reveal hard-luck stories behind others who did not make it. But after a frozen morning near Newmarket last week, watching one batch of Festival combatants going through their paces, I had one hope above all others: that before the Festival ended the words ‘Trained byJ. Ferguson, Cowlinge, Suffolk’ would have entered the official record beside at least one winner’s name. The great David Nicholson took

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 17 March 2016

The past couple of weeks have been the first since the New Year that we haven’t played a tournament of some international prestige, so I am going to go back to the Lederer weekend at the end of February, London’s premier invitational event. It was held at the extremely elegant RAC Club in Pall Mall, which has a strict ‘smart’ dress code. It is rather funny to see bridge players looking as though they are going to their own wedding! Ten teams were invited by Ian Payn, chairman of the organising body, and sponsor Simon Gillis to try to prise the trophy away from the England Open Team who won

Toby Young

The miracle of Michaela

It was like being on the set of an inspirational Hollywood film about a visionary teacher who transforms the lives of disadvantaged African-American and Hispanic children in a run-down part of Los Angeles. The young woman leaping about at the front of the class, who had somehow got a group of 12- and 13-year-olds speaking fluent French, looked a bit like Emma Stone. If this was a film, she’d be a cert for an Oscar. But this was no movie and I was in Wembley, not LA. The French class I was observing at Michaela Community School — a free school opened in 2014 by Katharine Birbalsingh — was the

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 17 March 2016

Q. I have a deep crush on an army officer I’ve met through work. He is decisive, practical and doesn’t waste a word. I am charmed. How can I hint that I’m interested and would like to be asked out? We are due to meet in about a month’s time. I am almost 40 and haven’t dated properly for years post a brief marriage. He, I suspect, is mid-to-late forties. My 21-year-old students suggest asking him for a drink. Surely not? Any advice? He is shorter than me by the way. — Name and address withheld A. Virtually all nice men are shy of making passes and will do so

Tanya Gold

Marco Pierre, why?

Wheeler’s is such a dreadful restaurant that I wonder if Marco Pierre White even knows his name is on it. I suppose, for legal reasons, we must assume he does, and was not held hostage in a cellar while they built and fretted and hung inflated photographs of their prisoner all over it, like the bedroom of a starlet in full madness. We must assume that White knows that Wheeler’s of St James’s, which was a famous restaurant, was closed, and reopened inside the Thread-needles hotel in Bank, and it does have his name on it, and this is the worst thing he has ever done; worse than promoting Knorr

Dot Wordsworth

Cock

On the Radio 4 news at 11 o’clock last Saturday morning there was a joky report about roosters in Brisbane. The cocks, it said, were annoying people with their crowing. The news at noon called them not roosters and cocks, but cockerels and fowls. I wrote here in 2005 about the advent of the ‘Year of the Cockerel’ and suggested that cock would soon be unusable because it put everyone in mind of a rude word for penis. Things have got worse since then. Mealy-mouthed folk who say cockerel simply ignore its meaning, which is ‘a young cock’. It’s like calling all cats kittens. Oddly enough, the Oxford English Dictionary says

Peter Jones

Safe space in ancient Athens

Brilliant Oxford undergraduates argue that it is right to prevent us saying things they object to, because speech they do not like is the equivalent of actions they do not like. They had better not read classics, then. There is no safe space there. Greeks made a clear distinction between logos (‘account, reckoning, explanation, story, reason, debate, speech’, cf. ‘logic’ and all those ‘-ologies’) and ergon (‘work, deed, action’). For a Greek, to reject logos was to reject the expression of thought; and so to close down any possibility of people giving an account or reason for why they were thinking and acting as they did; and therefore to prevent any

Jan Moir

Diary – 17 March 2016

To while away the time at airports, I like to spot celebrities. But pickings have been slim. Where is everyone? On Saturday morning the only face I see is ex-Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, guiltily bolting a free bacon roll in the BA executive lounge at Heathrow. Check your privilege, Jim! To be fair, he was wearing a tracksuit, so I guess that’s OK. Part of the pain of being a newspaper feature writer is the constant demand to have your photograph taken. It’s hideous in every way. I don’t think I would have agreed to write about the Viva Mayr spa clinic in Austria if I’d known a snapper

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 17 March 2016

Home In the Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, kept talking of the ‘next generation’. He outlined cuts of £3.5 billion in public spending by 2020, to be ‘on course’ to balance the books. Personal allowances edged up for lower taxpayers, with the higher-rate threshold rising to £45,000. A ‘lifetime Isa’ for under-40s would be introduced. Corporation tax would go down to 17 per cent by 2020. Small-business rate relief was raised: a ‘hairdresser in Leeds’ would pay none. Fuel, beer, cider and whisky duty would be frozen. To turn all state schools into academies (removing local authorities from education), he earmarked £1.5 billion. He gave the go-ahead

Dumpynose

2252: Writer deploys me

11/22, 36/1D, 48/2, 9/30 and 17/46 combine to form anagrams of the titles of five works (four of two words, one of three) by a writer whose name will appear diagonally in the grid and must be shaded. Across 1 Moll producing sauce or gravy (5) 6 Jolly sister shampooing (7) 12 Small box of rolled gold (4) 14 Mythical beast in the old tree (4) 15 Wild time in Sunshine State (5) 18 One yearning aloud for past master (4) 19 College cat quivering like a jellyfish? (7) 20 Blushing for clumsy journalist (7) 21 Aristo not on tribunal (3) 23 Fat Greek leading the life of

Dumpynose

to 2249: Transformation

In line with 10A, other unclued lights were anagrams of US states: 17A ILLINOIS; 29A MARYLAND; 35A UTAH; 7D TEXAS; 9D OREGON; 18D MINNESOTA; 33D MAINE. First prize Paul Davies, Reading, Berkshire Runners-up D.P. Shenkin, London WC1; Mrs J. James, Harrow, Middlesex

Nick Cohen

The idea of a university as a free space rather than a safe space is vanishing

I’ve always admired the liberal Muslims in the Quilliam Foundation. It is hard to take accusations of betrayal from your own community. Harder still to keep fighting when the thought feeling keeps nagging away that out there, somewhere, there are Islamists who might do you real harm. But Quilliam keeps fighting. To mark the launch by students of the Right2Debate campaign, which seeks to make universities live up to their principles and respect the right to speak and dispute, they have collected accounts from atheists and secularists of the wretched state of higher education. I should pause to explain that last sentence to the confused. You might have assumed that

Sarah Wollaston

Why George Osborne’s sugar tax isn’t a ‘pious, regressive absurdity’

George Osborne’s announcement in the Budget that he wants to help fight childhood obesity through a tax on sugary drinks has provoked the usual grumbles. But this is not a ‘pious, regressive absurdity’, as some claim. It is practical action that will help to tackle an avoidable health disaster for the nation’s children, a quarter of whom from the most disadvantaged families are leaving primary school not just overweight but obese. This is double the rate for the most advantaged children and the inequality gap is rising every year. If that had no consequences for them, there would be no case for action, but obesity blights their future health and life chances.

Theo Hobson

How ‘damning’ is the report into the Church of England’s handling of sex abuse?

A ‘damning’ report has been published into the Church of England’s handling of a particular abuse case. Except it’s not very damning. In 1976 a 16-year old was abused by a priest called Garth Moore – an attempted rape took place. He kept quiet about it for a couple of years, then told various priests about it over the next few decades, including some bishops. Moore died in 1990. The Church did nothing about his claims until 2014, when it began an inquiry that led to him receiving some compensation last year. The report says that the Church was at fault for failing to advise him to report it to

Brendan O’Neill

RIP Paul Daniels: magician, light entertainer, sexual libertine

Which of us who grew up in the thrall of Paul Daniels’ magic, under the spell of his Saturday-night humour and charm, could have imagined he would spend his latter years as a kind of sexual outlaw? Not many of us, I would wager. But that’s what happened. When, in 2012, he bravely criticised the hysteria over the sexual behaviour of 1970s light entertainers, Daniels went from being viewed as a sweet, ageing refugee from the era of old-fashioned entertainment to being treated as a kind of magician version of the Marquis de Sade. One of the classiest purveyors of light-hearted, family-oriented TV culture in the late 20th century became

Helen Nugent

Budget 2016: the winners and the losers

Was it good for you? George Osborne’s 2016 Budget, delivered to a packed House of Commons on Wednesday, has drawn criticism over a looming £55 billion black hole in public finances. But what does it mean for your money? We published a guide to the main changes yesterday. Today Spectator Money looks at reaction to a Budget lauded for pleasing middle England. Income tax More than half a million people will save £400 a year thanks to a rise in the 40p higher rate tax threshold to £45,000 from next April (with the Chancellor sticking to a pre-election pledge to hike the threshold towards £50,000 by the end of the parliament). Iain McCluskey

Camilla Swift

The Spectator Podcast: Why political correctness is a good thing, George Osborne’s Budget, and the end of the rave

Is political correctness a good thing or a bad thing? As Simon Barnes writes in this week’s magazine, he used to think that people should be free to use whatever words they wanted to, in pursuit of truth and meaning. But having a son with Down’s syndrome has changed his mind. Now, he has seen the benefits that political correctness bring to society. On this week’s podcast, he and Isabel Hardman discuss whether being PC is a good thing with Tom Slater, Deputy Editor of Spiked. Yesterday’s Budget held a few surprises – but not that many. What it did do, as James Forsyth argues in his column this week, was bring the political