Society

Thursday

David Cohen

Why is this New Zealand airport clamping down on hugs?

‘Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world,’ Hugh Grant famously offered in the heartwarming opening scene of Love, Actually, ‘I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport.’ It’s just as well he doesn’t think about Dunedin airport in New Zealand. The airport’s chief executive, Daniel De Bono, seems not to be a fan of lingering emotion-packed arrivals and departures taking place at his modest transport hub.  While other airport chiefs look for new ways to limit their terminals’ designated smoking areas or swoop on blameless travellers with too many toiletries, De Bono is cracking down on lingering hugs at his terminal here in New Zealand.   Announcing his airport’s

Catriona Olding

Wes Streeting is right – palliative care isn’t good enough

Wes Streeting informed backbenchers this week that he is voting against the assisted dying Bill on 29 November, saying that ‘end-of-life care is not good enough for patients to make an informed choice.’  Experience of an issue, and I have too much on this one, can both cloud and inform opinion. I’m glad I don’t have to vote on the Bill but I do know that if palliative care was reliably good many people, myself included, wouldn’t fear the end as they do now. The current Bill, if passed, would allow terminally ill adults with less than six months to live to end their lives with medical help. Six months

Nicholas Farrell

Giorgia Meloni is going to war with Italy’s judges

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has declared war on Italy’s judges who are trying to kybosh at birth her much vaunted scheme to offshore illegal migrants to Albania.  Last Friday, a court in Rome dealt Meloni’s Albania scheme a potentially fatal blow by ruling that the first migrants sent to Albania cannot be detained and must be freed because their countries of origin – Bangladesh and Egypt – are unsafe.  The Toghe Rosse have Meloni in their sights She has now issued an emergency decree to change the law and her ministers are confident that it will stop the judges making similar rulings in the future. Meloni’s Albania scheme launched last week and is seen across Europe as

Francis Pike

Leyte Gulf is the greatest naval battle you’ve never heard of

When you think of great naval engagements, the Battle of Leyte Gulf does not immediately spring to mind, despite it being the largest naval battle in modern history. Leyte Gulf, which celebrates its 80th anniversary today, took place in the Philippines in 1944. Even my well-educated American friends, the CEO of a major publishing company included, fail the vox pop test of knowledge of this epic battle. The sea battles that we remember tend to be engagements that define the outcome of struggles between empires and civilisations. At the Battle of Salamis, Athenian triremes thwarted Persia’s conquest of Greece. Similarly at the Battle of Lepanto, Pope Pius V’s Holy League navy

Ian Thomson

Albania has long lived in Italy’s shadow

Albanians are descended from the most ancient of European peoples, the Illyrians. The country came into existence only after 1912 with the demise of Ottoman power in Europe. Its first ruler, the glorified Muslim chieftain King Zog, was hounded out by Mussolini when fascist Italy invaded in 1939. (Zog was put up in London for a while at the Ritz.) Five years later the Nazi Germans were expelled by the Albanian resistance fighter Enver Hoxha. Outwardly a Stalinist, the artful Hoxha was a Muslim-born Ottoman dandy figure who terrorised his Balkan fiefdom through retaliatory murders, purges and the trap-door disappearance of class enemies. Albania has long lived in Italy’s shadow.

The Spectator

Which were the closest US elections?

Back to the White House If Donald Trump wins on 6 November, he will be the first US President to serve two separated terms since Grover Cleveland, who was president between 1885-89 and 1893-97. Cleveland actually won a higher share of the popular vote in the 1888 election, but lost to Benjamin Harrison in the electoral college after an election fought on the issue of trade tariffs. Cleveland’s wife Frances was confident she would return to the White House, reputedly telling her staff to keep things in good order for when they return four years to the day. So it proved – Cleveland won the 1892 election easily. Close calls

Francis Young

Halloween is the time for fairies

Among the many options available for Halloween costumes and decorations these days, from witches to zombies, from mummies to serial killers, there is one traditional Halloween character you are unlikely to see: fairies. But in Irish and Scottish folklore, which provides the basis for modern Halloween traditions, fairies were central to this festival. In Scotland, it was on Halloween night that the ‘fairy rade’ (procession) was said to be seen going through the countryside, bearing the souls of the unbaptised dead or those who were snatched away in life by the fairies. In the ballad of Tam Lin, Janet has to wait until the fairies ride at Halloween to rescue

Toby Young Toby Young

A British First Amendment wouldn’t save free speech

Does the United Kingdom need a First Amendment? That’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, given the government’s unrelenting assault on free speech. If Britons enjoyed the same constitutional protections as Americans, it would have been more difficult to prosecute anyone over the summer for social media posts ‘intending to stir up racial hatred’, the crime for which Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor, received two-and-a-half years last week. The solution is not to pass a new law, but to repeal those laws that limit our freedom of expression But I remain sceptical. For one thing, there’s no mechanism in our constitution for creating a

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why the young are fleeing to Portugal

The legendary music producer Rick Rubin once asked me why I had never moved to the United States. The answer, I think, comes down to an important trade-off: quantity of earnings vs quality of consumption. Historically, once you had a job, there was a limit to the lifestyle choices you could make Whereas the United States is certainly a better place to earn and accumulate money, Europe is, on balance, still a better place to spend it. (Which may explain why Rick asked me that question at his summer home in Italy.) This imbalance partly arises from a fundamental asymmetry in the transmission of ideas. Whenever anything good or interesting

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I stop my friend’s banal WhatsApp messages?

Q. I have a very dear friend who lives in Scotland, so we rarely see each other. Before the internet existed, we would call each other on the landline two or three times a year for a pleasant catch-up, and meet sporadically. However, since the onslaught of social media, my friend has taken to sending several WhatsApps per day, almost always saying things like ‘How is your day going?’, adding a few banal details of the current weather in the Highlands or what she plans to bake that day. I feel guilty if I don’t reply at all, so find myself sending pleasantries back, even though I am feeling very

Luke McShane

WR Masters

Two of England’s brightest prospects received a golden opportunity to play at the WR Chess Masters Cup, an elite knockout tournament held at the Langham Hotel in London last week. WR is Wadim Rosenstein, a keen chess player and CEO of the German WR logistics group, which last year partnered with Fide to organise the World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships in Düsseldorf.    Shreyas Royal recently broke the record to become the UK’s youngest grandmaster at the age of 15 years and seven months. In the first round of the knockout, he faced former world champion Viswanathan Anand. With two extra pawns in the diagram below, one would expect

Bruce Anderson

The finest Rhône I have ever tasted

The medics would have one believe that alcohol is a depressant. That may be their conclusion drawn from test tubes in laboratories. Fortunately, however, it bears little relation to real life, which is just as well. The world has rarely been in greater need of antidepressants, in every form. One tries to tease American friends out of their gloom, reproaching them for taking their independence too early. Last time I attempted that, it did not work. ‘If Washington and Jefferson had foreseen Trump vs Harris, they would have asked George III for forgiveness.’ The 2014 Hommage à Jacques Perrin was just about the finest Rhône I have ever tasted In

Dot Wordsworth

Do you ‘cock a snook’ – or snoot?

‘This is interesting, darling,’ my husband called out from beside his whisky while I was doing the washing-up. The interesting thing was in a short black-and-white film made by John Betjeman for television in 1968 and now on BBC iPlayer called Contrasts: Marble Arch to Edgware. The camera showed him in the bare interior of the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner turned into a little police station. I felt one ahead on this, as I had since been up the arch, for the sake of the view, mostly. I remembered from an exhibition there that the name of the police station cat had been Snooks. With Snooks in mind, I

Luke McShane

No. 824

White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Hermann Feodor Lehner, Deutsche Schachzeitung, 1873. Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 28 October. 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…f6! wins, e.g. 2 Rxf6+ Qxf6. Shankland chose 1…Kh7? missing 2 Qg8+!! Kxg8 3 d8=Q+ Kh7 4 Qh4 with perpetual. 1…Kh5 2 Rc5+ is no better. Last week’s winner Kevin Kiernan, London EC2

Victoria Lane

The Spectator’s Jilly Cooper Competition

For Competition 3372 you were invited to submit a prose-style mash-up of Jilly Cooper and another famous writer. The entries were very amusing, though a handful were a little too pornographic for publication. Some of you seemed regrettably unfamiliar with the works of Cooper while others seemed to err in the other direction. I anticipated a fair few Austen–Coopers and there were indeed several excellent examples – shout-outs to Janine Beacham and D.A. Prince for theirs. Also deserving of a mention: a couple of versions of Chandler-meets-Jilly (Mike Morrison and Basil Ransome-Davies), Brian Murdoch for his Cooper/Tolkien, and David Silverman, who brilliantly yet unprintably infused Jane Eyre with some essence

Susan Hill Susan Hill

The medicinal powers of a good book

‘And they lived happily ever after. The end.’ ‘Again.’ My poor father, bidden to read the story of the moment over and over again. Long after I could read perfectly well for myself, at bedtime I needed to hear his quiet monotone that never failed to send me to sleep, just as, though my taste in books was always adventurous, I had a narrow range of preferred stories at night, or if I was unwell. When the shadows thrown by the lamp form themselves into monsters, familiar comforts are required. Alice in Wonderland was read until the words must surely have faded on the page, and if he missed a

Melissa Kite

My boyfriend, the hedgehog hero

‘I’m making a hedgehog rescue ladder,’ said the builder boyfriend, who was on his knees in the farmyard, drilling a series of mini rungs into place on two mini rails. The builder boyfriend keeps going to check but the hedgehog seems very happy, snoozing away in its comfy box I should have known. Why did I even ask? Of course he was making a hedgehog rescue ladder. The BB doesn’t like to admit it, but beneath the gruff exterior he has such a soft spot for all living creatures that he often bends down to pick up stranded worms from pavements and roads. It is a charming contradiction in his

Aidan Hartley

What the Delameres did for Kenya

Kenya’s Rift Valley The story of Kenya’s Europeans such as the 5th Baron Delamere, who died recently, is one of hard work. In late 1897 his grandfather, the 3rd Baron, rode his horse up the Rift Valley’s eastern escarpment into the highlands. For a year he had been trekking through Somalia’s burning deserts and now he saw cool waters, green grass and fresh winds. ‘Here was a promised land, the realisation of a Rider Haggard dream of a rich and fertile country hidden beyond impenetrable deserts and mountains… a modern Eldorado, waiting only for recognition,’ wrote his biographer Elspeth Huxley. Tom, a friend of mine, spent years languishing in Kamiti

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 26 October 2024

Super star Juniors are springing up everywhere, living, breathing and playing bridge. Nicolai (The Kid) Heiberg-Evenstad (16) from Norway and Christian Lahrmann (21) from Denmark are both already professional bridge players and are crazy talented both in the bidding and the play. One of the finest card players of the ‘new’ generation is England’s Ben Norton. Watch how he helped himself to a game swing against one of the stronger teams at the recent WBT event in Copenhagen (see diagram). Ben and his partner, Stefano Tommasini, rapidly bid to their vulnerable game, although they missed out on the best spot of 3NT by North. West led the ♣K, which was