Society

Thursday

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 30 July 2015

Q. I have learned that someone I much admired in youth is about to become single again. I only have the sketchiest details but am single myself and keen to know more. The one person who knows everyone and would know everything is a valued and highly amusing friend of mine, but she is also massively indiscreet and interfering. How can I find out more without arousing her suspicions re my own interest? Were she to guess it she would overplay my hand for me. — Name and address withheld A. Look around for a newly single man of your own vintage, then mention to your gossipy friend that he

Dot Wordsworth

I love it that you…

I had never heard the Country (Red Dirt) singer Wade Bowen before, although his latest album Hold my Beer (Vol 1) has already sold 14,000 copies. On an earlier album, he provided textbook examples of two constructions that I find increasingly annoying, and one that seems fine. ‘I love it that you’re my girl,’ sang Wade. ‘I love that I’m your man.’ I didn’t care for either of those declarations one bit. ‘I love it when you take my hand,’ he added. I didn’t mind that at all. This business of I love that… is on the rise. I heard Fi Glover say it on Radio 4, and someone in one

Toby Young Toby Young

Trouble withthe neighbours

A few years ago, I got a bit fed up with receiving Christmas cards from my friends designed to show off just how well they were doing. A typical card consisted of five or six blond children on ponies or quad bikes with a massive country house in the background. The caption would be something like: ‘Greetings from Shropshire.’ So I came up with an idea. Why not create my own version? I’d get my four children to strike a variety of delinquent poses. One would be outside QPR stadium, fag in mouth and can of beer in hand. Another would be doing an impression of Lord Coke with a

Jessie Burton

Diary – 30 July 2015

The week starts well. My debut novel, The Miniaturist, is a year old. On the anniversary of its publication, my friend Patrick the bookie sends me a message to say a horse called Miniaturist is running at Sandown. I’m not normally a betting woman, but I decide to have a punt. An hour later, Miniaturist has won and I’ve collected 125 quid. Ain’t it a glorious feeling when your horse comes in? Things decline a little after that. After nine years not driving, I’m back behind the wheel and taking refresher lessons from Silvano, a Venetian south-east Londoner with a bullish prognosis for getting me up to speed. We pootle around

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 30 July 2015

Home A man died when 1,500 migrants tried to enter the Channel Tunnel terminal in Calais in one night. The night before, 2,000 had tried. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, spoke of spending money on fences. The Foreign Office warned travellers to the Continent via Calais that they should be prepared to return by a different route, what with migrants and French strikers. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, visited Paris for talks with French ministers about Britain’s place in the European Union. Chris Froome won the Tour de France for the second time in three years, although some spectators threw urine at him and some even suggested that

Columba

2222: Exquisite

One unclued light (hyphened) is a 38 of a word hidden in the grid. Two unclued lights are definitions of the hidden word, which is also the surname of a former 11 of 25 (two words), whose first name is an unclued light. The hidden word and its 38 — both starting in an appropriate square, and together forming a 38 relevant to the puzzle — must be highlighted.   Across   6    Divisions in Mississippi led by force aboard steamer (7) 13    Part screened by sign, a certain slender type (9) 15    Steep southern wood (4) 16    Cue card oddly came as a product (7)

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 30 July 2015

I was wondering what to write about this week when I suddenly realised that exactly 40 years ago this Saturday I became editor of this magazine. Despite eventually getting the sack, I hung onto the job for nine years, from 1975 to 1984, which is still the longest that anyone has had it since Wilson Harris ended his 21-year tenure in 1953. The Spectator has had 15 editors since him, but none apart from myself has lasted for much more than six years. Fraser Nelson, however, looks set to outlast us all. I am surprised how little I can remember of those years (or perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, given

Columba

To 2219: Keep going

Unclued lights complete the titles of Carry On films. First prize Tony Hankey, London W4 Runners-up Mark Roberts, Hostert, Luxembourg; Tony Dew, London SW13

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Poor boys are losing the university battle of the sexes

Something worrying is happening to university access. It’s not what opponents of higher tuition fees predicted, which is that the higher rates would put off poorer students, so it might not get as much pick-up. It might also get less pick-up because it concerns a group that it isn’t particularly fashionable to worry about, which is poor young men. A report today from the Independent Commission on Fees finds that poor young men are less likely to go to university than women from the same background – and this gender gap is widening. The ICF, which was set up to examine the impact of charging students £9,000 a year, found

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Time for change

From ‘The Problem of Public Assistance’, The Spectator, 31 July 1915: In one respect big reforms are actually easier in times of national emergency than in times of peace, for the collective purpose of the nation is in the crisis of a great war more firmly set, and therefore better able to overcome sectional and private vested interests. On the other hand, it is somewhat difficult to secure adequate consideration for any important new proposal at a time when public attention is absorbed in the movements of a great war. On the whole, the former consideration is in the present matter perhaps the more important. For although of necessity the

Paul Wood

‘The smugglers don’t care’

 Lesbos A young woman in a headscarf stumbled over some rocks and onto the beach. She stood there, rigid, stunned, then burst into tears. A grandmotherly German tourist hugged her. ‘It’s over now, you’re safe,’ she said. ‘You’re in Europe.’ A Burmese man from the same boat looked around anxiously and asked: ‘Will the police here beat us?’ It was after dawn on the Greek island of Lesbos, the sun glinting off the turquoise sea, an idyllic holiday-brochure landscape of hills with whitewashed houses. But the Turkish coast is so close that you can see it, and so this tiny island has become the front line in Europe’s migration crisis.

Douglas Murray

Despair springs eternal

The literary emissions of the left are hardly ever enjoyable, but they can be instructive. Last year Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century became one of the biggest-selling political books of the year. Like a thousand-page Soviet report on tractor production, it hardly seemed intended to be read. The point of its success was that it could be said to ‘prove’ the left’s argument. They could then hit their opponents over the head with it and move to the next stage. Last year they questioned some premises of capitalism and now Paul Mason, the economics editor of Channel 4 News (and Spectator diarist), is here to say that capitalism

The Spectator

Out of service

From ‘The new standard’, The Spectator, 24 July 1915: If a change must be made at all, it is worthwhile to make a great change, to put right our mistakes, to get any happiness that a rearrangement can give us. We fear that at first a new way of life may come rather hard upon the more prosperous and highly skilled of the servant class, many of whom must be turned out of place. But, on the other hand, we hear constant complaints that servants are scarce because new careers are opening before women, and if the race of indoor manservants died out altogether we do not imagine that anyone would

Bruce Anderson

Young guns

The Honourable Society of Odd Bottles began proceedings with a report on the activities of our junior branch. These youngsters are not yet eligible to become drinking members, but they are chosen because of their unremitting hostility to vermin and their burgeoning enthusiasm for killing game. Young Charlie, the Nimrod of his generation, has been prodigiously active. It is surprising that there is a single grey squirrel still alive in Somerset. Any rat that comes his way goes no further. He is also mightily effective against rabbits and pigeons, which he enjoys scoffing, after he has skinned or plucked them. Charlie has inherited a .410: the fifth generation of his

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Let’s pay for the BBC content we use

What follows is a proposal for reducing the BBC licence fee and improving the corporation’s output while saving the British newspaper industry. All that’s involved is a basic understanding of pricing psychology combined with a digital currency for micropayments. Under my proposals, half the licence fee would fund the BBC’s Reithian purpose; the other £60 could be paid direct to the BBC as now or, if you chose, paid to you as a digital currency (6,000 Beebcoins). People could buy additional Beebcoins, which could be spent on BBC or competitor content — including content from newspapers. Notionally the BBC would lose out; in practice they would gain revenue, as they

Deborah Ross

Dedicated follower of fashion

Iris is a documentary portrait of Iris Apfel, the nonagenarian New York fashion icon. Nope, me neither, but that’s irrelevant, as all you truly need know is she is a joy, a wonder, and terrific, as is this film. It’s the final work of documentary film-maker Albert Maysles, who died last year, at 88, and although Iris obviously loves the camera, and plays to the camera, and it is often Iris doing Iris, as Iris does Iris so brilliantly, who cares? Also, you just can’t take your eyes off her. You can’t. The opening shots show Iris, who is 93, in her Park Avenue apartment, in all her glory. Accessories

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Machetes and the middle classes

Another stabbing in my new neighbourhood, not with an axe or with a samurai sword this time, but a machete. The samurai sword incident was back in the spring. The magnolia was in bloom and the citizens of London N1 were about their innocent business, reading for book club and baking (wheat-free). At 3 p.m., a terrible screaming was heard coming from Englefield Road and when police arrived they found a teenage boy lying bleeding, sword on one side, meat cleaver on the other. The machete killing which followed was worse. Daylight, but this time the crime scene was a playground. Children were goofing about after school, including the soon-to-be victim’s

Melissa Kite

Asking too much

Jack Nicholson’s moving portrayal of a lonely old man in About Schmidt convinced me that I should sponsor a child. You may remember the scene at the end: he gets a letter from a nun in the Tanzanian village where a little boy has been receiving his largesse and realises that his life has not been meaningless. He has made a difference to somebody. I wept buckets as the credits rolled and not long afterwards signed up to a sponsorship programme with a leading charity in the hope that I too could make life better for one person. And maybe I did. I was allocated a child in Armenia. I

James Delingpole James Delingpole

A twinge of fear, and a glimpse of a harsher world

I celebrated Eid in a sandy bay in Sri Lanka, watching from the warm, shallow sea as gaggles of local Muslims in holiday mood sauntered past to congregate at the public end of the beach about half a mile away. Since they looked so much more colourful, picturesque and exotic than the tourists in the security-guarded enclave where I was, I thought I’d wander down to take a few snaps. Having just finished Ramadan, they were all very excited — the young men especially. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a group of dark-skinned boys with wispy beards, bare-chested but in long trousers, had surrounded me. ‘Selfie!’ one of them said —

Claudia Massie

Glasgow

A wet walk in a Glaswegian graveyard might not be your idea of fun, but then you might not have spent the past two hours in the Glasgow Science Centre. Endure that, and see the sodden Necropolis stroll swell in allure. The Science Centre is one of the emblems of the new Glasgow. Rising from the old docklands on the south side of the Clyde, beside the BBC at Pacific Quay, it is one of the shouty new buildings leading the regeneration of the old shipbuilding areas. These buildings and their outlying friends still look like awkward blow-ins here, isolated blobs of glitter studding the wasteland. There’s not yet much