Society

Thursday

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

Cheesecracker

2677: What’s in a name?

Unchecked and mutually cross-checking letters in 14 unclued lights spell out PEEP – THE SPECTATOR CHARACTERS RECREATE REST. One such light is hyphened and another comprises two words. Across 1               Bundle of stuff needing time (7) 5               Dubious party assumes American power (7) 9               Church, with Old English exterior, from which arrows are launched (4) 13            Impressive collection of maths and physics constants (4) 14            Long-lost beast is such, or a fake (7) 16            Letters delivered for Badger (5) 17            Cold bottle of milk overturned – it’s irresistible to kitty (6) 20            Mediterranean restaurant worker sent back outside state (7) 21            Least cautious female interrupts returning emperor (7) 25            Fight animals

The Spectator

2674: New crop – solution

7D sung by 40A suggested other unclued lights, all anagrams of fruits: 12A mango; 17A apple; 18A apricot; 24A damson; 9D tangerine. MELON, an anagram of LEMON, was to be highlighted. First prize Kathleen Durber, Stoke-on-Trent Runners-up Clare Reynolds, London SE24; Sid Field, Stockton on Tees

The Spectator

Is Wes Streeting the Hamlet of the health service?

Is Wes Streeting the Hamlet of the Health Service? Is this undoubtedly talented and thoughtful young Labour prince fatally irresolute when it comes to doing what he knows must be done? Few politicians have articulated so clearly the need for reform of our healthcare system. Streeting’s insistence that the NHS should be a service not a shrine angered all the right people, which is to say the BMA. It marked a welcome departure from the treacly displays of affection which have hitherto characterised ‘debate’ about the health service. More recently, the Health Secretary has frankly admitted that the NHS is letting patients down and acknowledged its manifold inefficiencies. The need

Douglas Murray

The ICC’s rogue prosecutor

Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of 7 October, went to meet his maker last week. Having spent a year being pursued through the underground tunnels of Gaza that he had built, he finally put his head up above the surface in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah. The world that had told the IDF not to go into Rafah was once again proved wrong. Sinwar was killed in an exchange of fire by a 19-year-old Israeli soldier who was not even in uniform on 7 October. People inside the ICC were annoyed by the way Khan made himself a sort of ‘world policeman’ A couple of days after Sinwar’s demise, I

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The lessons of the Chris Kaba case

I wonder if we should join with the radical campaigning organisation Buy Larger Mansions (BLM) in order to protest about both the verdict in the Chris Kaba case and indeed the racism inherent in the Metropolitan Police? Perhaps we can get Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer to wear some BLM badges on Match of the Day and recreate the heady, exciting atmosphere of 2020 when white liberals in the US and here decided that George Floyd was a kind of combination of Toussaint Louverture and Rosa Parks, rather than a former criminal jailed eight times, including for robbery with a deadly weapon. It is true that every man’s death diminishes

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Budget leaks, prisoners released and Israel kills Hamas leader

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was expected to freeze tax thresholds in the Budget on 30 October, to swell government income as more working people were brought into higher tax bands. Before Labour formed a government, she had said that the Conservatives, by freezing tax thresholds, were ‘picking the pockets of working people’. Weeks of speculation on the Budget were encouraged by leaks and by constant questioning of ministers about how Labour would keep to its manifesto undertaking not to raise taxes on ‘working people’ by increasing income tax, national insurance or VAT. The International Monetary Fund raised its growth forecast for the United Kingdom to 1.1

Nigel Farage

The OnlyFans model, the milkshake and me

What better start to a Monday than to attend Westminster Magistrates’ Court? I was there for the trial of the young OnlyFans model Victoria Thomas Bowen who threw a banana milkshake at my face on the day that I launched my campaign in Clacton. Unbelievably, she planned to plead not guilty despite the fact that the whole thing was caught on camera. Rumours that her reason for doing all of this was because I had unsubscribed from her page are untrue. There was the usual circus of media outside as I arrived, but Victoria still insists she didn’t throw the milkshake just to get publicity for her website. It was

David Butterfield

Decline and fall: how university education became infantilised

Last month, after 21 years studying and teaching Classics at the University of Cambridge, I resigned. I loved my job. And it’s precisely because I loved the job I was paid to do, and because I believe so firmly in preserving the excellence of higher education, in Britain and beyond, that I have left. When I arrived in Cambridge two decades ago, giants were still walking the earth. Students could attend any lecture, at any level, in any department; graduate and research seminars were open to any interested party, and you could sit at the feet of the greats. Unforgettable gatherings of everyone from undergraduates to professors would discuss the

Philip Womack

Is it really too much to ask students to read children’s books?

The Shakespeare scholar Sir Jonathan Bate recently claimed that students are struggling to read long books. Depressingly, he’s right. I could have told him the same thing five years ago, when I was teaching at a well-respected Russell Group university. The problem isn’t that students won’t read Moby-Dick in five days. It’s that even if you give them what they want, they’ll still find fault. This all points to a tussle at the heart of modern education: do you cave in to the blighters, or not? To my surprise, when convening a BA course on children’s literature, I discovered that some of my students balked at reading children’s books. The

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The 38 candidates to be Oxford’s chancellor

Being Cambridge, I thank God that we have no nonsense about electing our chancellor. We have had a blameless, unchallenged succession of eminent persons. Since 1900, three prime ministers (Balfour, Baldwin and Smuts), two military commanders, one royal Duke (Prince Philip), two great scientists (Lords Rayleigh and Adrian) and now that prince of commerce and philanthropy, Lord Sainsbury of Turville. Their presence has passed almost unnoticed, rightly so: a chancellor’s role is to be, not to do. Poor Oxford, however, has a form of democracy to choose its chancellor, and now has insanely extended its effective franchise by online voting. So there are 38 candidates, and pressure that they should

Wednesday

The Spectator

Letters: Why does the Navy have more admirals than ships?

Pointless laws Sir: The leading article ‘Wrong problem, wrong law’ (19 October) makes cogent points about the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, in particular pointing out that it would probably not have made any difference had it been in force at the time of the Manchester Arena bombing, and that if passed it will impose disproportionate and often unmanageable burdens on venues such as churches and village halls. There is, in truth, a wider point here: most legislation is either counterproductive, useless or both. All legislation has five aspects: (1) A real purpose. This may be to achieve the ostensible purpose of the legislation, but is often really to make

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Do you like the century you’re in?

Years ago Lord Patten of Barnes – Chris – was our guest for my Great Lives programme on BBC Radio 4. He championed the life of Pope John XXIII, a mid-20th-century pope from humble origins who (his admirers would say) did much to bring the Roman Catholic Church into the 20th century. He had his detractors too, Evelyn Waugh for instance: ‘Easter used to mean so much to me before Pope John and his council… I have not yet soaked myself in petrol and gone up in flames, but I now cling to the faith doggedly without joy.’ The muscle memory of today’s pop-musical taste is half a century long

William Finlator

The tragedy of Scotland’s church sell-off

‘We are not a heritage society,’ insisted the Rev David Cameron, Convener of the Assembly Trustees of the Church of Scotland. Speaking to the BBC in January, Mr Cameron claimed the Church has a ‘surplus of buildings and large property’, and that there is a need ‘to address our estate’. A church or kirk is usually the most historically important building in any given town or village In other words, the Church of Scotland is selling off its churches. Not just one or two here or there, but a lot, and for cut-price rates. Of course, the Church insists that the move is ‘painful but essential’, aping the language of

Silkie Carlo

Has your local shop blacklisted you?

Britain’s obsession with surveillance is reaching new heights. Several of the UK’s largest retailers have quietly installed facial recognition checkpoints on their doorways and inside their shops. It means that automated identity checks are taking place on our high streets without customers even being aware of it. You won’t be informed if your photo is taken and added to a watchlist, and no police report is required The cameras look like any other CCTV cameras, except they take a biometric scan of every customer’s face, like at a passport e-gate. The facial recognition scans are then compared against a private database run by the software company Facewatch. The database is

Terry Barnes

Lidia Thorpe has emboldened protests against King Charles

King Charles and Queen Camilla flew to Samoa for the Commonwealth leaders’ meeting early on Wednesday, after completing their visit to Australia the previous day. Not, however, without again being confronted by the historic grievances of Aboriginal community leaders. It was a disgraceful display of look-at-me exhibitionism, but Monday’s one-woman disruption of the King and Queen’s formal welcome by part-Aboriginal firebrand senator and full-time activist, Lidia Thorpe, gave others licence to express their concerns directly to King Charles. It was no surprise that they took the heavily indigenous-flavoured last day of the royal itinerary to do just that. Unlike Thorpe’s outbursts on Monday, those remonstrations were very polite and low-key.

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The gratuitous trade in images of Palestinian pain

It is getting to the point where I am dreading going online. For I know the minute I open my laptop I will be exposed to the grimmest images of human suffering. The internet is awash with dead Palestinians. Their broken bodies clog up social media. Their ashen remains get thousands of shares. ‘Look at this’, cry the death-sharers, as they post another photo of something that was once a human being. The grisly trade in images of Palestinian pain is starting to feel more exploitative than insightful. It is less about raising awareness than about stoking a gut feeling. Its impact is visceral, not political. It is a pornography

Tuesday

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Paddington shouldn’t have been given a passport

Paddington has an official passport. The makers of the new Paddington film Paddington in Peru revealed this in passing to the Radio Times today.  They needed the passport for scenes in the new movie, presumably showing Paddington clearing customs on his journey back to darkest Peru. So they approached the Home Office for a facsimile, which is odd in itself, given that any decent prop hand on a film set can rustle one up for you – one that will fool a camera, anyway – in half an hour.  The issues around immigration are often reduced to the level of a CGI bear – because this is the level at which many of the country’s

Niall Gooch

The cowardice of the Chris Kaba case

Since 2010, British police have shot dead 30 people. This works out at an average of around 2.1 people per year. In two consecutive years – 2012-13 and 2013-14 – not a single person was fatally shot by police in the UK. In 2023-24, the last period for which we have full data, it was two; for 2022-23, it was three. Which is to say that incidents where the British police kill people are vanishingly rare. It is highly unusual for the roughly 6,000 licensed firearms officers in England and Wales to use their weapons at all. Over the past decade there have been only 66 incidents where officers have fired their

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The TV industry should be worried about AI

ITV are searching for an ‘AI expert’ to ‘create TV shows, films and digital content’, and to use this possibly baleful new algorithmic technology for ‘character development’ and ‘ideation’. The successful applicant will be ideating away for a tidy salary of up to £95,000 per annum.  AI could be a game-changer for TV and film, and not the good kind as far as workers in the industry are concerned. It’s taken a long while for technology to mount a serious threat to the sector, though its knock-on effect has been one of the big reasons that the quality of TV and film has declined in recent years. People who would