Society

Thursday

12 Mar 2015

Bright blues

The boat race for the brain, as it has become known, took place at the Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall, London last Saturday. The 133rd Oxford v Cambridge Varsity chess match was generously hosted by Henry Mutkin, the life president of the club, and the club itself, represented by their new chess circle chairman, Stephen Meyler. Among the chess experts present were grandmasters Luke McShane, Michael Stean, Jon Speelman and Julian Hodgson, while the wider world of chess enthusiasts included Tony Buzan of mind-mapping fame, Daniel Johnson, editor of Standpoint magazine, and Barry Martin, former vice president and captain of the Chelsea Arts Club chess team. In spite of

Taki

Where Alcibiades once walked, amateur tax spies are trying to entrap poor pistachio-sellers

Athens I am walking on a wide pedestrian road beneath the Acropolis within 200 meters of the remaining Themistoclean wall and the ancient cemetery to eminent Athenians. One side is lined with splendid neoclassical houses, none of them abandoned but most of them shuttered and locked up. This is the area where once upon a time Pericles, Themistocles and Alcibiades — to name three — trod, orated and debated non-stop. Back in those good old days we Athenians ruled supreme. Reason, logic and restraint placed us at the head of the queue, and genius also helped. I am climbing to the Pnyx, where Themistocles rallied his fellow citizens to defy

Jeremy Clarke

Lunch with Max Beerbohm’s brother’s grandson

It’s a silly, chippy complex, I know, but I often feel, on the rare occasions that I am induced to attend a lunch or dinner party, that I don’t belong. This truth or delusion occasionally overwhelms me and I sit there, paralysed, unhappy and silent. It’s a pity. Today we were six for Sunday lunch and so far — apart from knocking over the coatstand, twice, during what one would have thought to be the simple act of hanging a jacket on one of the hooks, and breaking it in two — so good. The chap seated to my left — by a very surprising and agreeable coincidence, given that

Melissa Kite

A lot of animal lovers go on about how great it is to rescue a horse from the racing industry

All was going suspiciously well with the thoroughbred. I suppose it had to be the calm before the storm. I bought Darcy as a yearling, you may remember, from the builder boyfriend’s mother, who has an eye for a horse and had picked her up in a sale. One day when visiting her yard I saw the little filly peeping over a stable door and got ‘a feeling’. Oh lord, please save me from feelings. After I took her home, she promptly jumped out of her field and landed on a fence post. We had to carry her on to the horse lorry to get her to Liphook equine hospital

Alexander Chancellor

It’s a pointless waste of time for David Cameron to resurrect the hunting debate

Of all the election promises politicians make in the run-up to a general election the one most certain to remain unfulfilled is David Cameron’s pledge to try to repeal the foxhunting ban. He has said he will give MPs a free vote on the issue, but he promised something similar before the last election, only to be prevented from doing anything by his coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, who remain firmly opposed to hunting with hounds. So does the Labour party, and so does the public. A recent opinion poll found that 80 per cent of people in this country, in rural communities as much as in towns, want to

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 12 March 2015

Why do men always yell at the television or keep up a running commentary while watching sport? My husband does it whenever the rugby is on. After I told him to pipe down the other day, he quite reasonably pointed out that I do it myself when I’m following bridge online — he has to put up with constant mutterings of ‘Hmmm, yes …What? No!’ Watching bridge really is as thrilling as watching any sport — especially if you know the players and have a team to support. I was glued to my computer during the recent Lederer Trophy, the invitation tournament held each year in London. My loyalties were

Raymond Keene

No. 353

Black to play. This is from James-Sugden, -Cambridge 1972, as featured last week. It’s a win by the Cambridge player Dr J. N. -Sugden of St John’s College. In the diagram my notes gave 1 … Bf1+ but Julian Simpole pointed out something far more effective. Can you spot it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 17 March or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. The winner is the first correct answer out of a hat, and there is a prize of £20. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1 … Qh3+ Last week’s winner T. Watson, Glasgow

Jeffrey Archer

Jeffrey Archer’s diary: a pirate at the traffic lights, and other Indian wonders

This last week, in India, I visited six cities in seven days: Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta and New Delhi. This is my 11th trip to India and from the very beginning the signs were good. For a start, the temperature on arrival in Mumbai was a cool 22 degrees and I was told it had rained for the past two days, though I’ve actually never seen rain in Mumbai before. Because of a new eight-lane highway, we got from the airport to the Taj Hotel in the city centre in just 40 minutes, despite a minor hold-up. As the car was idling in a traffic jam, a young boy who

Dot Wordsworth

Are you negatively impacted by business-speak? It’s time to escalate

Maureen Finucane of Richmond, Surrey, wonders whether there is any branch of public service not infected by Orwellian Newspeak. In a letter to the editor (Spectator, 28 February), she explained that a museum owed her a refund and that after a fortnight she was told on the telephone: ‘The situation is being reviewed by several managers and once it has been approved will be actioned.’ She asks if I might take this up. I’m not sure I have the strength. I can only suggest that in response Mrs Finucane might assert that she has been impacted negatively by this issue and demand that the situation be escalated as a priority.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 March 2015

Home Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said that ‘a huge burden of responsibility’ lay with those who acted as apologists for those who committed acts of terror. Parliament approved new obligations for passenger carriers to restrict the travel to or from Britain of people named as a terrorist threat. The Charity Commission required the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Roddick Foundation to give unequivocal assurances that they had ceased funding Cage, the advocacy group known for speaking up for Mohammed Emwazi, the British jihadist involved in videos of Islamic State murders. England were knocked out of the Cricket World Cup. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself

Toby Young

Could my son Charlie become a Premier League footballer?

My son Charlie was scouted by QPR last week. I say ‘scouted’, but that’s not quite accurate since he’s only six. Rather, a man claiming to be a member of the club’s coaching staff suggested I bring him along to the QPR pre-academy in Willesden. At first, I was suspicious. The man in question teaches football at the local leisure centre and I was worried that this ‘pre-academy’ would turn out to be an expensive, fee-paying affair with no official links to QPR. When the man first introduced the idea, I had to ask if he’d got the right boy. Charlie’s quite small for his age and not exactly lion-hearted.

The Spectator

James McAvoy is wrong – the arts are better off without subsidy

The season of cringe-making acceptance speeches at arts awards ceremonies is nearly over, thank heavens. But it hasn’t passed without a most fatuous contribution from James McAvoy as he accepted a nomination for best actor at the Olivier Awards this week. He should have stuck to sobbing and thanking his agent. Instead, he launched a feeble and trite attack on the government for supposedly thwarting social mobility by failing to fund the arts. According to McAvoy’s thesis, ‘Art is one the first things you take away from society if you want to keep [people] down.’ It’s true that several of the British stars in prominent recent films attended private schools

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: When is it all right not to bring something to a dinner party?

Q. A wonderful and generous woman invites me, on a regular basis, to dinner parties at her house. What is an appropriate gift for an impoverished artist to take along on such occasions? I am always told by her that I shouldn’t have brought anything but my rigid British upbringing is telling me otherwise. — T. R., Florence A. As a rule grandees have present fatigue. They already have wall-high supplies of scented candles and chocolates and find flowers irritating due to the nuisance of having to find a vase. They are not ungrateful for the ‘thought’ but for practical reasons, they prefer guests to walk in empty-handed. Having to

Dumpynose

2202: Problem XI

Seven unclued lights (one hyphened) are 23: 7A + 17 + 40 + 5 + 6 + 31 = 36. Ignore one accent. Elsewhere, ignore an apostrophe and two accents. Across 1 Half per cent off haircut (11, two words) 11 Girl crafty in conversation (6) 13 Lunatic ran through crazy Swiss town (7) 15 Stop charging about part of church (5) 16 Scots ask gentleman about Peru (5) 18 Friendly earl cuddled priest’s daughter (5) 20 Yarn one from Paisley spins in recurring patterns (6) 21 Sack or Martini? (5) 22 Electronic system tap-dancer contrived ejects CD (7) 27 Ship’s position, say, eagle flying takes on board

Dumpynose

To 2199: TV Comedy

The unclued lights can be arranged to give: ‘I decided to sell my Hoover … well, it was just collecting dust’ (by) Tim Vine. This was voted best one-liner at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe. First prize D. Morris, Birchington, Kent Runners-up Elizabeth Feinberg, Rancho Mirage, California; M. Day, London N6

Alex Krasodomski

The ‘Darknet’ is dangerous. It’s also deeply democratic

The ‘Darknet’ is in the spotlight. Over the past few months, stories of paedophile rings, drug empires and terrorist organisations have set pulses racing as investigative journalists have begun dipping their toes into the network. Cue stories such as: ‘Five scary things ANYONE can buy in the Darknet’s illegal markets‘. Now, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology have released a briefing. The note, entitled ‘The Darknet and Online Anonymity’, centres on Tor. Tor is an easy-to-use web browser that makes tracking a user’s online activities much more difficult. It is designed to prevent government agencies and big corporations learning your location, your identity and your browsing habits. As well as

Ed West

The abolition of anti-discrimination laws would prove how tolerant Britain had become

My mum once told me about a man she knew who’d come from a poor background and had no luck finding a job. He’d applied for over 400 positions but never got a response, but then he made one change to his CV and the next job he landed straight away. What did he do? He used a friend’s address, a friend who lived in a neighbouring postcode. The point of her story was that perseverance and lateral thinking will win out in the end, but what I took from it was that employers tend to choose people on arbitrary grounds. Postcodes are just one way in which employers use

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the death of childhood and has Hillary gone too far?

Have we lost the age of innocence forever? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Melanie Phillips and Sarah Green discuss this week’s Spectator cover feature on consequences of dropping the age of consent. By teaching sex education at a younger age, are we simply encouraging children to have more sex? Is it too late to regain the age of innocence? And would compulsory sex education in all schools help or create more problems? James Forsyth and John Bew also look at why foreign matters aren’t featuring more in the election campaign. Why are the party leaders mostly ignoring Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world? Although defence is occasionally getting

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Uniform behaviour

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 13 March 1915: We are glad to note that officers in uniform have been forbidden to visit night clubs in London. The gambling night clubs have ruined several young officers, and the dancing clubs are almost quite as undesirable in these times. But why does the order apply only to officers in uniform? Surely, if discipline requires that officers should keep away from these places, they ought to be forbidden to go whether in uniform or in ordinary clothes.

Keith Budge

Are the sciences and the arts a false dichotomy?

In late 2014, the Secretary of State for Education declared that the days when arts and humanities subjects could be relied on as useful were behind us, and that STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) were the way to go. For all of her subsequent backpedaling on this point, it remains pretty clear that arts and humanities are considered soft and irrelevant by this government. STEM subjects are vital, of course, and I welcome the Prime Minister’s recent announcement of a government push on maths, science and technology in schools, and a new national college for digital skills and coding. Nonetheless, I remain concerned about this instinct to promote