Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 April 2015

Home The nation greeted with well disguised enthusiasm the beginning of the general election campaign after the dissolution of parliament. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, stood at a little plywood lectern in Downing Street and said: ‘In 38 days you face a stark choice’ — between him and Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party. The Conservatives said they would create two million jobs in the next parliament. Their claims that Labour’s plans would cost each household £3,028 extra in taxes were met with baffled scepticism by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Some business leaders indignantly rejected Labour’s claims on a poster that they supported the party’s opposition to

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How I can I avoid being invited to any more country house weekends?

Q. Someone I was at university with but hadn’t seen much of over the ten years since invited me to come for a weekend at his country house. I went once and, although it was perfectly fine and they are perfectly nice, wouldn’t want to go there again. Life’s just too short to spend weekends with people you can’t really talk to. But now his wife has identified me as a ‘spare man’ and is keen for me to come again. I have given excuses for not accepting subsequent invitations but she is really persistent and has now said they are going to be there all of July and August

Toby Young Toby Young

Lefty myths about inequality

As a Tory, I’ve been thinking a lot about inequality recently. Has it really increased in the past five years? Or is that just scaremongering on the part of the left? By most measures, there’s not much evidence that the United Kingdom became more unequal in the last parliament. Take the UK’s ‘Gini co-efficient’, which measures income inequality. In 2009/10, it was higher than it was at any point during the subsequent three years. Indeed, in 2011/12 it fell to its lowest level since 1986. Data isn’t available for the last two years, but there’s no reason to think it has exceeded what it was when Labour left office. George

Lavatch

2205: In shape

The unclued lights (including one of three words, one of two words, and one hyphened) form two thematic groups in the grid. They consist of a theme word, four lights which it defines in one sense, and three which it defines in another. A fourth example of this latter group, part of an unclued light, must be highlighted. Ignore one apostrophe.    Across   10    See bird that’s yellow (6) 11    Old, tragic character’s love for pungent stuff (7) 13    Cook destroying starter in oven (4) 14    Assessment of painter – one’s in shock (9) 17    Suspect pockets diamonds with hesitation in TV programme (6) 19    Time judge gets banned

Lavatch

To 2202: Problem XI

Seven unclued lights are ANAGRAMS (23) of numbers. 2 (7A) + 11 (17) + 10 (40) + 16 (5) + 18 (6) + 3 (31) = 60 (36). First prize Jack Shonfield, Child Okeford, Dorset Runners-up Michael Ollerenshaw, Bowdon, Cheshire; M. Purdie, Cupar, Fife

Sebastian Payne

Listen: The Spectator’s verdict on the TV leaders’ debate

The snap polls suggest there was no immediate winner of the televised leaders’ debate on ITV — so what happened? In this View from 22 podcast special, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the first (and last) debate  of the general election campaign with all the party leaders. While the consensus is that Nicola Sturgeon met the high expectations, did the other insurgent leader Nigel Farage fall short? Was David Cameron able to appear Prime Ministerial or did Ed Miliband successfully challenge him? And will the programme make any difference to the election campaign and result? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer or

Daniel Jackson

Low income damages children’s brains, says study. If so, that’s a tragedy

The link between wealth and attainment is a subject that’s close to my heart, or perhaps more accurately my cerebral cortex. Like 20 per cent of the population I was raised in technical poverty. My first home was a touring caravan. It’s safe to say that no statistician would have expected me to amount to anything – especially if they’d had access to the findings of a new study in Nature Neuroscience. Researchers have found that there is an association between low family income and the structure of the brains of children. The study looked at the relationship between wealth and the size of the brain’s surface area. The measurements were derived from a

Max Hastings

Prince Charles letter: “There is a DIVINE Source which is ultimate TRUTH”

I notice an online howl of anguish from a Kentucky professor of biology who faces demands from local evangelical Christians that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in his classes. This, it seems to me, parallels the Prince of Wales’s successful lobbying for some NHS funds to be diverted from conventional medicine to homeopathy. I have beside me a copy of a letter allegedly written by him some years ago to a cultural institution, asserting the conviction that ‘there is a DIVINE Source which is ultimate TRUTH… that this Truth can be expressed by means of numbers… and that, if followed correctly, these principles can be expressed with infinite variety

Julia Hartley-Brewer

Zero-hours contracts have nothing to do with flexibility and everything to do with dodging tax

Could you live on a zero-hours contract? David Cameron was forced to admit, during his grilling by Jeremy Paxman, that he couldn’t. But 1.4 million Britons do. Some out of choice, some through necessity. But the latest attempts by the main parties to tackle the injustices of zero-hours contracts fail to get to the heart of the problem – which has nothing to do with a need for ‘flexibility’ and everything to do with dodging tax. Many of us might be horrified at the thought of not knowing when our next pay cheque will be coming and how much it will be, but large numbers of people on zero-hours contracts are

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

April Wine Club | 2 April 2015

Private Cellar is the Jack Russell of the wine trade, tiny but tenacious, nipping in and snuffling out first-rate everyday wines that others either miss or require in greater quantities than are available. Private Cellar, based in Newmarket, has no shop to speak of and a staff of just eight, selling online from a commendably concise list and at their brilliant countrywide tastings. Private Cellar’s team are all graduates of such fine oenological finishing schools as Corney & Barrow, Armit and Lay & Wheeler, and the wines they unearth are invariably excellent value and great examples of both grape and region. It was no surprise to those of us who

Michael Gove

In defence of Christianity

Jeremy Paxman was on great form last week, reminding us that when it comes to being rude to prime ministers he has no peers. Jeremy’s rudeness is, of course, magnificently bipartisan. However elegant the sneer he displayed when asking David Cameron about Stephen Green, it was as nothing compared to the pointed disdain with which he once asked Tony Blair about his faith. Was it true, Jeremy inquired, that he had prayed together with his fellow Christian George W. Bush? The question was asked in a tone of Old Malvernian hauteur which implied that spending time in religious contemplation was clearly deviant behaviour of the most disgusting kind. Jeremy seemed

Mark Mason

Tourists are trickling back to Egypt – to beat the crowds, go now

Egypt’s revolution of 2011 didn’t just get rid of President Mubarak: it did a pretty good job of clearing out the tourists, too. The political uncertainty since then has made people wary of visiting — meaning more space and lower prices for those who do make the trip. But you’d better be quick if you want to take advantage: this seems to be the year that Egypt is opening up again. BA are resuming their Sharm el-Sheikh flights in September, while Abercrombie and Kent are back up to three boats for their Nile cruises (they had been down to one). I started in Aswan, home to the alarmingly named Hotel

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Rory McIlroy and the grandest prize in golf

The grand slam in golf is a feat almost impossible to imagine now. It meant winning all four golfing majors in the same year, and has only been done once, by the extraordinary Bobby Jones in 1930. Jones was awarded a ticker-tape reception in New York, and a golfing writer of the time with a feel for geometry called it ‘The Impregnable Quadrilateral’, a fortress that could never be taken. Jones, a lawyer by profession and unimpeachably honourable in his play, was a canny young man as well as a remarkable player: he had backed himself for the grand slam at the start of the year with a British bookmaker

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

What happened to Julie Burchill on silent retreat

When I told my friends that I was planning to attend a silent retreat, they all laughed. It’s true that I am something of a convivialist; my idea of heaven is a big table in a warm restaurant, the table shimmering with the laughter of friends and the glugging of wine, and me picking up the bill. On the other hand, I was a solitary only child and I look back on those days with great fondness. Before the long stagger up the primrose path of pleasure started, the only companion I needed was a book; I well remember my mother crying because I preferred to sit in my room

Douglas Murray

‘The truth is hard’: an interview with Roger Scruton

To the extent that Britain has philosophers, we do not expect them to address issues of any relevance to the rest of us. They may pursue some hermeneutic byway perhaps, but not the urgent or profound issues of our time. Roger Scruton has always been an exception in this regard, as in many others. He has spent his adult life thinking and writing about the nature of love, the nation state, belonging, alienation, beauty, home and England. But even his closest readers may gulp at the relevance of his latest subject matter. His new novel, The Disappeared, is set in the north of England and centres on the recent rape-gang

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Airport wars: why I’m betting on Gatwick

Easter is a good time to talk about airports — or perhaps a bad time, if you bought your Spectator in the shopping labyrinth that impedes your path to the departure gate after a maddening wait in the security queue, where only a quarter of the scanners are working. I’m with you, and not just in spirit: in fact, that’s me being led away by men with machine guns, after an altercation over the contents of my wash-bag. It’s a curious fact that no one has ever succeeded in imbuing airport terminals with the romance, dignity and passenger satisfaction quotient of 19th-century railway stations. At best they are soulless, at

Ian Thomson

‘I will call the police!’: My close encounter with ‘revenue protection’

‘Make yourself a happy bunny this Easter with cheap tickets and egg-cellent deals!’ chirped the Abellio train company advert. I use Abellio’s Greater Anglia service regularly from London and was looking forward to a nice fluffy ride to Norwich. I was late for the 9 a.m. train but the Liverpool Street station Abellio assistant smilingly informed me I wouldn’t need to pay extra for the later train. I bought a cup of coffee and presented my ticket to the barrier staff at platform 11. A dignified-looking man of African origin with ritually scarred cheeks seemed to be unusually officious. Tapping my ticket with the sharp end of a pencil he

Lucy Vickery

Yawn

In Competition No. 2891 you were invited to think of the most boring lecture topic possible and submit an extract from that lecture. Christopher Gilbert gamely -submitted an extract from a real lecture he is due to deliver on the impenetrable-sounding topic of heteroscedasticity. But Brian -Murdoch, observing that it was all ‘a bit near the knuckle’, decided against putting his own genuine ‘Comments on the Prologues to the Old Frisian Laws’ into the ring. His fictitious offering not only made it into the winning line-up but also won him the bonus fiver. The rest take £25 each. Scribal Division of Words at the End of Lines in Vernacular Prose

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Why doesn’t Osborne admit the link between the jobs miracle and slowing down deficit reduction?

Will George Osborne come ever clean about his successes? I caught up with the Chancellor in Leeds today and asked him about the Treasury’s role in the jobs miracle. I put it to him: isn’t it the case that he has decided to go slower on deficit reduction to support the jobs boom? The figures show that this is exactly what’s happened: the Treasury isn’t getting as much tax in because so much of the increase in employment is in low-paid jobs. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/N7pwS/index.html”] Osborne has decided to cut these workers’ taxes, and even support their income through tax credits. You’d think a compassionate conservative would make a virtue of this and say

Digby Warde-Aldam

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Royal Albert Hall, review: who goes to a Noel Gallagher gig?

When people say Noel Gallagher is big-headed, they don’t know the half of it. He has what is known as a ‘classic rock-star build’ – that is, a tiny, fragile little body with a ludicrously big bonce on top, like one of those football figurines. I know this because I saw him once. He was standing outside the University of Westminster, looking cross as he jabbed a text message into his phone. It must be heavy, that head. From my seat in the Albert Hall, I watched as Noel stood hunched over his mic, like Quasimodo delivering a TED talk. It’s probably a bit off-key to mock a man for