Society

Friday

Sebastian Payne

Is Douglas Carswell avoiding the HIV question — or should he be given a break?

Does Douglas Carswell agree with Nigel Farage’s controversial comments on treating foreigners with HIV? When I asked the Ukip leader, Farage responded ‘Yeah of course, he thinks we should have a national health service not an international health service.’ The question was put to Carswell directly on Question Time last night, when Piers Morgan took him to task if he was ‘ashamed’ at the comments. Carswell responded: ‘I think it’s entirely legitimate and right that we should expect that our National Health Service is a national health service and not an international health service. Now if someone was to fly into this country with no prior connection here at all and to fly in

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Papal infallability

From ‘The Pope and the War’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: The result of the war may prove that motives which we had supposed to be secured by Christianity are after all to be of little account in directing human actions. That is the situation stated without exaggeration. And in the world in which this gigantic crisis is about to be decided there is a spiritual Power which claims infallibility in any judgment it may choose to deliver ex cathedra on matters of faith or morals. We say nothing about faith, but surely if ever there were a plain occasion for moral direction and moral judgment this war provides one.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 16 April 2015

The real road menace Sir: I write in anger after reading Mark Mason’s malicious attack on mobility scooters (‘Hell on wheels’, 11 April). The motorcar has, since its invention, killed many hundreds of thousands of innocent pedestrians. Meanwhile, whole tracts of our beautiful and productive countryside have been flattened or destroyed to accommodate its traffic. I have been a devoted walker for over 80 years and remember how many favourite walks have been erased or spoiled for the construction of motorways. Now that I am unable to do more than dodder, I get about on a mobility scooter. I like it even less than the pedestrians I may inconvenience, but my only alternative is

Raymond Keene

Hit for six

The Hamilton Russell trophy for London clubs has been dominated in the past by the RAC. This year, though, they were knocked for six in the final decisive match by the MCC. The full scores (out of a possible 14) were as follows: 1st Marylebone Cricket Club, 14; Joint 2nd Oxford & Cambridge Club and Royal Automobile Club, 11; 4th Athenaeum Club, 7; Joint 5th Hurlingham Club and Oriental & East India Clubs, 4; 7th Chelsea Arts Club, 3; 8th Reform Club, 2. The crucial game which helped the MCC to take the cup was the following clash between an international master and a former Spectator editor. Dominic Lawson has supplied the

Raymond Keene

No. 358

White to play. This is from Lee-Zakharov, Vrnjacka Banja 1963. Black has just captured on c3 and now 1 Qxc3 runs into 1 … Qxf1 mate. However, White can do rather better than that. Can you see how? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 21 April or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. The winner will be the first correct answer out of a hat, and each week I am offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 … Nxh3+ Last week’s winner D.V. Jones, Llanfair, Caereinion, Powys

Peter Jones

Demosthenes vs Michael Fallon

Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon’s claim that Ed Miliband, having practised on his brother, would also stab his country in the back by not renewing Trident has not gone down well. As a classicist, Mr Fallon should surely know there is a more effective rhetoric at hand. When an ancient Greek wanted to attack a political opponent, two particular angles were popular: whose interests does he have uppermost in his mind — his own or the city’s? And has he any track record of being useful, (or as we might say, ‘adding value’), to the city? Both angles were superbly marshalled by the Athenian statesman Demosthenes in 330

Taki

High life | 16 April 2015

New York ‘Gimme a BLT on rye and hold da mayo’ is a great Noo Yawk sound. So is boid for bird, and toerty-toird for 33rd Street. True working-class accents no longer exist in the Bagel, and one is far more likely to hear ‘Deme un BLT y guarde la mayo’ from our Dominican or Puerto Rican cousins. The fire escape is also going fast, and as some wit pointed out, the next time Tony woos Maria in West Side Story he’ll have to text. The outdoor fire escape is a classic piece of Noo Yawk architecture, especially in the tenements of old in the Lower East Side, now the

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 16 April 2015

To say that Oscar was warmly welcomed as he stepped through the massive oak door into a chilly House of God for the first time in his life on Easter day would be an understatement. Delighted crones came bounding up, mewing and moaning at the rare and unexpected appearance in their midst of an innocent child. One of them thrust her face in his and excitedly interviewed him. ‘What’s your name then, my dear?’ she said, thrilled to meet someone under 70. Oscar diffidently but courageously answered that he was called Oscar. ‘What? What?’ she said, deaf as a post. ‘Do you know what the little chap’s name is?’ she

Melissa Kite

Real life | 16 April 2015

By and large, I’m not really sure the world is ready for me to join the steering committee of a community project in Lambeth seeking Lottery funding. It sounds like I might end up punching someone who is left-wing in an argument over how to spend public money. That said, I was mildly inspired when a disused cricket pavilion in my local park went up for tender and some stalwarts of the community started to have worthy ideas for its future use. They approached me to help and so I am considering how I could safely (for all concerned) become involved. I should explain, unless you happen to remember, that

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 16 April 2015

No sooner had I written last week’s column about the sad disappearance of the two tortoises in my care than they suddenly showed up. The sun had shone for two days, and that was enough to bring them out from underground. I had become convinced that I would never see them again. They had vanished from sight nearly five months earlier, and the expert websites that I consulted not only said this was longer than tortoises normally hibernate but also made clear that I had been an utterly irresponsible tortoise-keeper. They should have been starved before hibernating, they should have been measured, weighed and minutely inspected, and then they should

Robin Oakley

No fairy tale ending

It all depends how you like your fairy tales. OK, so we would have loved the retiring Tony ‘AP’ McCoy, 20 years a champion, to have won his last Grand National on Shutthefrontdoor, owned by his long-time patron J.P. McManus, jump racing’s biggest benefactor. But fate rarely reads the full script and this year’s National went instead to the talented Many Clouds, owned by Trevor Hemmings, another who has poured a fortune into racing. Many Clouds was trained in Lambourn by the generous-hearted Oliver Sherwood, a man claimed truly as a friend by more people in racing than anyone else I know and who has in his choice of riders

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 16 April 2015

When I was growing up, the loudest, most explosive arguments erupted when my parents played bridge together. Not surprisingly, when my father offered to teach me I made my excuses and ran. Jasmine Bakhshi is in the lucky position of having David for a father. Not only is David on the England Open team that wins practically everything they enter but he is also an excellent teacher. And what a pupil he has in ten-year-old Jasmine. At the Easter Festival in London she played with 15-year-old Isaac Channon in the Under 19 Pairs Championship, which they won, making her the youngest ever holder of that title. She first showed an

Toby Young Toby Young

The extraordinary Green manifesto

I’m disappointed that Ed Balls’s suggestion that the Office of Budget Responsibility should audit the parties’ manifestos was never taken up, not least because we will never know what Robert Chote thinks of the Green party’s claim that all its proposals are ‘fully costed’. Believe it or not, this includes the commitment to spend £45 billion on loft insulation in the next parliament. It’s quite something, the Greens’ manifesto. No doubt you’ll have already read about some of their more reasonable measures — such as the ‘complete ban on cages for hens and rabbits’ and the insistence that ‘UK taxpayers’ money is not used for bullfighting’. But the sheer scale

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 16 April 2015

Q. I have moved from London to the centre of a historic market town, now becoming famous as a foodie destination. For some reason people who would never have dreamt of dropping in without ringing when I lived in Kensington now think it almost de rigueur to knock on my door without warning when they are staying locally for the weekend. I like many of these people — but such unplanned visits are disruptive. Can you suggest a way I might retrain people to give me notice without seeming middle-aged and crusty? — Name and address withheld A. Make it a policy to always put on a coat and hat or sunglasses before

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Sharing Caring

The Ivy Chelsea Garden is a restaurant inside an Edwardian house disguised as a Tudor house on the King’s Road; it was formerly the fetid Henry J. Bean’s American Bar and Grill, which was a sort of magnet and sex market, with cheeseburgers, for Chelsea teenagers. It sits in a row of babywear shops and artisan bakers — why Chelsea needs bakers I know not, because no one here is fat enough to eat bread. Perhaps it bespeaks a psychic insecurity that even the rich of SW3 feel — for the bread is the life? It is the third instalment of Richard Caring’s growing Ivy franchise, because Caring — catering’s

David Starkey

Diary – 16 April 2015

To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I bit on a nut warned me that my problem molar — much abused by a badly fitted bridge in the 1970s — had finally given way. My usual dentist confirmed as much with a poke and an X-ray. Then came the surprise. ‘I’m going to hand you over now,’ he said. Having a tooth out has ceased to be a hazard of life to be borne and grinned at. Instead it’s become dental surgery. And it requires a specialist. Mine was a man with a mission. ‘My job is to

Dot Wordsworth

Passion | 16 April 2015

‘I long for spontaneous passion but I will never get it with my husband because I think he has Asperger syndrome,’ wrote a reader of the Sun to Deidre last week. I noticed this because the leading article in The Spectator earlier this month said that David Cameron needs ‘more passion’. It was right, of course. Deidre’s reply suggested that ‘specific requests could help him, such as “Please give me a cuddle in bed”.’ I don’t know if a similar suggestion has been made to Mr Cameron. But Tony Blair said in his recent speech: ‘I believe passionately that leaving Europe would leave Britain diminished.’ Does believing passionately that something

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 16 April 2015

Home Launching the Conservative party manifesto, David Cameron, the party leader, told voters he wanted to ‘turn the good news in our economy into a good life for you and your family’. The Tories promised: to eliminate the deficit by the end of the parliament; to provide 30 hours of free child care a week for working parents of three- and four-year-olds; to grant a right for housing association tenants to buy their properties; to increase the inheritance tax threshold for married couples from £650,000 to £1 million (paid for by nobbling tax allowances on pension contributions for those earning £150,000); to raise the threshold of the 40p rate to £50,000 by

The Spectator

A deadly silence

One Friday, 28 people were rescued by the Italian coastguard when the boat on which they were fleeing Libya capsized in the Mediterranean. Arriving homeless and without prospects in a strange land, these were — relatively speaking — the lucky ones. As many as 700 are thought to have drowned. Add them to the tally. On Monday, another boat capsized with 400 souls feared lost. Last year more than 3,000 died in the Mediterranean trying to get to the West. It has become a phenomenon of our times. We do not hear much about life in the supposedly liberated Libya, but the fact that even immigrants into Libya would rather risk death than stay

Mr Magoo

2207: An unusual angle

In six answers the wordplay ignores an item. These items (two of them identical) are not listed as specific 27 of 22 in Chambers, unlike the other unclued entries.   Across   1    Extra thin pins cleaned up with this? (5) 6    One that’ll teach you a measure of warmth (8) 12    Hopes dashed with 31 restaurants (10, hyphened) 13    Horse runs into different one (9) 14    Allan Wells, perhaps, absent from racetrack? (4) 15    Censor adjusted EastEnders, essentially as seen on TV (8, hyphened) 16    Stick holds sack, calculating its volume? (6) 17    Problem when 22 for a group’s composition (5)