Society

Jonathan Ray

April Wine Club II

When I was pondering a theme for this week’s offer with Mark Cronshaw, operations director of The Wine Company, he sucked his teeth, stared into the distance and came up with a brainwave: why not simply offer The Wine Company’s best-sellers? Wines that have been tried, tested and loved by their customers, but offered with special discounts for Spectator readers only. A fine plan, I said — depending, of course, on the quality of the wines and the generosity of the discounts. Well, I’ve tasted them and they’re an excellent, well-varied bunch, whittled down to six from The Wine Company’s top dozen sellers — a surprisingly tricky task. And MC’s

Hugo Rifkind

Warning: you may be about to vote for more than one government

For the last five years, I’ve been trying to get people interested in the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. No, don’t sidle away. Honestly, this is The Spectator. Aren’t you meant to be into this sort of thing? It’s not as though we’re on a date, for God’s sake. It’s not like we’re in a restaurant and the starter has just come, and I’m droning on about the threshold for a vote of no confidence, and you’re draining your third huge glass of red and thinking, ‘This guy looked waaaay more fun on Tinder. Next time I go to the loo I’m climbing out the window.’ That’s not how it is.

The real winners (and losers) of the Tory right-to-buy scheme

Much dust was kicked up by the Conservative pledge to widen right-to-buy to housing association tenants. How dare the Tories offer six-figure discounts on homes that don’t belong to them? Or so the housing chiefs thundered, amid threats to mire the idea in a costly court battle. But as the dust settles, how much of that anger is justified? Will the idea seriously harm the landlords to most of the nation’s social housing tenants? The first thing to note is that much of the initial anger was poorly directed. Housing chiefs were caught somewhat off-guard by a surprise pledge to compensate them for the six-figure discounts. This financial twist – not extended to local authorities – undermined

Lawyers, journalists, chefs, bankers, doctors – the robots are coming for your jobs next

At the Hannover Messe robotics fair in Germany yesterday, UK company Mobey Robotics launched the world’s first robot chef, capable of watching and mimicking the kitchen skills of a human chef and recreating them with superhuman consistency. There is already a restaurant in Soho with touch-screen tables where you can place your order and pay your bill, and restaurants in Japan where robotic waiters serve food. As these new technologies become cheaper and more widely available, they are likely to replace the need for human labour in restaurants altogether. If you find this a bit unlikely, remember that we’ve already accepted robots at the supermarket checkout, the airport check-in, the

The Spectator at war: Germany’s unimpressive air raids

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: The chief event, or rather sensation, of the week has been the German aircraft raids—first on the Tyne on Wednesday, and then on Thursday over Lowestoft and Malden and other parts of South Suffolk and North Essex. Both raids were quite futile. The raid on the Tyne caused no lose of life and very little destruction of property, and yet nearly thirty bombs were dropped I The accounts of the second raid are very meagre, but apparently the results were equally poor. In the case of the Tyne the small amount of damage was no doubt due to the fact

Apple and IBM may just have changed the future of personalised medicine

As the FT reports, Apple and IBM have got into bed together. The deal they’ve struck has major implications for the growing number of people using wearable tech (and indeed mobile phones) to monitor their health. Here are the details. IBM has entered into partnership with Apple and other manufacturers of medical devices to make health data from wearable tech available to doctors and insurers. One outcome will be personalised treatments for diabetics. But that’s only part of the picture. This is how it will work. If you’re self-monitoring your heart rate, calories and cholesterol levels – as more and more of us are – you will now be able to

View from 22 podcast special: the Conservative manifesto

In a View from 22 podcast special, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the implications of the Conservative manifesto, which was announced today. You can read the full manifesto here and Isabel’s snap reaction here. Will Tory promises on issues such as childcare, housing and income tax be enough to convince voters that they are still better off under a Conservative government? Is Cameron adopting a more hardline approach when it comes to Islamic State? And is it now time for Cameron to take to the streets to meet the real people of Britain? As Isabel says, it feels a lot like Ed Miliband is more eager to win this election right now. You can

Steerpike

The Queen suggests that cricket Tests are a man’s game

When Charlotte Edwards collected her CBE today from the Queen for services to cricket, the acclaimed sportswoman and current captain of the England women’s cricket team, got slightly more than she bargained for. Her Majesty used the meeting as an opportunity to let her feelings be known on the appropriate length of cricket matches for all-female teams compared with all-male teams. Speaking with Edwards, the Queen allegedly said that men were better suited to the longer format of matches than women: Although some social media users were quick to take offence at Her Majesty’s ‘sexist’ suggestion that women can’t cope as well as men at test matches, she does at least have history on her

Fraser Nelson

Extending right-to-buy is Cameron’s big bazooka. But will it work?  

Just a few weeks ago, David Cameron had not decided whether to extend right-to-buy to a further 1.3 million families in housing association homes. The  idea, from Iain Duncan Smith, was relatively new and carried risks. As all radical policies do – but you can see why Cameron would be worried about this one. Imagine two men, who work next to each other in a factory. One rents privately, the other rents from a housing association and is now offered a massive discount to buy his house: up to £102,700 if he’s in London, £77,000 outside it. He’s is over the moon: his capital gain would  be more than he’d be able to save in a decade

Fraser Nelson

In defence of the 1 per cent: a Spectator debate

Ed Miliband’s manifesto can be boiled down to the simple act of shaking his fist at the wealthy. Yes, the super-rich can be annoying – but they are also super-taxpayers. Those at the top should shoulder their fair share, Miliband said today. But he didn’t give any figures: if he did, his argument would collapse. The best-paid 1 per cent pay 25 per cent of the income tax: that’s what I call a fair share. And for those who are serious about fairness, it’s a sign that our society has got something right. The super-wealthy are also super-taxpayers. The best-paid 0.1 per cent pay almost twice as much income tax as the lower-paid 50 per cent.  So wealthy

Steerpike

Tom Bower finds a safe venue for his Richard Desmond pep talk

After Mr S broke the news last month that staff at the Express offices who were concerned about redundancy were to be offered a pep talk from Tom Bower on how to deal with their proprietor Richard Desmond, the offer was revoked as Bower was refused permission to enter the building. Happily, Express staff fearing the axe will now have a fresh chance to discover the inner workings of Desmond’s mind from Bower, who has spent years working on an unauthorised biography of the media mogul. Bower, who Desmond previously launched an unsuccessful libel case against, will lead a panel of speakers for a talk on World Press Freedom day which will take place at Headland House in Holborn: ‘Tom

How taxing their benefits could help people with disabilities

Close your eyes for a moment and place an image in your mind of the sort of person who needs to claim state benefit for their disability. The most common picture is someone almost destitute, reliant on the benefit just to function in their day to day life, likely to be claiming a multitude of other entitlements; the sort of person who won’t ever be able to derive a normal income. Whisper it: the majority of people claiming Disability Living Allowance are the sharp elbowed middle classes, with incomes placing them in the top half of those in the UK. Amongst pensioners, arguably those who need the most help with their

James Forsyth

Tories try to use their lead on the economy to bolster their position on the NHS

The Tories believe that their record in government and their lead on economic competence means that they can set out spending commitments without having to set out precisely how they would pay for them. George Osborne’s interview on Marr this morning was a demonstration of this strategy. Challenged repeatedly over where the £8 billion for the NHS that he and Cameron pledged yesterday would come from, Osborne simply pointed out that they have managed to increase the amount of money going into the health service every year over the last five years despite having to make significant spending cuts. However much it infuriates their opponents, I suspect that this Tory

Spectator competition: When Ogden Nash met Johnny Cash (plus: brunch with Byron?)

The latest brief was to submit irregular quatrains that bring together two people from the world of the arts and finish on a couplet describing the consequences. Popular couplings included Wendy Cope and Alexander Pope; Salvador Dalì and Bob Marley; Horace and William Morris; and Mel Gibson and Henrik Ibsen. Two competitors paired Tolkien and Graham Greene, with not dissimilar results. Here’s D.A. Prince: If J.R.R. Tolkien met Graham Greene would a hobbit’s story become The Power and The Glory? And take two from Virginia Price Evans: Had J.R.R. Tolkien Met Graham Greene, The Hobbit’s lair Might have been the end of the affair. This one drew the crowds and

The Spectator at war: Friendship and the war

From ‘Friendship and the War’, The Spectator, 10 April 1915: WE are all losing our friends. This is true in a tragic sense, because our friends are dying in battle. But there is a lighter sense in which it is true also, and which is also connected with the war. There is so much work to be done that there seems to be no time for keeping up with old friends, let alone for making new ones. Besides being busy, everybody is obsessed by new emotions, and cannot pay attention; and besides that, the mental strain of eight months’ war is beginning to tell, and we are all rather on edge. Anyhow,

An anti-cricketer’s tribute to Richie Benaud, a cricketing great who radiated televisual decency

Cricket-captain-turned-cricket-commentator Richie Benaud died in Sydney this morning. He would have been 85 next October.  That last pair of sentences contains, believe it or not, two of the most crucial facts in modern Australian history. As of the last (2011) census, approximately 24 million people lived in Australia. It is a fair bet that (whatever the Fourth Estate supposes) fully two-thirds of them would struggle to remember – on the optimistic assumption of their ever having known – who Malcolm Fraser was, or who Gough Whitlam was. (From the mere fact that voting at Australian elections is compulsory, it need not follow that voting at Australian elections is literate.) But

The Spectator at war: The possibilities of thrift

From ‘The Possibilities of Thrift’, The Spectator, 10 April 1915: IT has, perhaps, not yet been sufficiently realized that the country is passing through what may almost be called an economic revolution. Large numbers of the working classes who, let it be frankly admitted, were often underpaid are now in receipt of incomes which, in comparison with their previous earnings, must almost be described as princely. The husband, who by the nature of the case in a working-class family is the greatest consumer, has gone to the front, and the wife finds herself in possession of a larger income than before, while she is relieved of the principal burden upon

Polymath

I learn from The Problemist, the organ of the British Chess Problem Society, that the polymath Dr Jacob Bronowski also composed chess problems. According to the article I read, Bronowski was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1908, grew up in Germany and then became an undergraduate at Jesus College, Cambridge. He was a mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatrical author, poet and inventor, and of course is most celebrated as the author and presenter of the 1973 BBC TV series The Ascent of Man. The puzzle in Diagram 1 composed by Bronowski. This puzzle is a reflex mate which is a variant of the self-mate theme. In a self-mate White must

No. 357

Black to play. This is from Cochrane-Staunton, London 1842. How did Staunton exploit his menacing build up of pieces on the kingside? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 14 April or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7681 3773. 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 h7+ Last week’s winner Dennis Brierly, Falmouth, Cornwall

Letters | 9 April 2015

In defence of Catholicism Sir: Michael Gove gives an excellent defence of Christianity (4 April), but his embarrassment about the Roman Catholic part of the story is unnecessary. He writes of his discomfort as, declaring oneself to be a Christian, ‘You stand in the tradition of the Inquisition, the Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits who made South America safe for colonisation … the Christian Brothers who presided over forced adoptions’. The Inquisitions (Papal, Spanish and Portuguese) were indeed shameful, but were often as ineffective as the governments that supported them. The Counter-Reformation was a great movement of spiritual and cultural renewal that altered and improved western civilisation. Jesuits, and other religious orders,