Society

Martin Vander Weyer

Switch over to the Greek debt drama: the final episode must be coming shortly

Bored with the election? Switch over to the Greek debt drama. In this week’s cliffhanger, silver-tongued finance minister Yanis Varoufakis visited IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Sunday, promised to meet his country’s obligations ‘ad infinitum’, and was expected to meet a €450 million repayment to the IMF on Thursday. But more troublesome members of the ruling Syriza party denounced the IMF and Brussels for treating Greece as ‘a colony’, threatening a snap election ‘if creditors insist on an inflexible line’, and warning that public-sector salaries and social security payments must rank ahead of debt as cash runs out. Which it will before August. Greece’s tax collections are so feeble, its

James Delingpole

I went looking for a used car – and found my inner boy racer

A bit late, I know, to put in a bid for Jeremy Clarkson’s old job. But I think I might just accidentally have rediscovered my inner petrolhead. What happened was this. We’d just replaced our old sensible family car (a Ford Mondeo) with another sensible family car (a Skoda Yeti), only to realise that it just wasn’t enough. If you live in the country you really need at least two cars. The question was: what type should it be? Well, there are all sorts of cars I would like to own — the one I covet most of all being one of those evil-bastard Range Rovers, preferably the sport model with Kenneth

Mary Wakefield

Original sin makes us better people. I wish Muslims believed in it

These days, on the subject of Islam, non-Muslims have mostly divided into two camps — though there’s a little wandering about between the tents. Camp one says Islam is a religion of peace, and points for proof to the millions of non-violent Muslims around the world. Warlike Muslims are an anomaly, they say, and fight not because they are religious but because they are politicised. Bad guys like Isis aren’t Muslims so much as Islamists, which is different. Most politicians and public figures belong to this camp, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. Camp two is more furtive. Members look around before they speak. In this gang, sotto voce, everyone agrees

Consequences

In Competition No. 2892 you were invited to submit an irregular quatrain in which you bring together two people from the world of the arts and then add a couplet describing the consequences. 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. Other popular couplings included Wendy Cope and Alexander Pope; Salvador Dalì and Bob Marley; Horace and William Morris; and Mel Gibson and Henrik Ibsen.

Brendan O’Neill

Trans activists are effectively experimenting on children. Could there be anything more cruel?

Can you think of anything more cruel than telling a five-year-old boy who likes Lady Gaga that he might have gender dysphoria? Or telling a nine-year-old tomboy who hates Barbie and loves Beckham that she might really be male – in spirit – and therefore she should think about putting off puberty and possibly transitioning to her ‘correct gender’? Saying such things to kids who are only doing what kids have done for generations – messing about, discovering their identity – turns playfulness into a pathology. It convinces boys who aren’t boyish and girls who aren’t girly that they must have some great gender problem, a profound inner turmoil that

The Iran deal heralds a new era for US policy across the Middle East

What is it about a nuclear deal with Iran that induces hysteria in certain quarters of the West?  In recent weeks, editors at both the New York Times and the Washington Post have seen fit to run op-eds calling for preemptively bombing Iran, apparently under the impression that preventive war has not yet received a fair shake.  Sure, Iraq didn’t work out, but why quit now?  By ensuring that the American people and their leaders do not overlook the possibility of giving war one more chance in Iran, these newspapers are presumably performing a public service.    In the Times, John Bolton, Dr. Strangelove with an unkempt moustache, describes a situation on ‘the brink of

The Spectator at war: Righting wrong

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 10 April 1915: With much satisfaction we record that Mrs. Johnson, formerly of Redhill and now of Old Town, Croydon, has been awarded by the Home Office £500 compensation for eighteen months’ wrongful imprisonment. This unhappy woman was wrongly convicted in October, 1912, and July, 1913, of writing threatening letters. The letters have since been clearly traced to another person. Her husband and family were compelled to leave their former home, and were reduced almost to destitution. The compensation is none too large after two and a half years of agony, but we congratulate the Home Office warmly upon having done the just

Ed West

Kids love fairy tales. This doesn’t mean they must be taught about transgender politics

If the NUT didn’t exist it would be necessary for a latter-day Michael Wharton to invent it. This week the teaching union is having its congress where, among other things, it’s pushing for the government to install an anti-Section 28; a rule stating that schools are required to teach positive examples of same-sex relationships as part of sex education. I always thought Section 28 was a bad idea because it was not Westminster’s job to tell individual schools and teachers what to think. I imagined that schools would know how best to guide their pupils through these difficult years of confusion. But for some people the principle behind Section 28 was wonderful; they’re

Snowden now faces the traitor’s fate – worship from hipsters and Hollywood

New York Brooklyn is the hipster heaven of New York, which is perhaps why it was there that a bust of Edward Snowden was unveiled yesterday.  Not that it stayed long.  The bust of the former National Security Agency contractor was put on a pedestal sometime on Monday with the word ‘Snowden’ glued on the base at the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument at Fort Greene Park.  It was taken down a few hours later by parks and recreation employees. I don’t want to read too much into this, but the brief deification and bringing down of Snowden’s image does seem apposite.  When the Snowden leaks were first publicised the left-wing

The Spectator at war: Three month suspension

From ‘A Possible Compromise’, The Spectator, 10 April 1915: If the Government have not the courage to adopt total prohibition, then we reluctantly suggest the following plan. Let the Cabinet adopt the policy of the suspension of the sale of all intoxicants for three months—say from April 20th till July 20th. Such suspension would cover what, as far as we can see, must be the crisis of the war. It would cover also the period when climatic conditions give less excuse for the use of stimulants, though at the same time they increase the temptation to drink on the purely physical ground of thirst. Speaking generally, people drink more in

Being a bit fat can be healthy. But the medical profession doesn’t want us to know

A GP called Malcolm Kendrick has written a book about politically correct manipulation of medical data – and has cropped up in the Independent highlighting the medical profession’s unwillingness to share research suggesting that being a bit fat makes you live longer. Here are two key paragraphs: Despite the fact that study after study has demonstrated quite clearly that ‘overweight’ people live the longest, no one can bring themselves to say: ‘Sorry, we were wrong. A BMI between 25 and 29 is the healthiest weight of all. For those of you between 20 and 25, I say, eat more, become healthier.’ Who would dare say such a thing? Not anyone with tenure

Bored teenagers are the last people we should be forcing to vote

One of the trendy things to worry about these days is political disengagement among young people. A think tank called the Institute for Public Policy Research is so worried it’s suggested people be forced to vote in the first election after their 18th birthday. They say political apathy among the young is undermining democracy, but their solution is rather perverse. People who are so bored by thinking about the future of the country that they can’t be bothered to vote are the last people we should be consulting on the next government; frankly it’s a relief that so many of the least competent voters keep themselves away from the polling

How a weird medieval recipe is fighting superbugs

Medieval medicine doesn’t have a great reputation, it’s fair to say. But one of its recipes may help us tackle the great curse of 21st-century disease control – the growing ineffectiveness of antibiotics. In April 2014, the World Health Organisation warned that we were entering a ‘post-antibiotic era’, an age in which drug resistance could render routine infections deadly. We do seem to be entering this age rapidly; the news is relentless. Now the US Centres for Disease Control are warning that a multidrug-resistant strain of food poisoning, the eerily named Shigella, has reached American shores from abroad. Indeed, physicians and scientists are surprised at how quickly pathogens have been adapting

The doom and gloom of the unions shows how out of touch they are with teachers

From school places to behaviour to teacher training, the teaching unions have excelled themselves with their doom and gloom pronouncements at their conferences this weekend about the state of our schools.  We shouldn’t be surprised, there is, afterall, an election coming up and we all know where the union leaderships’ loyalty lies. But these conferences have simply served to highlight one thing – that the gulf between the leadership of the classroom unions and their members is wider than ever before. Because the unions’ depressing portrait isn’t what I see when I look at England’s schools today. The first commitment I made as Education Secretary was to get out of Westminster

Fraser Nelson

Osborne and Miliband compete to see who has the worst housing policy

So who is talking more nonsense about the housing market: George Osborne or Ed Miliband? From today’s newspapers, it’s hard to tell. The problem: the era of low interest rates has fuelled an asset boom. Perhaps an asset bubble. Property prices are soaring to ridiculous levels, unaffordable for anyone without money in their family. This causes real despair for young people. So what to do? Ed Miliband’s solution: he’ll ‘harness’ (by which he means ‘divert’) money put into first-time buyer ISAs into housebuilding. This policy could only have been devised by a bunch of academics who don’t understand markets. The whole point of ISAs is that people can invest money wherever they like:

Damian Thompson

We don’t think of highly gifted people as mentally disabled. Perhaps we should

I’m intrigued by this recent study suggesting that intellectual gifts and learning disabilities, far from lying on opposite ends of a spectrum of intelligence, sometimes go hand in hand. Intrigued, but not surprised. Very bright people can be odd – we all know that. The eccentric genius is one of the clichés of history and fiction. But it’s rooted in observation. One thinks of wild-haired Oxford dons at high table, singing music hall songs in iambic pentameter while spraying their neighbours in Brown Windsor soup. Or the story of a distinguished academic banned from dining in his own college after – so legend has it – reinforcing his argument about the intellectual failings of women

James Forsyth

Britain might want a holiday from history, but we’re not going to get one

The more I think about the debate on Thursday night, the more I think it was a disgrace that there was no question on either defence or Britain’s role in the world. This country might want a holiday from history. But, sadly, we don’t look like getting one on. On Europe’s Eastern border, the Russians are behaving in an increasingly aggressive fashion. The Times’ account of a recent meeting between ex-intelligence officials from Russia and the US shows just how bellicose Putin is and reveal that Britain might well soon have to decide whether to honour its Nato Article 5 obligations to the Baltic states. On Europe’s Southern border, Islamic

From Russia with love | 2 April 2015

In the James Bond film From Russia with Love there is an evil mastermind named Kronsteen. The character is in some ways based on the Russian chess genius David Bronstein, and the chess game ‘from the Venice International Tournament’ that forms the backdrop to the opening sequence is taken from a game between Bronstein and Boris Spassky. A new book by Steve Giddins, Bronstein Move by Move (Everyman Chess), gives a superb insight into the creative processes of the chessboard colossus through a series of deeply annotated games. This week’s game and notes are based on those in this highly rewarding and entertaining book. Botvinnik-Bronstein; World Championship Moscow (Game 17)

No. 356

White to play. This position is a variation from Bronstein-Zilberstein, Tbilisi 1973. Bronstein has just given up a piece on d5 but has a clever tactical idea in mind. Can you see the key move? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 7 April or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. The winner will be 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 … Na3+ Last week’s winner Graham Baker, Campsea Ashe, Suffolk