Society

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Every 73 seconds, police use snooping powers to access our personal records. Who’ll rein them in?

At its peak, the Stasi employed one agent for every 165 East Germans. Spying was a labour-intensive business then — you needed to monitor telephone calls, steam open mail, plant a bug, follow suspects on shopping trips and then write reports for the KGB. The advantage was that, human nature being what it is, the Stasi would probably succeed in gathering dirt on all but the most saintly. The drawback: trying to gather files on so many millions could almost bankrupt a government. How much easier it is nowadays. By interrogating someone’s mobile phone, the police can gather more information than the Stasi could dream of compiling. The modern smartphone

Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz’s diary: Keeping James Bond’s secrets for the Smersh of publishing

It was quite fun being named as the new writer of 007 — although actually I’d make a lousy spy. As my family knows, I’m hopeless at keeping secrets and I’ve found it almost impossible hanging on to this one for the past few months. Even now I’m forbidden to reveal the title, the story, the date it takes place or any of the characters… and I’ll probably get into trouble even for writing this. Believe me, Orion Books and their legal department are more sinister than Smersh. In fact I did quite well and only dropped one clue to someone who follows me on Twitter. He asked me what

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Can I run out on an apprenticeship for my dream interview?

Q. I have been trying to get an apprenticeship in fashion for over a year without success. I just had a day-long interview where I had to sew and cut and was employed on the spot. My problem is that a few hours later, I got the call to come in to be interviewed by a designer who has been my fashion idol since I was 15. He would be much cooler to work for. He may not offer me a job but it seems like a chance of a lifetime. How should I play this, Mary? —Name and address withheld A. Honour is all. ‘Employed on the spot’ means

The Spectator

Spectator letters: St Augustine and Louise Mensch, war votes and flannel

Faith and flexibility Sir: What a contrast in your two articles on religion last week: one liberal atheist parent (Claire Stevens) concerned about her son’s turn to conservative Islam, and one conservative Catholic (Louise Mensch) determined that her children understand her unbending fidelity to the tradition.  Ms Mensch’s problem is endemic throughout the western church, Catholic and Protestant alike: greater confidence in human sinfulness than in God’s forgiveness. Mrs Stevens’s problem is the opposite: a lack of confidence in her atheism. Brought up to believe in nothing, one is prone to believe in anything. At least if you bring a child up Christian, he can always choose to reject the

The Spectator

Dealing with trolls the Swedish way

How to deal with a troll In Scandinavian mythology, trolls were shady creatures who lived below ground and varied in size from giants (in Iceland) to dwarfs (in Sweden). They snatched infants and replaced them with baby trolls, or ‘changelings’, in an attempt to improve their breeding stock. They could, however, be tackled: — By leaving a knife on a baby’s cradle, the trolls being frightened of iron. — By ringing church bells constantly. — By baptising infants quickly, as trolls will not snatch those already christened. — By exposing them to sunlight. Hello, strangers Which European capitals have the highest and lowest percentages of foreigners in their populations? HIGHEST

Raymond Keene

Fabian strategy

Good news. Fabiano Caruana will be coming to London this December to participate in the sixth London Classic. This will be a great privilege for the London audience since Caruana is, in my opinion, now creating the best, most exciting, most aggressive and most accurate chess that we have seen since the glory days of Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov. In Standpoint’s current issue, Dominic Lawson, former editor of The Spectator, praises ‘Caruana’s astonishing and seemingly natural ability to calculate’ combined with his ‘immense aptitude for hard work’. This week’s game between Caruana and a former Fidé (World Chess Federation) champion ranks as one of the most impressive I have ever seen.

Raymond Keene

No. 335

White to play. This position is a variation from Aronian-Anand, Bilbao 2014. White needs a subtle move to complete the rout. Can you see it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 14 October 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 Qd8+ Last week’s winner Blanche White, Romford, Essex

Toby Young Toby Young

You’ll regret not having a Human Rights Act when Labour get back in

I’ve been thinking about the Conservative party’s proposal for a Bill of Rights and am finding it difficult to make up my mind. On the one hand, I like the idea of making the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom the ultimate guarantor of our human rights rather than the European Court. British judges are surely more reliable guardians of liberty than the jurists in Strasbourg. But on the other, I’m nervous about the rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights becoming less sacrosanct, particularly Article 10, which deals with freedom of expression. I’ll explain what I mean by that a little bit further down. Let’s start with

Taki

We’re still repeating the mistakes of the first world war

The time-honoured saying that England’s great battles have been won on the playing fields of Eton is a lot of hooey. Blücher was the real winner against Napoleon at Waterloo, and the only thing he said to Wellington after the battle was ‘Quelle affaire!’ (Hardly an Old Etonian expression.) England’s great battles have been won by some Old Etonians, to be sure, but the heavy lifting has been done by England’s allies, such as the Yanks in the first world war and the Russians in the second. If that ogre Woodrow Wilson had not sold his soul to the bankers and kept America out of the war, I am convinced

Dot Wordsworth

The fascinating history of dullness

At least I’ve got my husband’s Christmas present sorted out: the Dull Men of Great Britain calendar. It is no doubt intended ironically, as travelling the country photographing old pillar-boxes, for example, does not strike me as being in the least bit dull. I had thought that dull, in reference to people, was a metaphor from dull in the sense of ‘unshiny’. ‘Dieu de batailles!’ as the Constable of France in Henry V exclaims of the English, ‘where have they this mettle?/ Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull?’ But I was quite wrong, as so often. It started off (in the form dol) meaning ‘foolish’. In English almost as

The Spectator

There is a way to beat Ebola (and we’re already doing it)

There is something depressing about the fact that it has taken a sick Spanish nurse to put Ebola back on the front pages. Since the summer, some 3,400 West Africans have died, but interest in the story here had waned. So long as the disease did not make the nine-mile leap across the Straits of Gibraltar, the moat which keeps all nasty things from Africa at bay from fortress Europe, a sense developed that it could quietly be forgotten — or left to the aid charities. No longer. Spain’s public health authorities are investigating how a nurse who treated two missionaries in a Madrid hospital — who had contracted the

Jeremy Clarke

Karl Miller called me his ‘great white hope’. I failed him, of course

As I think I said in this column the other week, I used to sneak into English lectures at University College London, while officially studying at the School of Oriental and African Studies round the corner. I attended these lectures with such keenness and regularity that an English student called John Bradley, who now writes sometimes on Middle Eastern politics for this paper, one day asked me to contribute to the London Review — a UCL student literary magazine. I chose to review a handbook of ferret husbandry by the artisan hunter D. Brian Plummer, who was my favourite writer at the time. I’d never written anything other than school

Melissa Kite

Is New York ready for Cydney the spaniel (and her Facebook friends)?

As the maître d’ ushered me into the packed restaurant, I leaned in close and intoned softly, so as not to be heard by the elegant lady sitting nearby who was obviously my date, ‘I’m here to meet…’. And I nodded towards her as I said the name of my New York publisher. Yes, that’s right. New York. I’ve had fancy conference calls and everything. A lot of very bright Americans say a lot of lovely things to me down a phone line with a two second delay and I say ‘um’, and ‘oh, right’. And they sound confused that I don’t sound more excited by the prospect of a

Alexander Chancellor

Cooking I find easy and satisfying. Preparing microwave dinners, on the other hand…

When some years ago I stopped having to go to an office, mainly because nobody wanted me to go to one, I started to do quite a lot of cooking. I am no natural cook, but I had ambitions. I bought more and more cookery books — Jane Grigson, Elizabeth David, Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, that kind of thing — far more than I was ever going to consult. And as it turned out, I found myself relying mainly on just two books — Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking for Italian dishes, which are generally satisfying and quite simple to make, and, for similar reasons, on Delia Smith’s

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 9 October 2014

Has Zia Mahmood cried wolf one too many times? He’s still the undisputed master of the ‘psyche’ — he has an uncanny ability to know exactly how and when to make deceptive bids without running into large penalties like the rest of us. But he’s done it so often that many players are wary of him: he’s famously not a man to be trusted. Given this, Zia really needs to pick his victims with care. At the recent Cavendish Tournament in Monaco, he tried it on against the cheeky-faced Irish player Tom Hanlon (who, with Hugh McGann, has possibly the longeststanding bridge partnership in the world: 40 years). But the

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 9 October 2014

Home Alan Henning, 47, a British volunteer aid worker taken captive in Syria by Islamic State, was murdered, and footage of his death, which included an appearance by a man with an English accent nicknamed Jihadi John, was posted online. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said: ‘We will do all we can to hunt down these murderers and bring them to justice.’ Four men were arrested in London on suspicion of terror offences; MI5 sources suggested that the arrest might have ‘foiled the early stages’ of a planned attack. A 12-year-old girl in a wheelchair was saved from injury by her arm-braces when two men set a pit bull dog

Columba

2183: Group theory

Each of 31 clues comprises a definition and a hidden consecutive jumble of the answer including one extra letter; the extras spell five words of a quotation in ODQ. The quotation’s next three words, identifying two groups, form an unclued light. Remaining clues are of the same type, but without extra letters in the jumbles; initial letters of these clues spell the author’s surname, which is an unclued light. Three unclued lights belong to one of the groups, and three unclued lights (one of which consists of two words) belong to the other.   Across   9    Depict broken home (4) 11    Fruit seller chops up dates (10) 12

Columba

To 2180: Superfluous

FURBELOWS — given by initial letters of superfluous words in clues — can be read as FUR BELOW S, indicating the unclued lights in each of four columns in the grid. First prize F.J. Bentley, Tiverton, Devon Runners-up Bertie Ledward, London SW11; M. Taylor, Eskbank, Midlothian

Philip Sidney

Grayson Perry has a pitiably phalloscopic perspective

Calm down, dears: the strange coughing noise that was heard across Britain at around 8.30 yesterday morning was not the last gasp of an exhausted Mother Earth, nor was it the harbinger of a country-wide Ebola outbreak. No, it was simply the sound of nation’s middle-aged, middle-class men choking on their cornflakes while listening to Grayson Perry being rude about them on the Today programme. Perry was appearing to promote his guest edition of the New Statesman, proudly entitled the ‘Great White Male Issue’. That issue is the subject of Perry’s lead article, which tackles the Default Man – a shorthand term for the straight white middle-aged males who oppress