Society

Saturday

Daniel Mael

In defence of Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Max Blumenthal has made a name for himself as a Jew whose main bete noire is the Jewish state. Preferring fairy tales to facts and evidence, Blumenthal paints a picture of a Nazi-esque, evil incarnate (and completely fictitious) Israel. Now, not content with defaming Israel, Blumenthal has moved on to defending Islam against one of its bravest critics in a long and mendacious hit-piece entitled “Exposing Anti-Islam Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Latest Deception.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born refugee, overcame a patriarchal upbringing in a Somali Muslim family, during the course of which she was subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) and a forced marriage. She sought asylum in the Netherlands and

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Muslims, Jews and Christians use identical twins to ‘prove’ homosexuality isn’t genetic

The subject of identical twins has been on my mind ever since I read a magnificently creepy thriller called Ice Twins by SK Treymayne – a pseudonym meant to sound like a woman, but it fact belonging to the novelist Sean Thomas. I read it because Thomas is in the new Spectator Life explaining how the pressures of the market push the writers of psychological thrillers towards female-sounding names – so he (sort of) turned into a woman to make Ice Twins a bestseller, which it duly became. The book is tightly plotted, meticulously researched and I urge you read it – but what grabbed my attention was the subject of that research:

Friday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Jeremy Clarkson and the Political Correctness of the Right

One of the many delusions of the Right is the myth of conservative robustness. Conservatives don’t play the victim card, they say. They tell it like it is, and don’t care who knows it. They stand on their own two feet, and take it on the chin. They have guts and backbone too. It’s easy to mock the anatomical clichés, but middle-class leftists should worry. Millions of people are about to vote for Ukip, in part because they resent a modern version of Victorian prudery that has stopped robust debate, and allowed sharp-eared heresy hunters to patrol the nation’s language. If fellow citizens are prejudiced, then there is indeed a

Sebastian Payne

Listen: The Spectator’s verdict on the Cameron/Miliband Q&A

According to the snap polls, David Cameron was victorious in the first TV ‘debate’ — but Ed Miliband didn’t do too badly either. In this View from 22 podcast special, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the televised Q&A session with Cameron and Miliband yesterday evening. Did the Labour leader exceed expectations? How did the Prime Minister cope with an interrogation from Jeremy Paxman, as well as questions from the audience? And what affect, if any, will the outcome have on the election campaign? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer or iPhone every week, or you can use the player below:

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

America declares war on e-cigarettes. But it’s an ideological battle, not a medical one

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have launched a wildly expensive campaign against e-cigarettes because… well, I can’t really work out their logic, but the sickly aroma of liberal puritanism is unmistakeable. The medical arguments are risible. The Wall Street Journal reports: Print and radio ads starting Monday target e-cigarette users who continue to smoke traditional cigarettes. They depict an e-cigarette user named Kristy alongside a caption that reads: ‘I started using e-cigarettes but kept smoking. Right up until my lung collapsed.’ So it was vaping that caused Kirsty’s lung to collapse, was it? Nope: it was smoking cigarettes. Of which she did less because she also vaped, but

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: The polite pirate

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 27 March 1915: On Friday the Admiralty announced that they bad good reason to believe that the German submarine ‘U29’ bad been sunk with all hands. The vessel was commanded by Captain Weddigen, who sank three British cruisers at the be- ginning of the war, and who on March 12th, when off the Scilly Islands, destroyed three trading ships. Captain Weddigen, for the courtesy he displayed to his victims, earned the name of the “Polite Pirate.” He not only expressed his regret at having to sink merchant ships, but entertained the crews and towed their boats some distance towards the land. He was

Thursday

The Spectator

A censored hymn to motorway misery

Service record The government is to form a design panel to improve motorway services stations. These have not always charmed the British public, not least the very first: Watford Gap services, which opened in 1959 on the same day as the first stretch of the M1. — It quickly became a night-time haunt of rock stars travelling between gigs, but not all were impressed by the food. In 1977 the folk singer Roy Harper recorded a track on his Bullinamingvase album called ‘Watford Gap’ and containing the lyrics: ‘…And the people came to worship on their death-defying wheels,/ fancy-dressed as shovels for their death-defying meals…Watford Gap, Watford Gap, a plate

Taki

Make no mistake: the Top Gear brouhaha is cultural warfare

It’s a famous quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one that Elton John should ponder (when he’s not out shopping, that is): ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.’ Mind you, Elton John is a hysterical, spoilt, ugly fat man who thinks his opinions count. (Perhaps they do with non-talents such as Liz Hurley and Victoria Beckham.) I now know who Dolce & Gabbana are because of the row over children conceived by IVF and surrogacy, and they seem like nice billionaires, except they threw in the towel right away

Jeremy Clarke

Football in front, infibulation behind

I’m watching Manchester City being taken to the cleaners by Barcelona on the telly, while at the table behind me my Parisian feminist intellectual hostess Natalie is discussing female genital mutilation with her Malian girlfriend Fatou. Football in front, infibulation behind. Fatou: ‘It goes without saying: how can you say that female genital mutilation is not a disgusting and barbaric practice? How, in this day and age, can a woman allow herself to be oppressed in this medieval fashion? The practice is pure evil. The suffering of those little girls is impossible to imagine: infections, gangrene, septicaemia, cysts, fistulae, perpetual bleeding. And in the name of what? It is not

Dot Wordsworth

Where ‘poop’ came from

Danny Alexander recounted in the Diary last week his daughter’s efforts in making unicorn poop. This is something of a historic marker. Most members of the cabinet in previous generations have been unforthcoming on faecal matters, particularly when it comes to comestibles. In other countries there is less reticence. In Catalonia, Christmas isn’t Christmas without the Caga Tió, a log that is encouraged to defecate sweetmeats by being hit with a stick during the singing of a traditional song. ‘Shit, log, shit turrón, hazelnuts and cream cheese,’ it goes. ‘If you don’t shit well, I’ll give you a whack with the stick.’ This seems a good metaphor for Treasury attitudes

Melissa Kite

I gave the blasted Paltrow method a go and allowed a bit of conscious uncoupling to creep in

The builder boyfriend has a new girlfriend. I suppose he was bound to move on eventually. I just never thought he would move on this quickly. From the day I told him, in the traditional female way, that it really wasn’t working and never would work because of things that were entirely his fault, to the moment I heard he had a new squeeze, I would say it was three weeks tops. She’s nearly ten years younger than me. And, by the sound of it, a deal better off. Good for him. If I could have traded him in for a younger, richer model I might have. But we’ll never

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 26 March 2015

Q. When sending wedding invitations, does one put the full titles on the card, or can one just put, for example, Jane and John having addressed the envelope to Mr and Mrs John Smith? Isn’t it strange that all one’s old wedding invitations are nowhere to hand when one needs them? I would really appreciate your advice. — K.T., Sherborne, Dorset A. I have it from the highest authority that these days first names on the cards themselves are perfectly acceptable. Q. A client whose wife has left him invited me to dinner at his new flat. He presented me with three fairly disgusting courses, all ‘cooked’ by himself, one

Alexander Chancellor

Be different, be original: that’s what makes a popular politician

I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like being a political leader. I find this difficult because I would be so utterly ill suited to the role. I’m too lazy, too disorganised and too undisciplined to be remotely credible at it. But the area in which I would fail most completely would be in the projection of a suitable image. Not only would I be incapable of saying the right things at the right time; I don’t have the appearance or bearing or dress sense to convey calm, self-confidence and authority. I suppose you could say much the same of Adolf Hitler were it not for his gift

Toby Young Toby Young

How (and why) we lie to ourselves about opinion polls

A strange ritual takes place on Twitter most evenings at around 10.30 p.m. Hundreds of political anoraks start tweeting the results of the YouGov daily tracker poll due to be published in the following day’s Sun. Some of them are neutrals, but the majority are politically aligned and will only tweet those results that show their party in front. I often wonder what the point of this is, even though I’m guilty of it myself. It’s not as if anyone is going to see the tweet and say, ‘Ooh, I wasn’t going to vote Conservative, but now that YouGov has them two points ahead I’ve changed my mind.’ I can think

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 26 March 2015

Janet de Botton and I decided to spice things up a bit at the Young Chelsea heat of the nationwide Portland Pairs on Sunday by having a small bet about which of us would do better. She was partnering the fiery Thor-Erik Hoftaniska and I was partnering the unflappable Phil King. When Janet began surging ahead, I bemoaned my fate to another of the players — Nicola Smith (multiple world champion). She told me that many years ago, she’d had a similar bet with the bridge writer Alan Hiron. Alan had actually done poorly, but at the end he filled out a new scorecard of perfect scores — and showed

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 26 March 2015

Home David Cameron, who was cutting up lettuce in his kitchen, told James Landale of the BBC that he would not seek a third term as Prime Minister, even if he secured a second. Mr Cameron was heckled the next day by pensioners at an Age UK conference. He had mentioned Theresa May, George Osborne and Boris Johnson as possible successors. Mrs May, the Home Secretary, made a speech promising action against extremists, such as the use of ‘closure orders’ against premises (such as mosques) used by extremists, and a ‘positive campaign to promote British values’. Afzal Amin resigned as the Conservative candidate for the Dudley North constituency after allegations that

Harry Mount

Harry Mount’s diary: Class war with classicists and wisdom from Brian Sewell

I never knew classicists could be so scary! Last week I wrote a Telegraph article saying classics exams had been dumbed down. It followed the news that Camden School for Girls — the last comprehensive in the country to teach Greek A-level — is planning to drop the subject in September. Soon after, the classics trolls came a-calling, on Facebook’s Classics International forum. The insults were impressively high-minded. A classics student at King’s College London called me an ‘antediluvian ape’. A classics teacher at Durham Sixth Form Centre predicted my next book would be ‘bowel-achingly derivative’. My kind former tutor, Professor Greg Woolf, disagreed with my argument but flatteringly suggested

Raymond Keene

Caro can

The Caro-Kann Defence, 1 e4 c6, has always appealed to me. It has the advantage of staking a claim in the centre by means of … d5, without the disadvantages of the Centre Counter (1 e4 d5) which brings out Black’s queen prematurely, or the French Defence (1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5), which locks in the black queen’s bishop. A new book by Jovanka Houska, Opening Repertoire: The Caro-Kann (Everyman), details Black’s strategies against the dangerous Advance Variation, while in the main line she recommends the early development of Black’s queen’s bishop, as in the following game.   Tal-Keene; Simultaneous Exhibition 1964; Caro-Kann Defence   1 e4 c6 2

Raymond Keene

No. 355

Black to play. This position is a variation from Ganguly-Vitiugov, Gibraltar 2014. The game started as a Caro-Kann and is mentioned in Houska’s book. Although Black is a pawn down he has very active pieces he can exploit with a clever tactic. Can you see it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Monday 30 March or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7961 0058. The winner will be the first correct answer out of a hat, and each week I am offering a prize of £20.   Last week’s solution 1 Kh1 Last week’s winner Robin Murfin, Lyme Regis, Dorset

Columba

2204: Security

In nine clues, cryptic indications omit reference to parts of answers; these parts must be highlighted, to reveal a definition applicable to each of the five members of the perimeter cordon, reading clockwise, and two unclued lights. Letters in corner squares and those adjacent to them could make TEAM NEAR GAPS. Two of the perimeter’s occupants are hyphened, one doubly so.   Across 11    Whip stopped receiving resistance (5) 12    Hateful person answering poster? (4) 13    Drive back vicious brute (5) 14    Clubs run into trouble with a new synthetic fibre (7) 15    Vehicle is, in general, grand blessing (10) 17    Period of excitement