The key phrase is KNOW WHERE THE SHOE PINCHES (12 38 43). Each of the partially indicated answers is pinched by a shoe, creating entries at 1D, 20, 21, 24 and 29; definitions of these are at 30, 14, 26, 42 and 15. First prize D.G. Page, Orpington, Kent Runners-up Gerry Fairweather, Layer Marney, Essex; Anthony Harker, Oxford
Andrew Norfolk, the Times journalist that blew open the Rotherham child abuse scandal, can sleep well in his bed tonight, for he has been completely vindicated now. Forget the Jay Report, and the resignation of the Leader of Rotherham Council. No, Norfolk has been blessed with great reward from a far higher power; from the the fathers of the nation: Hacked Off. The campaign for regulation of the press have released a statement praising this Murdoch stooge: ‘Hacked Off Executive Director Joan Smith said: “This is investigative journalism at its best. Andrew Norfolk has uncovered a dreadful story of abuse, in Rotherham and elsewhere, which has been ignored or brushed aside
At a time when politics resembles a bad soap opera, it’s easy to despair about the ability of government to change anything for the better. But as the Queen pointed out in her 2010 UN address, the best changes in society tend not to come from governments but from society more broadly. Anyone concerned about social mobility need not wait for government to act: there are changes that, if you’re reading this blog, you are probably able to make. You might be a position of influence, or have the ear of someone who is. That’s why this year, as last year, The Spectator is not asking its readers to offer money to
999, what’s your emergency? This time, it’s one right at the heart of the ambulance service, as Mary Wakefield reveals in this week’s Spectator. Paramedics are fleeing and needless calls are mounting. But why is the government refusing to take notice? And why are paramedics being denied the respect they deserve? Mary discusses her findings in this week’s podcast with Fraser Nelson and Julia Manning, chief executive of 2020Health. The Prime Minister heads off on Saturday to Brussels for one of his least favourite events: the European Union summit. In her column, Isabel Hardman suggests that EU summits haven’t been kind to Cameron, and that things aren’t about to change.
I can’t blame bigwigs in the NHS for the meltdown of our 999 service. It’s fundamentally our own fault that the service we depend on to save our lives is breaking down. We call 999 at the slightest sniffle, which means paramedics and ambulance drivers find it impossible to keep up. They’re run ragged trying both to respond to every call and hit the government’s response time targets. What I can blame the bigwigs for (by which I mean senior management in the NHS London Ambulance Services) and do in this week’s Spectator cover story, is that they have responded to the crisis in a catastrophically counterproductive way, with the result that their
‘News of the Week’ in The Spectator, 29 August 1914: THERE is cause for manly anxiety, there is cause for stern determination; above all, there is cause for unflagging energy in military preparation; but there is no cause for despair, or even for despondency. If the effort of will is maintained by the nation, and if good sense, courage, and the calmness not of fatalism but of resolution strung to the very last point remain ours, we must win. We say this in no boasting spirit; but because time is with us and against our enemies. Those who fight with the sense that all is lost unless they can win
It was poker night. Five yuppies crammed round a table in a room at the back of a south London semi. Tumblers and water were on the table. Conventions had developed. The host cooked the food (or so he said) and the four guests each brought a bottle of whisky. The guests rotated between four ‘stations’. One had to supply a standard blended scotch. Another had to provide a whisky from outside the United Kingdom. Another had to find an affordable malt (no more than £40). The last had to produce an ‘interesting’ malt. Ordinarily, this would be from a boutique producer; but if the nominee had had a good
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_28_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Mary Wakefield and Julia Manning discuss the ambulance crisis” startat=63] Listen [/audioplayer]Last month I wrote about the weird exodus of paramedics from London’s ambulance service. Flies would blanch at the rate they’re dropping, and so I was curious — and also anxious. Everyone who lives in this heaving city relies upon 999, and 999 relies upon paramedics. The official reason, given to me by Mr Jason Killens, the tough-sounding director of operations at the London Ambulance Service (LAS), was that they’re leaving because they’re underpaid. But as I wrote back then, I wasn’t convinced. It turns out Mr Killens wasn’t quite convinced either, because since we spoke, the
Laikipia ‘Good morning, sir!’ The warrior strides up to me on the high plains and shakes my hand. ‘May I traverse your farm? I thought it impolite not to ask.’ I am astonished at his excellent English accent. This is a youth in full Samburu kit: red ochre paint, a snood from which pokes a long feather, bunting and Christmas tinsel, a toga, Man U stockings and thousand-miler tyre sandals. He carries a long-shafted spear tipped with an ostrich pompom, a stabbing sword, a knobkerrie ending in a wing nut nicked from a lorry and a finbo — a long thin wand. He tells me his name is Douglas.
A stint in dry dock — the ‘dry’ literally — has one advantage. There is time for lots of long reading. After many decades since the last opening of Middlemarch, I had forgotten how good it is. I had completely forgotten a delicious minor character, Mrs Cadwallader, who is a blend of Aunt Dahlia and Lady Circumference. A Marxist heedless of his safety might describe her as declining gentry. She would have rejected both words with scorn. In those days, many Church of England livings were bestowed on parsons such as Mr Cadwallader, who needed the money to preserve their social status. ‘The C of E was always better at
In 1980, June Lait and I published Can Social Work Survive?, the first critique of British social work aimed at the general public. She was a lecturer in social policy and a former social worker; I was a psychiatrist who had regular and friendly contact with social workers. But we both felt that social work had become vague and grandiose, and we compiled quite a lot of evidence to make our case. We even reported studies showing that well-intended social work interventions could be not just unhelpful but harmful. Our work was published in The Spectator, and it touched a nerve. ‘Of course social workers don’t do harm,’ one critic
Strange times throw up strange heroes — and in Russia’s proxy war with Ukraine, none is more enigmatic than the Donetsk rebel leader Igor Girkin, better known by his nom de guerre of Igor Strelkov. In a few short months, Strelkov has gone from being an obscure military re-enactor to the highest-profile rebel leader in eastern Ukraine. But at the same time Strelkov’s fame and outspoken criticism of Vladimir Putin for failing to sufficiently support the rebels has earned him the enmity of the Kremlin. Moreover, Strelkov’s brand of sentimental ultra-nationalism, extreme Orthodoxy and Russian Imperial nostalgia offer a frightening glimpse into one of Russia’s possible futures. In the West,
From ‘Left behind’, The Spectator, 29 August 1914: In the poorer streets a kind of holiday atmosphere prevails, and a sort of excitement which is in a measure pleasurable fills the air… All the children are intensely excited. Many fathers have ‘gone to the war’, but not quite so many as are said to have gone by little boys and girls who cannot bear to be behind their friends and neighbours in importance. It is a tremendous step up in the world to have relations ‘at the front’, and ‘the front’ has a very wide meaning to children. Indeed, it seems to include the whole of England, except London.
I was waiting on an office forecourt recently puffing on an e-cigarette when a security guard came out. ‘You can’t smoke here,’ he shouted. ‘I’m not, actually,’ I replied. He went to consult his superior. A few minutes later he reappeared. ‘You can’t use e-cigarettes here either.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because you are projecting the image of smoking.’ ‘What, insouciance?’ ‘Go away.’ I did. This phrase ‘projecting the image of smoking’ — along with ‘renormalisation’, ‘gateway effect’ and the usual ‘think of the children’ — appears frequently in arguments for restricting the use of e-cigs in public places. While new evidence may yet emerge to support restrictions, these reasons don’t convince
As the BA flight from Warsaw landed at Heathrow, I felt a little tremor of anxiety, though it wasn’t anything to do with fear of flying. I was here for the Pembroke College gaudy. I had never attended a reunion before, and I had doubts about it. What if the people I really liked didn’t show up? What if I didn’t remember somebody’s name, while they remembered me? Above all, did I really want to see a bunch of old people claiming to be my contemporaries? It turned out to be a delight. It was lovely to be woken again by the sound of the bell from Tom Tower, which
Not so long ago disaffected youngsters would take to a life of crime and hard drugs, a trajectory which would often kill them. These days, some young men from our Muslim community sign up instead to the so-called Islamic State, and the dream of a distant Caliphate. Why? Well, forget theology or even the prestige which comes from being a warrior — if Sister Christine Frost is right, it all comes down to housing. Sister Christine has worked on the Will Crooks Estate in Poplar, east London, for over 40 years. She accidentally got into the news in early August when she removed the black flag of radical Islam which
Is international conflict really just a fight over oil? It sometimes seems that way. In Syria and Iraq, the militants of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ sell captured oil while battling to establish a puritanical Sunni theo-cracy. From Central Asia to Ukraine, Russia is contesting attempts (backed by the US) to minimise Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Meanwhile, Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ allows the US to threaten the choke points through which most of China’s oil imports must pass. Conspiracy-mongering petrodeterminists who try to reduce world politics to nothing but a clash for oil are too crude (pun intended). No shadowy cabal of oil company executives pulls the
‘Outspoken comic Frankie Boyle has called on the BBC to sack “cultural tumour” Jeremy Clarkson.’ Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this opening sentence from a recent news report? Clue: it’s that first word. In order to qualify as ‘outspoken’, surely, you need to be the kind of person who fearlessly, frequently and vociferously sets himself in opposition to the clamour of the times. Does demanding that a public figure lose his job for some mildly sexist/racist/homophobic/ableist remark fit into that category? Hardly. In the current climate it’s about as heroically contentious as, say, a private school prospectus that promises ‘We believe in educating the whole person’; or a
With Candida, you learned to expect the unexpected. She said she might make the charity sale at my house on Thursday, but not to rely on her. I didn’t. But on Friday, a bright red pick-up truck turned into the yard and out got Candida with a bagful of contributions. But she also brought a birthday present of a beautiful Alice Temperley skirt for my younger daughter. The red pick-up was a present for Candida’s own birthday, thrilling her as much as any red bike for a six-year-old. ‘I’m an old hippy,’ she once said. Perhaps. She was certainly a child of the Sixties, when half the aristocracy’s offspring were
In Competition No. 2862 you were invited to submit a poetic preview of when the lights go out. Submissions were impressively varied this week, and kept me thoroughly entertained. Honourable mentions go to Katie Mallett, who had Betjeman in mind (‘Fetch out the candles, Norman…’), and to Sylvia Fairley, who was in double-dactylic mood: ‘Jittery-tickery/ Grid electricity/ won’t last for ever, you’d/ better beware…’ The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 each. Alan Millard takes £30. And will the lights fade one by one, Fade one by one, As each man’s dwindling day is done And dark descends, A world where every waning light Brings others, waxing, into