Society

Thursday

Fieldfare

2186: From the off

Unclued lights (two of two words and one doing double duty), singly or paired, reveal some that are to be gone over, and two that famously did so. Ignore one accent and two apostrophes.   Across   1    Paradoxical suit, a product of mine (13, two words) 9    Police once crashed into rumpus (7) 14    Arrest in short case (6) 16    Had a row: shouted head off (5) 20    Malarial fever recently back, affecting a layer of the retina (7) 21    Move elsewhere — what, in stir? (7) 23    Match item of furniture (7) 24    Radiance recognised to capture hearts (5) 25    Maybe hear one trying to please all creatures

Fieldfare

To 2183: Group theory

Extra letters in clues plus 1A give ‘the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks’, an extract from a quotation by QUINE (35). 24, 25, 29 are sages; 17, 39, 42 are cranks. First prize Storm Hutchinson, Dulas, Anglesey Runners-up William Spont, Bellingham, Massachusetts; Nick Hussey, Overton, Hampshire

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Good Samaritans or sinister surveillance? The app that tries to stop suicide

According to an email I received earlier this afternoon, I should be worried about the mental state of someone I know. An alert popped up in my inbox from an app called ‘Radar‘ which the Samaritans launched this week, telling me a tweet from someone I followed might suggest they were contemplating suicide. Here’s the tweet: Clearly the Samaritans need to work on their formula, otherwise I’ll be receiving daily alerts whenever Jim Murphy warns against Scottish Labour committing electoral self-harm or one Conservative faction warns another faction that it is being politically suicidal. The Samaritans say they pursued the app, which monitors certain words and phrases in tweets before

Tom Chivers

Lies, damn lies and health statistics – smoking is more deadly than serving in Afghanistan

Basically nothing is as bad for you as smoking. Short of fairly obvious things like blunt-force trauma or falling out of buildings, anyway. That is a fact worth keeping in mind when you read newspaper headlines about health. On the front page of the Telegraph’s print edition on Friday ran the headline: ‘Lazy lifestyle can be as deadly as smoking’. The Mail runs the same story, saying: ‘A lack of exercise is as dangerous as smoking.’ Now, remember: Nothing that you do in your daily life, even if you are a lumberjack or an oil-rig diver or whatever, is as deadly as smoking. I pretty much promise you that. Serving

Spectator Health

How do you solve a problem like the NHS? The Spectator asks the experts

So ingrained is the NHS as part of British life that it’s hard to imagine it disappearing. But it can’t go on as it is: its budget is being squeezed while its costs are rising and people are demanding more from it than ever. We want ongoing treatment for chronic conditions; exemplary care for our growing elderly population; the latest drugs; the highest standards of care across the country; and the NHS’s founding principles – the provision of universal care free at the point of use – to be adhered to. Earlier this year The Spectator held its first health lunch with a round-table discussion to coincide with preparations for

Mark Varga

The US won’t beat Isis alone; Qatar and other Gulf allies must help in Iraq

Revelations keep pouring in about the uneasy relationship between Western aid givers and ISIS operators: from bribes given by humanitarian convoys to secure access in war-torn Syria, to food and medical equipment appropriated by Islamists and used to provide basic services to the population under its control. Moreover, USAID personnel working in the area have to be vetted by ISIS: “There is always at least one ISIS person on the payroll; they force people on us” one aid worker told the Daily Beast earlier this month. This is just the start. As the Islamic State makes inroads into Iraqi and Syrian territory, it’s becoming increasingly clear that American promises to

The Spectator

Podcast: Ruby Wax and Andy Puddicombe on mindfulness, plus Jim Murphy and Movember

The chances are that by now either you or someone you know well has begun to practise ‘mindfulness’ — a form of Buddhism lite, that focuses on meditation and ‘being in the now’. In the past year or so it’s gone from being an eccentric but harmless hobby practised by contemporary hippies to a new and wildly popular pseudo–religion; a religion tailor-made for the secular West. But separating meditation from faith is a dubious business, suggest Melanie McDonagh. In this week’s podcast, the comedian Ruby Wax, who has written a best-selling book about mindfulness and is now touring with Sane New World, and Andy Puddicombe, founder of the Headspace app, join

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How to conjure up a £3,800 tax cut

It’s great to read David Cameron’s article in The Times today making the moral case for tax cuts. It’s tough for him to do so, given that his Chancellor has pushed back the date for balancing the books until 2018/19, a decade after the crash. But he has been doing some maths, which makes its way in to the Times splash:- An average worker will pay £3,800 less income tax between 2015 and 2020 because of sweeping cuts made by the coalition and pledges in the next Tory manifesto, David Cameron has said. Great news! £3,800 in the next parliament! A figure you can campaign on – except it is

Henry Jeffreys

The fightback against wackiness starts here

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_30_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Henry Jeffreys and Sarah Coghlan from Movember discuss wackiness” startat=1491] Listen [/audioplayer]At Glastonbury in 2000 I noticed two young men both wearing enormous Y-fronts and carrying an even bigger pair with the word ‘pants’ written on it. They both looked miserable as you would if you’d come up with the idea while drunk and then found yourself stuck like that for the duration of the festival. Some of the more thuggish elements jeered and threw beer cans. Seven years later, at another festival I attended, they wouldn’t have attracted a second glance, because dressing up had become ubiquitous. This year, seven years on from that, far from being

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The cult of ‘mindfulness’

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_30_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Ruby Wax and Andy Puddicombe discuss mindfulness with Mary Wakefield” startat=75] Listen [/audioplayer]The chances are that by now either you or someone you know well has begun to practise ‘mindfulness’ — a form of Buddhism lite, that focuses on meditation and ‘being in the now’. In the past year or so it’s gone from being an eccentric but harmless hobby practised by contemporary hippies to a new and wildly popular pseudo–religion; a religion tailor-made for the secular West. Think how hostile an awful lot of companies are to organised religion; to any talk of ‘faith’. Now consider that in both America and the UK, it’s probably easier to

Michael Karam

Why I’ve joined Lebanon’s exodus

In early autumn I was on a train travelling from London to Brighton, on the final leg of a journey that began earlier that day in Beirut, and which was taking me back to live in Britain for the first time in 22 years. It was late Friday afternoon and the man opposite me was droning into his mobile phone. He had not drawn breath since he joined at Clapham Junction except to take a swig from one of three bottles of Black Sheep beer he had lined up on the table. Friday night clearly couldn’t start soon enough. Back then, the Islamic State had just begun to pick at

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Test cricket and the Archers are both in deep trouble

Lions and weasels The Archers and Test cricket: words you rarely find in the same sentence and more’s the pity as there’s not much else that can give greater innocent pleasure. But could these magnificent institutions be in the midst of some existential crisis? On peaceful old radio, the writers seem devoted to purging The Archers of the Archers: David, Ruth and Jill could be junking Brookfield for Northumberland, Tom Archer hasn’t been seen in Ambridge since that unfortunate incident in the vestry; Elizabeth should be hounded out soon for sexual witchcraft; and then there’ll be just Shula and Kenton. Pretty much like international cricket, which is being stripped of

Simon Courtauld

Why Gibraltar needs its hunt back

The British overseas territory of Gibraltar, or, as some would have it, the wart on the bottom of the Iberian peninsula, is not an exciting place for a holiday. You don’t go for the food (mostly English pub grub and pizzas), or the nightlife (there isn’t any) or the beaches (overcrowded, with sand imported from the Sahara). But there are a few interesting legacies of three centuries of British occupation of what was known in Greek mythology as one of the Pillars of Hercules. In the Trafalgar Cemetery, containing the graves of those who died in Gibraltar following the battle, a typical inscription records the death in December 1805 of

Lucy Vickery

Two hander

In Competition No. 2871 you were invited to submit a dialogue in verse between man and God. The tone of the discourse was far from cordial, ranging from boredom and -disinterest to outright hostility. Here’s Alanna Blake’s disgruntled deity: ‘I’m old and growing deaf and very tired/ These are my final words: I have retired.’ Loss of faith, it seems, works both ways. Honourable mentions go to Peter Goulding and Emma Mascarenhas. The winners below earn £25 each. W.J. Webster gets £30. Forgive me, God, but might I know What on Earth you do these days? If you’re at work it doesn’t show Even in mysterious ways. You never make

Douglas Murray

Jonathan Sacks on religion, politics and the civil war that Islam needs

Jonathan Sacks has an impressive track record for predicting the age we are in. In his 1990 Reith Lectures, ‘The Persistence of Faith’, the then chief rabbi pushed back against the dominant idea that religion was going to disappear. In the early 2000s, he predicted a century of conflict within Islam. And he was one of the first religious leaders and thinkers not only to critique multi-culturalism (‘the spanner in the works for tolerance’) but to try to think of a path beyond it. We recently talked over some of this at his house in London, where he lives during gaps in a busy teaching schedule that also takes him to

Roger Howard

The myth of the White Widow

Over the past year or so, a determined and fanatical Islamist has been waging a deadly and bloody war against the western world. This enemy is capable of moving unnoticed across continents and inflicting savage violence in each of them; inspires young Muslim men to become suicide bombers and die in their thousands. The enemy is particularly horrifying for being a traitor, born in Britain and a woman to boot. The ‘White Widow’, remember her? Samantha Lewthwaite from Aylesbury, usually described by our tabloid press as one of the most evil and powerful women alive. But is she really evil? Is she really even much of a threat? My contention

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle: The top 10 most fatuous phrases in the English language

An apology. A few weeks back, in my blog, I promised a regular series called ‘Fatuous Phrase of the Week’. Like so many publicly uttered promises, this one has failed to materialise. There has been no update to the Fatuous Phrase of the Week. This is because for the past two weeks I have been battling my demons — and horrible, vindictive little bastards they are too. While I would have been happy to fulfil that promise, and had plenty of phrases at the ready, the demons crowded around. Nah, they said, take the dog for a walk instead. Jabbering in my ear, poking me with their little pitchforks. Forget the

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

I’ll take Jeremy Clarkson over a howling mob any day

Perhaps it’s a glaring and personal flaw in my observational skills, but if somebody tried to insult me via a number plate attached to their car, I’m not at all sure I’d notice. I suppose if it was really obvious — ‘HUGO TWAT’ sort of thing — then the synapses would fire, but anything more subtle would pass me by. And I don’t think it’s just me. Imagine, for example, driving through Scotland in a car with the registration ‘H746 CLN’. How likely is it, do you think, that some super-observant thug would interpret this as a reference to the Battle of Culloden in 1746, and then gather together a posse to

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Help me become an addict

When the White Queen told Alice she had sometimes believed as many as six contradictory things before breakfast, she spoke for us all. But our irrationality goes further than a simple after-the-event report. Even while we’re believing it, we can know that something we’re believing contradicts something else we believe. Take, in my case, addiction. I believe that addicts lack self-discipline and willpower. Yet I know that this cannot really be the explanation. I feel a faint but ineradicable disapproval of people who can’t stop eating, smoking, drinking or injecting themselves with heroin, while knowing that this reaction is not only harsh, but must be ignorant. I half suspect people