Society

Thursday

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 5 June 2014

Have you ever been told by an expert that a bid you’ve made is foolish, badly judged or plain wrong? And although you may not agree, you tell yourself that you really ought to submit to their superior judgment? Before you do, my advice is: get a second opinion, and maybe even a third. When it comes to tricky bids, you’d be amazed how much disagreement there is among pros — and amazed, too, at how stubbornly each insists that their decision alone is the right one. If you want to see bridge egos clashing in this way, you need only turn to the regular section in the excellent online

Jeremy Clarke

Sharon took to the madness of Pamplona like a duck to water

Then there was the time I took Sharon to the Pamplona bull run. She looked very fetching in the traditional St Fermín costume of white T-shirt, white cut-off jeans, red sash tied around the waist and the red neckerchief symbolising the saint’s martyrdom by beheading. She wore her neckerchief in a big rumpled V at the front, like a cowgirl. The Sanfermines last a week. Hundreds of thousands of young revellers cram into the old fortress town’s narrow streets and cane it. As well as the famous bull runs each morning, and the evening bullfights, there are fairs and parades and marching bands and pop concerts and a nightly firework

Melissa Kite

Estate agents just don’t get it – I want a house, not a building site

‘What is this, please?’ I said to the estate agent, as he showed me into the building site he was calling a house. ‘This,’ he said beaming, ‘is the kitchen and breakfast room area.’ I picked my way over the rubble and stood in the dark, pokey room with its walls of hideous grey breezeblock. ‘I thought I asked you not to show me anything without a second fix, Sedrick.’ ‘Well, yes, but,’ said Sedrick, one of those perky young estate agents you can’t keep down, ‘you just need to use a bit of imagination. If you stand over here you can really get a feel for it. The space,

Alexander Chancellor

I wouldn’t have accepted Lord Rennard’s apology – but then he shouldn’t have made it

Shirley Williams has a point when she says that Lord Rennard’s alleged harassment of four female Lib Dem colleagues was very small beer compared with the sexual abuse attributed to so many other prominent people nowadays. Indeed, when the charges were made public early last year, I was underwhelmed by the account given by one of these women of Lord Rennard’s behaviour towards her during a Lib Dem conference in a Peterborough hotel. His knee had brushed hers on a sofa in the bar; and when she had shifted her knee, his had followed and brushed it again. She had fled to the bathroom, only to find him waiting outside

Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh’s diary: ‘Remember to get the Jesus aliens in, Irv!’

I’ve been heading east in a circle around the world from Chicago, taking in New York, London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Bristol, Brighton, Paris, Geneva, Barcelona, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and LA. Now I’m killing time in Barcelona. I’d forgotten what a wonderful town it is, and also reminded of how Mediterranean culture really is right at the apex of civilised society. By comparison, US mall life seems consumer capitalism’s ultimate declaration of vacuous failure. I’m sitting drinking wine in a café with three wonderful women (Italian, Spanish and English) from my publishers, and the next thing I know it’s 3 a.m. A long layover at Heathrow to get the connecting flight to New

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Is there a polite way to ask for the return of a handbag full of cash?

Q. A friend regularly hires a stall at a general neighbourhood market in order to sell surplus second-hand clothes and women’s accessories. She recently sold one of her handbags to a regular customer whom she knows quite well. Subsequently she realised that she had left her day’s takings in the handbag (quite a sum of cash). The customer has since been back a number of times but never mentioned the contents of the bag. My friend is now too embarrassed to ask outright, partly because she is only 99 per cent sure that she left the cash in the handbag. What should she do? — J.W., Sydney A. Why not

Dot Wordsworth

Square meals didn’t start in Nelson’s navy – but you could get one in a gold-rush town

I never dare go with my husband to any restaurant that uses square plates or he will play up the horrors of these ceramic items, huffing and puffing and pretending that he can’t stow his knife and fork without their falling off. When the subject attracted the attention of readers of the Daily Telegraph recently, one of them wrote in to say that square wooden plates were ‘standard issue in ships of the line in Nelson’s day’. Sailors were fed a hot meat meal every day, he pointed out, and ‘the practice led to the expression “a square meal”, meaning a good one’. This is a nice idea, but there is

Toby Young Toby Young

I used to think I was a Nietzschean superman. Now I know I’m just a dad

In The Wolf of Wall Street, there’s a poignant shot towards the end in which we see an FBI agent going home on the subway. This law enforcement officer — Agent Patrick Denham — will eventually bring about the downfall of Jordan Belfort, the film’s main character, and the fact that he uses public transport is supposed to be evidence of his integrity. He’s an honest, hard-working tax-payer who plays by the rules. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but in the past 25 years I’ve gone from being an international party boy to a kind of FBI agent. Admittedly, I’ve never plumbed the depths of debauchery that Jordan

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 5 June 2014

Home The government scrabbled together material for the Queen’s Speech, which promised measures to allow money to be put into ‘collective defined contribution schemes’ for pensions, as is done in Holland; to prevent pub landlords who are tied to large companies being worse off than independent publicans; to increase penalties for human traffickers; and to allow for by-elections when MPs do serious wrong. The European Commission called on Britain to raise taxes on higher value properties and build more houses. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, fought fiercely to blame each other over Islamic extremism in Birmingham schools. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, backed Conservative

Columba

2165: Not far off

According to a quotation (in ODQ) by a person whose surname is an unclued light, an area of five letters is 10 13 37 given a certain condition. Each of eleven clues comprises a definition and a hidden consecutive jumble of the answer including one extra letter; each of ten clues is of the same type, but includes two extra letters, next to each other within the jumble. The extras spell the quotation’s last seven words, specifying the condition. Remaining unclued lights prove that this condition exists in the grid; solvers will therefore be able to enter the aforementioned area, which must be highlighted. One unclued light consists of three

Columba

to 2162: Stand in

Superfluous letters in definitions form the phrase HOLD THE FORT. Thematically created entries at 5, 10, 17, 19 and 38 are defined by 12, 1D, 20, 3 and 9.   First prize J.P. Green, Uppingham, Rutland Runners-up Pamela Davies, Kenilworth; P.J. Hartley, Radcliffe, Manchester

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: The Queen’s Speech and the farce of recall and the fight for Ukip’s soul

Was this year’s Queen Speech a waste of time? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Conservative MPs Zac Goldsmith and Chris Skidmore discuss the government’s plan for the next year with Fraser Nelson — in particular whether the recall for MPs is a stitch-up by Parliament. How will the public react when they find out the recall is a farce? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also examine the contents of the speech and what it says about the state of the coalition. James Delingpole and Ukip’s Michael Heaver debate whether Ukip has a political soul. Are Ukip trying to shed their Thatcherite pronouncements and move to the left? Does

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Will Artificial Intelligence put my job at risk?

I used to feel smug when plumbers, bricklayers and the like used to complain of Eastern European migrants coming over here and taking their work. They might be able to replace a ballcock and lay a line of bricks but the one thing these Poles won’t be able to do, unless they happen to be Joseph Conrad, is write good English. My job would be safe. But there was a great big hole in my thinking: I hadn’t reckoned on artificial intelligence. What happens – as it will do any day now – when the editor of the Spectator receives a salesman, or even a sales robot, peddling a device which cuts

Robert Hardman

A Russian occupation and a veterans’ revolt – it’s D-Day all over again

The phrase ‘ring of steel’ hardly begins to describe the operation here in Calvados country as we await the 70th anniversary of the pivotal moment in modern history. Some world leaders are bringing warships as well as jets to the D-Day commemorations. The exclusion zone not only covers a chunk of northern France but even extends to cross-Channel ferries. Every Normandy veteran has had to be cleared for a pass although, as many point out: ‘We didn’t need a pass on 6 June 1944.’ If the cops are nervous, the protocol people are beside themselves: what do they do with President Putin? He may be the pariah du jour but Russia, which

Bruce Anderson

The soul of a lurcher and the secret of a capon

A county, a house, a dog — and a bottle. Somerset: men have delved and farmed and built here for millennia, reshaping the landscape but never losing harmony with nature. There lies the dearest freshness pretty near the surface of things. My friends live in the Vale of Blackmore, good hunting country, in a prosperous farmhouse. Over the centuries, it has been added to and bashed about. The exterior isVictorian-esque, but I bet that there is medieval masonry at the core of the stouter walls. In the kitchen, there are oak beams, perfect for hanging hams and flitches of bacon. Indeed, they could be needed for a similar purpose now,

Mary Kenny

The wonders of Wexford

I might have had chance to visit the famed Wexford Opera Festival when I was walking out with Bernard Levin — who was mad about the annual October event — but he never took me along, on account of calling me a ‘vile fidget’ during opera performances. Still, Wexford is a grand place to visit at any time, often having been, for me, a handy overnight stay after reaching Ireland at nearby Rosslare. Yet a more beautiful way, I think, to get to Wexford is by train from Dublin, which takes just over two hours. You travel down the lovely east coast of Ireland, with the sea on one side

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

How user-friendly is your house?

Old Glaswegian joke: ‘Put your hat and coat on, lassie, I’m off to the pub.’ ‘That’s nice — are you taking me with you?’ ‘No, I’m just switching the central heating off while I’m oot.’ Late last year we bought a little holiday flat on the Kent coast. After I had furnished it with all the essentials — fibre-optic broadband, a large television, a Nespresso machine and a couple of random chairs — I looked for an excuse to buy some new gadgetry which I hadn’t tried before. Given that the place is often empty during the week and was always chilly in the winter for a few hours after

Alistair Horne

‘Papa told us everything’: Winston Churchill and the remarkable Mary Soames

By any standards Mary Soames was one of the most remarkable women of her era: close confidante (possibly the closest) to Winston Churchill throughout the second world war, dedicated political wife, one of the most outstanding British ambassadresses sent to Paris, successful (against all reckoning) chairman of the National Theatre, and — later in life — a prize-winning author. She was also one of only three non-royal Ladies of the Garter in recent British history, and a Spectator contributor to boot. All this went hand in hand with a reluctance to talk about herself, and — except on rare occasions — about the war, and the father whom she adored

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Why don’t my generation care if Britain fails?

In my late thirties, I have become patriotic. It’s one of those things that’s happened with age, like cooking to freeze, plumping cushions and thinking policemen look too young. My heart stirs at the sound of a marching band and at the thought of great British inventions: the London sewer system, steam engines, float glass. On the slimmest pretext I’ll start lamenting the decline of our great industries and tell you that too often our brightest ideas are developed abroad. On most subjects, as we get older, my friends and I agree. On marriage and mortgages; grey hair and aching knees, but on Britain and its place in the world