Society

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why didn’t Piketty’s Harvard publisher spot the errors which the FT has exposed?

While Americans swooned over Thomas Piketty and his thesis about ever-rising inequality it has taken a Brit, the FT’s Chris Giles, to expose the corruptions in his data. What he has found – on the cover of today’s FT and in detail on a blog here – is shocking because the errors are so basic. And yet on this, Piketty has built a manifesto for all kinds of tax rises. It makes you wonder how his publisher, Harvard University Press, allowed such flaws to enter print. Chris Giles’ report is worth reading in full, but here are a couple of examples should give you a flavour of what he has found.

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition: write an elegy for Jeremy Paxman

The latest challenge to competitors was to submit a poem commenting on Scottish independence in the style of William Topaz McGonagall, the poet hailed by the TLS as ‘the only truly memorable bad poet in our language’. The deluded handloom weaver from Dundee built his reputation on appalling yet beguiling works of inadvertent comic genius. Unhampered by self-awareness, and buoyed up by uncrushable self-belief, he forged ahead with his art in the face of universal mockery and derision. Here is a particularly awful line from his most famous poem, ‘The Tay Bridge Disaster’ of 1880: ‘And the cry rang out all o’er the town, Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is

Friday

Daisy Dunn

In pictures: Fire engulfs Glasgow School of Art

The footage of fire tearing through the Mackintosh building of the Glasgow School of Art on Renfrew Street is more than unnerving. Though it’s too early to say how much damage has been caused to the building, it is evident that much of the original architecture has been destroyed. No building is replaceable, but this one is particularly precious. It is without doubt the most important building Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) designed. We are more inclined today to think of Mackintosh’s stylish interior designs – the kind of monochrome-and-rose prints that remain ubiquitous in interior design shops – but his Art School has also stood the test of time. As one

Steerpike Steerpike

Taxi firm Addison Lee’s spiteful prank on ITN

Mini-cab firm Addison Lee exacted cold revenge on ITN last night at about the worst possible time. Slap bang in the middle of the election coverage, they cancelled the news provider’s taxi account. ITN had recently announced that they would be moving the company account to a rival firm, and Addison Lee did not take this news well – suspending their account in the middle of the night on one of the busiest news nights of the year. In a frantic email to all their staff – and crucially the guest bookers – ITN bosses vented their anger: ‘Our decision to move to Green Tomato is based on a number

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Iron nerves

The game that clinched Magnus Carlsen’s victory in the Gashimov Memorial came, fittingly, in a last-round cliffhanger against his closest rival, Fabiano Caruana. Both players were on 5½ points out of 9 possible, hence a win for either grandmaster would determine the laurels in his favour. A draw, leaving them both tied on 6 points, would have been a reasonable solution, honourable to both sides, but Carlsen is at his most deadly in these tense situations — one of the attributes he has taken from the great psychologist Emanuel Lasker. As it was, Caruana, despite playing with the black pieces, also seemed determined to play for a win, repeating his

Raymond Keene

No. 315

White to play. This position is from Wojtaszek-Safarli, Gashimov ‘B’ Group 2014. The white pieces are very active and the black king badly exposed. How does White conclude? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 27 May 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 shall be offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Nxg6 Last week’s winner Graham Geary, Brockenhurst, Hants

The Spectator

Spectator letters: America as a genetic experiment, and a gypsy reply to Rod Liddle

The American experiment Sir: One can test Nicholas Wade’s hypothesis that social and political life is genetically determined (‘The genome of history’, 17 May) by constituting a nation along European lines, admitting immigrants from all over the world, and measuring the extent to which these immigrants assimilate to the dominant culture. That experiment is called the USA, and the evidence from that country suggests that within a generation or two these immigrants hold social opinions more like those of other Americans than natives of their ancestral countries. Cultural inheritance therefore outweighs genetic inheritance in the political sphere, and historians may rest easy. Dr James McEvoy Centre for Biomedical Sciences, Royal

Peter Jones

How Plato and Aristotle would have tackled unemployment

Labour is up in arms because many of the new jobs currently being created are among the self-employed. This seems to them to be cheating. Quite the reverse, ancients would have said. Ancient thinkers knew all about the needs of the poor and were worried about their capacity to cause trouble (as they saw it) by revolution. So in a world where everyone lived off the land (the wealthy by renting it out), Plato thought there should be a law that everyone should have a basic minimum of land to live off, and no one should own property more than five times the size of the smallest allotment; any excess

Taki

Being the father of the bride has matured me – as I discovered in the nightclub afterwards

So the wedding of my little girl to Andy Bancroft Cooke went off without a hitch, a wonderful ceremony in a beautiful Catholic church off Manchester Square, and even the weather played ball and gave us the most perfect spring day imaginable, cloudless and cool. Green Park was at its most glorious as we drank outdoors on the long terrace and lunched in Spencer House, which pulled out all the stops. It’s hard to believe but as I was leaving the church, having performed my duties as father of the bride, a Speccie reader approached me and asked if I had walked her down or had been walked down by

Jeremy Clarke

In the soft Cornish air, with the pressure off, I caved in

Just when I was beginning to think I’d had enough, I was offered a free week in a caravan. I took it like a shot, threw a few shirts in the boot of the car, and buggered off down to Cornwall. I arrived in darkness and couldn’t find the electricity switch. But I was so tired I simply climbed into a sleeping bag by the light of my phone and fell asleep. I was woken by sunshine and the cawing of rooks. At this caravan, there is no internet, no phone signal for miles, no telly, no radio. And the air I swear is soporific. It was like crawling out

Melissa Kite

A&E is no place for the over-tens

‘Ouch!’ said the ex-builder boyfriend. ‘I think something’s bitten me.’ And a few seconds after that, something bit me too. We had been walking in the woods with the spaniel, when a winged creature of some sort, or possibly an agile snake, decided to take a chunk out of us both. Within a few hours, the builder was complaining of feeling sick. And my leg started swelling. I’m allergic to mosquito bites, or at least I suspect I am because whenever I get one, it grows to a carbuncle. This time, the bite left an angry raised red patch on the back of my thigh that just grew, and grew,

The Spectator

A Romanian neighbour? Most people wouldn’t even notice

Parliamentary privilege Some facts and figures about the European Parliament, according to the parliament: — The parliament annually costs €3.10 per citizen in EU member states (compared with €7.30 for Westminster). — It received 1.4 million visitors over the past four years, with 790,400 visiting the Parliamentarium. And some facts from Single Seat, the campaign for the parliament to stop shuffling between Brussels and Strasbourg: — It costs an extra €180 million a year to have more than one seat. — The Strasbourg parliament building is empty 317 days a year. — Hotel prices in Strasbourg increase 150% when the parliament is in town. Raising the floor Ed Miliband has

Alexander Chancellor

Why do consultants write such scary, incomprehensible letters?

There is a kind of letter designed to bewilder, upset and possibly terrify its recipient, and this is the standard letter sent by specialist medical consultants to the victims of disease. Actually, the letter is usually addressed to the sufferer’s GP, but a copy is always sent to the patient as well; and because of this it usually begins with a flattering personal reference just to soften him up (‘It was a delight to meet this charming old gentleman’, or some such phrase). Thereafter, it may propose some little variation in the person’s treatment, but its main purpose is to describe in lurid and impenetrable detail the symptoms of his

Peter Mckay

Peter McKay’s diary: Is Kate and William’s Scottish trip a pro-union initiative?

Having dampened local republican ardour during their recent tour of New Zealand and Australia, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visit thinking-about-breaking-away Scotland next week. They’ll tour Glenturret Distillery near Crieff, Perthshire, next Thursday, to ‘bottle their own Glenturret whisky’, if you please. Sounds like a pro-union royal initiative, but what will First Minister Alex Salmond have to say? He claims he’d like the Queen to continue as Scotland’s head of state, although some of his supporters disagree. When HM said in her letter to the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly last week that she prays everyone ‘will work together for the social good of Scotland’, whatever the outcome of

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 22 May 2014

There’s no point in soft-soaping it: however long you’ve been playing bridge, however well you think you play, if you’ve never had regular lessons, or played with experts, sorry, but you probably aren’t much good. Bridge is an endlessly complex, multi-layered game, and there’s no way of improving without enlisting help. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with ‘kitchen-bridge’ — but if no one ever notices your mistakes, it’s easy to be deluded. Hiring a top-class player is not only about improving your game, though: it’s just such fun to play with someone better than yourself. And it has become a lot easier thanks to a new agency —

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I make my polite English husband interrupt like a German?

Q. My dear English husband has never mastered the knack of timing his interventions in conversation. He hesitates politely, and by the time somebody pauses, his comments are no longer to the point so he shuts up. After 45 years I always know when there’s something he wants to say, and it’s become a sort of party turn that I butt in and call for order for the next speaker — which doesn’t reflect well on either of us. Any ideas, Mary? Should he signal, for example by raising his right forefinger, the hand resting on the dinner table? — B.D., Frankfurt A. This gesture is too puny to halt

Dot Wordsworth

‘Basta’ must be the Queen’s English — a Queen used it

My chickens do not usually come home to roost so rapidly. Only a fortnight ago I wrote that ‘some people use basta in English, but to my ears it sounds like saying ciao — inauthentic’. Then I went back to reading Jane Ridley’s Bertie, the life of Edward VII (and how much I enjoyed it too). What should I find on page 357? I found Queen Alexandra writing about what she would wear at the coronation in 1901. ‘I know better than all the milliners and antiquaries,’ she wrote. ‘I shall wear exactly what I like, and so shall all my ladies — Basta!’ I can hardly accuse a queen of England of speaking

Toby Young Toby Young

Chasing Pulitzers has ruined American journalists. That’s why they’re edited by Brits

I was interested to read a story by Michael Wolff in USA Today saying that Graydon Carter may be about to step down as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Carter has been at the helm for 22 years and was my boss during the three years I spent there between 1995 and 1998. According to Wolff, himself a columnist at the magazine, the runners and riders to take over are nearly all British. Wolff thinks this is mainly because power within Condé Nast, the publishing company that owns Vanity Fair, has shifted from New York and towards London, home of Condé Nast International, a subsidiary that is now more profitable than

The Spectator

The slow death of Nato

The Cold War was won by 26 words contained within article five of the Treaty of Washington, which founded Nato in 1949: ‘The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.’ There was no wriggling and no qualification. The message to Stalin was perfectly clear: you nibble at one inch of Western Europe and you won’t just get an ad hoc response from war-weary Europeans; you will have to face a nuclear-armed Uncle Sam. The last time Britain held a Nato summit, in 1990, the organisation was triumphant. Little wonder that the newly

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 22 May 2014

Home Demand for housing posed ‘the biggest risk to financial stability’ according to Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England. House prices rose by 8 per cent in the year to the end of March, according to the Office for National Statistics, and in London the increase was 17 per cent. The annual rate of inflation rose to 1.8 per cent in April from 1.6 per cent in March, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index; it remained at 2.5 per cent as measured by the Retail Prices Index. The underlying annual profits of Marks & Spencer fell by 3.9 per cent to £623 million, putting them behind