Society

Friday

13 Jun 2014

World Cup diary: Was the ref playing for Brazil?

Suspicions that FIFA is an organisation given, occasionally, to a bit of corruption will not have been allayed by the first match of the 2014 World Cup. Brazil won with two goals from a player who should have been sent off, including a penalty which clearly wasn’t a penalty, while Croatia had a perfectly good goal disallowed and were denied a rather more clear cut penalty themselves. Incidentally, I say “Brazil” – and so do ITV. So do FIFA. And so does the OED, Wikipedia and Google. But not the BBC. The BBC says “Brasil”. Of course it does.

Thursday

12 Jun 2014

Raymond Keene

Vlad the Impaler

As I write, the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik is leading in the Norway tournament in Stavanger. The line-up is impressive, including Magnus Carlsen, Lev Aronian, Fabiano Caruana and Sergei Karjakin, and missing only Viswanathan Anand, who was defeated in last year’s World Championship match by Carlsen. At his best Kramnik is a subtle tactician, with a penchant for extraordinarily complex middlegames. Sometimes the search for complications lets him down, as in his notorious last-round loss to Ivanchuk in the final round of last year’s Candidates tournament in London. This deprived Kramnik of the right to challenge Anand for the world title, ceding the palm to Carlsen, who went on

Raymond Keene

No. 318

White to play. This is a variation from Karjakin-Grischuk, Norway 2014. What key move allows White to deal with the threat to his bishop and emerge with a winning position? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 17 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 … Kh7 (plans … Kh6) Last week’s winner Anthony Bolchover, London NW2

The Spectator

Spectator letters: The trouble with religion, alternatives to HS2, and whisky-drinking dogs

A history of persecution Sir: Colin Brown (Letters, 7 June) ignores some good reasons for keeping religion out of society. Small groups of believers are fine, but not totalitarian dictatorships. The early Christians were treated as heretics until 313 ad, when Constantine made what became the Roman Catholic Church the official religion of the Roman Empire. The church promptly started persecuting all other religious groups. In the Middle Ages the Church let loose the Inquisition and decimated civilised communities such as the Albigensians. As for his statement that ‘all religions have provided society with ethical and moral rules’, how ethical were the laws and morals that subjugated women and slaves

Taki

Like Murdoch, I’m an old man with an eye for beauty. But Wendi Deng? Seriously?

Gstaad A slight bump at 30,000 feet concentrates the mind, as the good Dr Johnson said about an appointment with the gallows. Halfway over the Atlantic and lost in a fantasy, I came back in a hurry as the plane shook and trembled; yet my first thought was to show off, pretend I hadn’t noticed, exhibit a kind of brazen indifference while my co-passengers nervously tightened their seat belts. It was only a bump, the nose dipped and then pulled up rather violently, and it lasted less than half a minute, hence my bravado. (I suspect the automatic pilot was the culprit.) They say that when one is about to

Jeremy Clarke

A free gin, a cheeky joint: welcome back to the local

My first time back in the local for eight weeks. The manageress lifts the flap, comes around to my side of the bar and kisses me on the lips. We can’t hear ourselves speak as there is a ska DJ barricaded into a corner behind a waist-high wall of speakers and the bar is small and the ceiling low. She indicates that my gin and tonic is on the house. I take it outside and take a seat on one of the picnic benches on the patio. This hippie guy is prancing ecstatically around the tables with fluttering fingers. A couple sit themselves down opposite me and the bloke starts

Peter Jones

The true gods of football (hint: they don’t work for Fifa)

The World Cup has started, and the gods of football will be in their heaven for a whole month. Not the players, of course: the spectators. Ancient gods, wielding absolute power, expected to have that power acknowledged. This was usually done by their adherents carrying out specific rituals at the right time and the right place. Do that, and the gods would smile favourably upon them, offering them personal benefits and even immortal glory in the eyes of the world. Fail, and that would be an affront, an insult to the gods’ dignity: their wrath would be unconditional. So when, in the course of the Trojan war, Paris, seducer of

Melissa Kite

Volvo 1; Melissa Kite: 0

‘And for my next trick,’ said the Volvo, as I parked at the supermarket and pulled the handle of the door to get out, ‘I shall refuse to open while you are inside.’ ‘What the…?’ I said, after pulling the handle a couple of times. I clicked the lock button by the window just in case I had inadvertently managed to child lock the driver’s door. Then I clicked the unlock button on the key. Then I turned the ignition on and off. Then I tried the handle again. Then I decided to have a good scream. I had only just had the 72 fault codes cleared by Karl the

Alexander Chancellor

Young Italians flock to London – for just the same reasons it scares me

Although I live in the country in Northamptonshire, I go to London often — almost once a week — and I find it more and more intimidating. This isn’t just because of the skyscrapers that spring up boastfully everywhere, parading one’s own insignificance, but also because of the aura of terrifying wealth that pervades its central area and now even its inner suburbs. Fifty years ago, when I got married, my wife and I bought our first London house in Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill, for £9,500. I wonder how many millions it is worth now. My parents, who were quite well off if not exactly rich, lived in Knightsbridge

Robin Oakley

Cambridge, meet your first professor of racing lore

Watching the contestants parade at Epsom for this year’s Oaks, I remembered the great D. Wayne Lukas’s pronouncement on selecting fillies: ‘She should have a head like a princess, a butt like a washerwoman and walk like a hooker.’ The John Gosden-trained Taghrooda, listed a month earlier as the first of our Twelve to Follow this season, ticked all those boxes. I doubled my bet and cheered her home nearly four lengths clear of the biggest Oaks field in 40 years. Sheikh Hamdan al Maktoum, an owner who gives much to the sport, has had a lean few years and it was good to see another Classic success for his

Tanya Gold

Something wild – well, wild for Claridge’s – in Gordon Ramsay’s old cave

Fera is in Gordon Ramsay’s old cave at Claridge’s. His red and yellow room, like a ripped-off arm, has been annihilated; here now is ‘restful’ green, and food by Simon Rogan. His cooking apparently ‘never stands still’. (I am quoting a website.) Fera means ‘wild’. In Latin. I am not sure a restaurant can be wild, but it can be needy. I request a table online. Fera says no. I telephone. Fera says yes. I give my credit card details because love is always conditional. I am then invited to confirm, reconfirm, and re-reconfirm, in the manner of a restaurant impersonating a woman requiring reassurance from a green lover. It

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 12 June 2014

The final match in the second division of Young Chelsea’s London Super League was as exciting as it gets. Two teams (out of ten) were going to be promoted, and four teams were within a gnat’s whisker of each other. We were narrowly leading and were playing McGuire, lying second. We needed to secure a 16–4 victory to be sure of going up to Div One. When you are under pressure, it’s time to wheel out The Great Malinowski, part illusionist, part con man and part downright genius. Here he is on the very first board of the match, unfazed by the obvious bidding screw-up: First the bidding: Artur thought

Dot Wordsworth

Why would a Danish queen say ‘basta’?

My husband heard me in the kitchen exclaim: ‘What would I do without you?’ He curiously imagined I was referring to him. But it was of you, dear readers, that I spoke, and in particular Elizabeth Maynard from Oxford, who wrote explaining the use of the Italian word basta by Danes. Well, how was I to know? I’d supposed that Queen Alexandra, who used the word in 1901 (Mind your language, 24 May), had picked it up from the Italian opera. Not at all, Mrs Maynard tells me, since her own Danish mother’s elder sister — born in 1893 — used it too. She would rap the table, to end

Toby Young

Yes, I compared Theresa May to an Israeli tank commander. Why is everyone so upset?

I expect all of us have said something we regret at one time or another, but not everyone does so in front of 1.5 million people. That was my misfortune when I was caught off guard by an interviewer for ITN on my way out of a television studio in Westminster on Sunday. I’d just done a review of the morning’s papers on Murnaghan and was feeling rather chipper on account of the exchange I’d just had with Diane Abbott about Labour’s electoral chances. Live on air, I offered to bet her £100 that Ed Miliband wouldn’t win the election and, to my delight, she refused to take it. ‘I

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What’s the best way to turn down charity requests?

Q. I am the co-owner of a chocolate business which regularly receives requests for donations of goody bags and raffle prizes. I take a dim view when these come addressed to ‘Dear Sir or Madam’. It seems that the larger the charity the less likely that anyone can be bothered. How can I, without being pompous, politely explain to people that if they only write a round robin-type impersonal letter, we are unlikely to support their cause? — N.C., London SW1 A. You have enough on your plate already, so take a passive approach and let the results of these slapdash applications speak for themselves. Q. I am wheelchair-bound, and

Robert Harris

Robert Harris’s diary: My accidental war with Tony Blair

To Paris, for the launch of the French edition of my novel about the Dreyfus affair. As we land, I isolate three anxieties out of my general sense of unease. First is the natural nervousness of any Englishman contemplating telling the French anything about their own country. Second is the French law which allows the descendants of actual historical figures — of whom there are dozens in my novel — to sue for defamation: the heirs of the Marquis de Sade even objected to an unflattering portrayal of the inventor of sadism. Third, I am required to make a speech in French, and while my grasp of that language is not as

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 June 2014

Home After an Ofsted inspection of 21 schools in Birmingham (none of them faith schools), against the background of allegations of attempts of a Muslim takeover in a so-called Operation Trojan Horse, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, joined Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, in seizing upon an observation by Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, that ‘all maintained schools and academies, including faith and non-faith schools, must promote the values of wider British society’. Five of the schools were put under ‘special measures’. In his advice note, Sir Michael said that ‘some head teachers reported that there has been an organised campaign to target certain schools in Birmingham in

The Spectator

The new Iraq war

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_12_June_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Former solider Tom Tugendhat and Fraser Nelson discuss ISIS in Iraq” startat=1758] Listen [/audioplayer]Seven weeks ago, Barack Obama proclaimed that ‘it’s time to turn the page on more than a decade of war’. The people of Iraq do not have this option. They’ve seen, in Basra, Iran-backed militias take on and defeat the British military. They’ve seen highly effective jihadis, disowned by al-Qa’eda for their brutality, take control of a major city, Fallujah, just 40 miles from Baghdad. This week they have seen their second city, Mosul, fall to that same band of psychopaths. If Syria is anything to go by, religious cleansing, beheadings and even crucifixions will

Dumpynose

2166: Somewhere X

Somewhere next to 34 and 12, 33 is 25, the highest mountain is 1D (two words), and the principal 3 and 39 are alongside each other in 19. Solvers must shade the clued light that is an anagram of the place’s name. Elsewhere, ignore two accents. Across 1 Jittery Jonah hides Sonia and Sam’s stuff (11) 7 Writer of humourless English (3) 11 Plastic covering most of spout in extractor (6) 13 State name applied to murdered sheep-master (retired) (7) 15 Poet takes drug — Charlie? (5) 16 Flower beginning to grow in hollow (5) 17 Suit clothing good successful examinee (6) 18 Unit in grand hotel starts

The Spectator