Society

Friday

James Bloodworth

I’ve just seen Nazi banners in Trafalgar Square. Well, almost

Picture the scene. Skinheads march through Trafalgar Square wearing SS uniforms and holding aloft portraits of the Fuhrer. They bring along a few right-wing Members of parliament who deliver comradely speeches and swear, arms raised in a sieg heil, to stay faithful to the party and the ‘race’. Thankfully, there would be universal outrage at such a spectacle. Having gone through the bloody 20th century to reach a point where even a nod towards fascism is political and social suicide, we don’t need a debate on the nature of Hitlerism nor to ‘put it into context’, as the effete academics like to say. The stench around racial theory and Nazism

Ed West Ed West

Political correctness gone mad – and madder – and even madder

In a blog for the IEA the other day Kristian Niemietz looked at the economics of holding politically correct views. Disagreeing with the idea proposed by Spiked magazine that PC is motivated by a loathing for ordinary people, he argues that such views are in fact a ‘positional good’. A positional good is a good that people acquire to signalise where they stand in a social hierarchy; it is acquired in order to set oneself apart from others. Positional goods therefore have a peculiar property: the utility their consumers derive from them is inversely related to the number of people who can access them. It has long been clear that expressing

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Julie Burchill’s faith, Belgravia’s basements, and the real cost of rail commuting

Burchill’s flimsy faith Sir: It is funny that it now falls to the Julie Burchills of this world, the old rebels of the cultural left, to speak up for Christianity in Britain (‘For God’s Sake’, 26 April). Good for her, I say, especially since she identifies Protestantism as the greatest force for liberty in this country — her argument is all the more convincing for being so unfashionable these days. The trouble, however, is that to stand up for Christian values in a time of relativism and multi-faith confusion, it helps to at least have some faith in what you are saying. Burchill’s admission that she’s ‘too shallow’ to think about

The Spectator

Are pigeons braver than dogs?

Animal spirit A labrador blown up with her handler while sniffing for bombs in Afghanistan in 2008 became the 64th animal to be awarded the PDSA’s Dickin medal for ‘gallantry’ during wartime work. — Among the total are 29 dogs, yet they are outnumbered by the 32 pigeons who have won the medal, such as Gustav, for bringing home the first message from the Normandy beach landings in 1944. — Only three horses have been given the medal, and none of them were working in a war zone. Olga, for example, was given the award after bolting 100 yards from a flying bomb, before returning to the scene and helping

Taki

I’m off the booze. My daughter insists that I walk her down the aisle – not vice versa

The vicissitudes of getting old are linked to the mystical innocence of childhood as one daydreams the precious time away. I’m a daydreamer par excellence, and lately I’ve been thinking non-stop about my daughter. She’s getting married this week and I’m off to London for the festivities. Solipsist that I am, it’s nice to think of others for a change. It’s the nature of prestidigitation to mix one’s self and one’s children — I’ve got one of each — and I thank my stars that there’s only one bride, as I read with amusement that three gals in Massachusetts exchanged vows although no state in America has yet to pass

Jeremy Clarke

Sharon’s back, altered in mind as well as body

Sharon’s back. As soon as I heard, I went straight round to the house and let myself in. She was standing in the kitchen wearing that deceptively vulnerable look that she has. Also in the room was a little girl aged about three with ruby red hair and a Boxer dog. The Boxer was built like Sonny Liston and capered before me. It span round in circles, glancing coquettishly over its shoulder. The little girl was my superior in intelligence and composure. I could see it straight away, as could she. Her name was Amy. Sharon and her partner had adopted her 18 months before. Sharon and Amy shared a

Melissa Kite

Must every man take spring off to give birth?

Really, I do wish people would stagger their baby-making. Absolutely every professional person whose services I have required in the past few weeks has declared themselves out of action for procreational reasons. And before I get accused of sexism, most of them have been men. It is a very strange thing, this trend for paternity leave. I wouldn’t mind, but it doesn’t just start when the baby arrives. It seems to take men out of gainful employment in the run-up to the birth as well as after it, nowadays. I’m sure this never used to be the case. As I understand it, my father, for example, was able to work

Alexander Chancellor

The rich have given up their freedom

The appointment of Sajid Javid as the new Secretary of State for Culture has been much criticised on the grounds that culture is not his forte; and in an interview with the Times the other day he confessed that he had never been to the opera. This is a little surprising because, as a former banker in the City earning an estimated £3 million a year, he is just the kind of person you might expect to go to the Royal Opera House if only to flaunt his wealth. However, Javid has never seen an opera; and the reasons he gave for this in his interview were that when he

Robin Oakley

Own up, Twelve to Follow fans – which of you sabotaged my BMW?

Mrs Oakley takes a dim view of my using the BMW that consumed much of her savings to ferry sacks of garden refuse and discarded paint tins to the council dump. She took an even dimmer view when, in executing a three-point turn recently, I missed a marker post behind me and reshaped the bumper: replacing it will require regular success in the Tote Placepot. But it really wasn’t my fault when a warning light flashed to tell us we had low tyre pressure. The garage reported that not just one tyre but all four had been penetrated by vicious-looking carpet tacks: it was either mindless vandalism or deliberate sabotage,

Raymond Keene

Vengeance is mine

The history of the world chess championship includes five title matches where the challenger was the former champion, seeking his revenge. These are Steinitz v Lasker, 1896; Alekhine v Euwe 1937; Botvinnik v Smyslov, 1958; Botvinnik v Tal 1961 and Karpov v Kasparov 1986. Steinitz and Karpov both failed in their bids to reclaim the championship, while Alekhine and Botvinnik were successful, the latter twice.   After the Candidates’ tournament in Khanty-Mansisk, the former champion Anand becomes the fifth deposed monarch of the chess world to have the chance to stage a comeback. When I organised the 2000 challenge by Kramnik to Kasparov in London, I offered Kasparov the right to an

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 1 May 2014

Somewhere highly intellectual I read that they were bringing back the Generation Game, recalling, in all their excruciating mundanity,  Brucie’s catchphrases. I had to eat my own snootiness at the Easter Championship Pairs, won by Susanna, yes OUR Susanna, playing with England supremo David Gold. ‘Didn’t she do well?’ I shrieked — and indeed she did. The first pair’s event is a two-day, three-session tournament, at the highly demanding matchpoint  scoring, so every trick counts. In other words, there’s no faking it. When you win that event you’ve played proper grown-up bridge. That’s why it’s called the Championship Pairs. Check out Ms Gross on this hand, executing a squeeze without

Raymond Keene

No. 312

White to play. This is from Botvinnik-Smyslov, World Championship (Game 2) 1958. White’s next was a clever way to win a pawn and achieve an overwhelming position. What did he play? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 6 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 am offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Qxh7+ Last week’s winner Risdon Nicholls, Essex

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Help! Wet wipes keep blocking the drains at our caravan park

Q. My sister and I own a popular caravan park which, for 30 years, has given happiness to around a hundred caravan owners a week. Over the past three years, however, our small profit has turned into a loss due to the craze for wet wipes, by which I mean facial cleansing wipes and baby wipes. They block the drains and cost us £7,000 every five months in cesspit rebuilding costs. No amount of pleading to the punters not to put them down the loos has any effect. As a consequence we are going to have to close the park unless, Mary, you can think of a solution? — Name and address withheld A.

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

After visiting the Cherwell Boathouse, I might spare Oxford from burning

It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a person, with only a gift for screaming; but no matter how low I sank, to paraphrase Alcoholics Anonymous literature, I never sank quite as low as to consider eating at the ’bab van (kebab van) outside Univ (University College) on the High (High Street); I preferred to dine in Hall (a hall). Oxford, you see, has its own native dialect, a sort of pidgin posh best worn with a depressed carnation and a giant inedible chip made of class terror. Perhaps the roots of my eventual redemption were in that

Toby Young Toby Young

The only way to survive as a cyclist is to behave like you’re suicidal

I wonder how many cyclists are killed in London during tube strikes? I had a 10 a.m. meeting in the West End on Tuesday that I couldn’t cancel so made the seven-and-a-half-mile journey by bike. It was hairy, to put it mildly. You’d think it would be safer cycling in London when the tube’s not running because the traffic is almost stationary. But it isn’t, thanks to the above average number of cyclists. I found myself constantly having to overtake people, most of whom were too cautious to weave in and out of the traffic like me. The danger came when they’d gingerly poke their noses out in between cars, completely

Dot Wordsworth

Why –y? The evolution of a suffix

Hitler was ‘dark, shouty, moustachioed’ in Churchill’s eyes, or rather, that was Jonathan Rose’s view of how Churchill saw Hitler, according to Sam Leith, writing in the books pages on 19 April. Shouty is not a word Churchill would have used in exactly this sense, for which no example is recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary before 2001. It falls in the category of –y suffixes that connote condemnation, ridicule, or contempt, like catty, churchy or beery. There are plenty of entries for a rather different sense, ‘like a shout’, as Henry Coward noted in his Choral Technique and Interpretation (1914) of untrained voices that may be ‘shouty, throaty, cavernous,

The Spectator

A shameful U-turn at the National Trust

What has happened to Dame Helen Ghosh? Last October the director-general of the National Trust seemed prepared to stand against the green orthodoxy which exists in the public and voluntary sectors. She declared that she had an ‘open mind’ on fracking, while she rejected the case for wind farms on the Trust’s land. Her approach was entirely logical. The Trust’s job is to guard the aesthetic integrity of the landscapes which it has bought with its donors’ money, or been gifted, in order to preserve. Not to deface this land with 300 ft-high wind turbines that generate pitifully little electricity. This week, however, Dame Helen and the National Trust appear to

Sam Neill

Sam Neill’s diary: Back in Blighty, remembering drinking binges of yore

I am back in the UK for work. Great time to turn up — after the grim, grey grind of the British winter. Here in Manchester, people stroll in shirtsleeves or T-shirts, though it’s still only 15 degrees. They are, in truth, dazzlingly white. Their semi-nudity strikes me as a tad premature, but then I’ve only just left my Indian summery vineyard in New Zealand via Bondi Beach. I’m here at the behest of BBC2, for a second season of The Peaky Blinders. If you didn’t see the first season, you should. And if you don’t … I know where you live. And having played Chief Inspector Campbell, I know how

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 1 May 2014

Home The British economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2014, disappointing hotheads who’d expected 1 per cent. It was 3.1 per cent bigger than a year earlier, but 0.6 per cent smaller than in 2008. Pfizer, the American pharmaceutical company, said it wanted to take over AstraZeneca, with a £60 billion bid that would make it the biggest ever foreign takeover of a British-based company. The Labour party said it was leaving the Co-op Bank and taking its £1.2 million overdraft elsewhere. UK Financial Investments, which manages the Treasury’s 81 per cent stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland, blocked a plan for 200 per cent bonuses. A film version of Dad’s

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes: Max Clifford’s conviction vindicates juries. But so did the acquittals

The conviction of Max Clifford for indecent assaults feels like a vindication of the jury system, as did the acquittal of the many other showbiz characters charged under Operation Yewtree. One reason I keep raising questions of justice about the current obsession with paedophilia is out of suspicion that those most zealous in their accusations are unhealthily interested in the subject. This was the case with Clifford himself and, of course, with the newspapers with which he did business. Celebrity culture is, in essence, a form of pornography which incites powerful people to exploit unpowerful people. It acquires an extra twist of perversion when it turns on those it has