Society

Thursday

Melissa Kite

‘I assembled a counter full of sharp objects, and went at it like Rambo in First Blood’

All the way around a cross country course I went, then I got back, tied the horse up at a wooden post and a splinter from the post landed me in A&E. This is what is known as Sod’s Law. I’m never quite sure who this Sod fellow is. But I do know the main thing Sod seems to want to demonstrate is that health and safety rules are a joke. There is, as we all know deep down, nothing you can do to make yourself safe in this world. We kid ourselves if we think we can stop bad things happening. They say God laughs at our plans. I

Alexander Chancellor

America’s crazy war on old pianos

More than 20 years ago, when I was living in New York, I wrote an article about the mutilation by the United States government of a fine old piano on the pretext of saving the African elephant. The piano was a 1920 concert grand from the once famous Parisian house of Érard, from which came the favourite piano of Franz Liszt. It had been bought in Paris by the Israeli–American pianist Ophra Yerushalmi, a huge admirer of the Hungarian virtuoso, and flown by her at great expense to New York, where it had been seized by the US Fish and Wildlife Service on the grounds that it had ivory-coated keys.

Robin Oakley

Why the other jockeys love Jamie Moore

In the parade ring just after Sire De Grugy had won this year’s Queen Mother Champion Chase, I found myself among a group of jockeys who had run out of the weighing room jostling and joshing like a bunch of schoolkids. They had, though, a serious purpose: they had emerged to pay tribute to one of their own, the winning rider Jamie Moore. Daryl Jacob, Aidan Coleman, ‘Choc’ Thornton and half a dozen others climbed on each other’s shoulders to cheer him in. I asked Daryl, why such a rare public honour? ‘It’s just that Jamie’s such a great guy from such a great family,’ he replied. Said Choc, ‘He’s

Toby Young Toby Young

Knowing things isn’t ‘20th century’, Justin Webb. It’s the foundation of a successful life

It’s scarcely possible to open a newspaper or magazine these days without reading an article about how the latest technological gizmo has rendered traditional education obsolete. According to Justin Webb, a presenter on the Today programme, it’s no longer necessary to commit any facts to memory thanks to the never-ending miracle that is Google. ‘Knowing things is hopelessly 20th-century,’ he wrote in the Radio Times. ‘The reason is that everything you need to know — things you may previously have memorised from books — is (or soon will be) instantly available on a handheld device in your pocket.’ The same view was expressed by Ian Livingstone CBE, one of the

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Gordon Ramsay joins in the posh invasion of Battersea

London House is in Battersea, which some people call South Chelsea, but is more East Wandsworth to my mind; or maybe North Clapham, or, even better, West Brixton. This is the self-hatred that the housing bubble has brought to London: we have whole sorrowful postcodes that long to be something else because original posh London, which is SW1 and W1 and SW3, does not really exist any more, or rather it does, but it does not belong to us, so we might as well forget about it. So we have London House. It was obviously a marketing essential to tag this restaurant to London, and also to mention houses, which

Dot Wordsworth

Why did we ever spell jail gaol?

‘Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.’ said the Community Chest card in Monopoly. I was never sure what a Community Chest was, but it seemed American, like the spelling jail. Those who love the spelling gaol, which combines characteristics of being very English yet outlandish, might be surprised to find that the Oxford English Dictionary prefers jail. There is a logical explanation. Both spellings derive indirectly from the Latin cavus, ‘a hollow’, from which came Latin cavea, ‘a dungeon or cage’, and thence French cage and Italian gaggia (like the coffee machine). The changing of cavea into cage is paralleled by

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I escape the tyranny of teacher presents?

Q. It’s only April and yet I am being emailed by parents who have already taken charge and are drumming up support for collective year presents for teachers at my children’s schools. I have one son and two daughters who are all leaving their respective schools and I would prefer to thank staff members on my own terms. Am I being petty? — H.K., Hampshire A. Many parents would be relieved that this organisational chore was taken off their hands but others would agree with your instinctive reaction. If you wish to distance yourself from the herd and the modern tyranny of present-giving, say, ‘Oh dear — for the first

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 3 April 2014

Dallas to me was an Eighties TV series with huge shoulder pads until I arrived there to play the American Spring Nationals last week. The American Nationals are bigger, better and  brighter than anything we Brits can imagine — after the first week they had filled over 7,000 tables — and it is organised so that everyone can play in an event of their choice and standard all day and most of the night. The main teams event is The Vanderbilt, where 64 teams compete in knockout format, in matches of 64 boards. The final was between the top two seeds, Monaco and Nickell, won by the tiny margin of

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes: Politicians and bankers both treat their most loyal backers like dirt

The Daily Telegraph’s revelation last Friday that the Financial Conduct Authority was going to arraign companies for 30 years of mis-selling pensions and other products ‘wiped’, as papers like to say, £4 billion off insurance stocks. George Osborne is putting pressure on the chief executive Martin Wheatley to go. The leak was highly embarrassing for the FCA, but the issue itself matters more. It is about how such companies treat longstanding customers. The way they work is through sellers, who hook someone for life in one go, and so the companies do not know or care about their customers. This is a parable of a much wider problem in society,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 3 April 2014

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made ‘a commitment to fight for full employment in Britain’ and for the country ‘to have the highest employment rate of any of the world’s leading economies’. Wolfgang Schäuble, his counterpart in Germany, agreed that any EU treaty changes should ‘guarantee fairness’ to countries outside the eurozone. The government’s approach to selling off Royal Mail was ‘marked by deep caution, the price of which was borne by the taxpayer’ according to a report by the National Audit Office. The Office for National Statistics said that the next census would be conducted online. Dust from the Sahara fell on to England and Wales. An

Columba

2156: Shoreline

Seven items of a kind read clockwise round the perimeter. In ten clues, cryptic indications omit reference to parts of answers; these parts must be highlighted, to reveal a definition of the perimeter items. Letters in corner squares and those adjacent to them could form WADERS, NOT OLD.   Across   11    Spirit and ogre in retreat talk dismally (5) 12    Stooge deserted after charge (4) 13    Revolutionary failure to capture current head (5) 14    Soul in small room following international game (7) 15    Insect holding attention around greenery in magnolia (10, hyphened) 17    Peasant, young, having day off (5) 20    Judge stopping

Columba

to 2153: Selling

Corrections of misprints in clues form the phrase BAIT AND SWITCH. Unclued lights are examples of bait (10, 16, 23, 38) and switch (15, 20, 31, 37).   First prize Robert Hinton, Swansea Runners-up Mark Roberts, Luxembourg; Roger Sherman, Richmond, Surrey

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

We get the message: smoking is bad for you. Now leave fag packets alone

What form do you reckon the government’s consultation on cigarette packaging is going to take? Given that health minister Jane Ellison has said that the government’s intention is clear and the consultation short, I rather think it’s going to be like the gay marriage consultation – which ignored half a million objections to the thing in principle, and just focused on asking how to implement a decision already made. So this business of seeking out the views of ‘stakeholders’ is, I rather think, entirely cosmetic. I don’t know whether you could call me a stakeholder because I’m not exactly a smoker – I’ve never got the hang of inhaling –

Steerpike Steerpike

Tom Watson and Alex Marunchak keep it civil at the Savile

The potential for brouhaha lurks on any party guest list; but the stakes are not often as high as they were last night at the Savile Club, where hacks and MPs – both past and present – gathered for the launch of Jerry Hayes’s naughty memoir An Unexpected MP. Tension mounted when former News of the World executive Alex Marunchak came face to face with Tom Watson, self-styled scourge of the Murdoch Empire. Readers may recall that in March 2012 Watson made a series of allegations in parliament about Marunchak concerning the News of the World and the murder of the private investigator Daniel Morgan in 1987. As the Press Gazette reported: ‘During

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Hurrah for National Tweed Day!

As I’m sure many of you will be aware, today is a very important day: National Tweed Day. To be honest, I don’t quite understand why they chose the first day of Aintree rather than some time during Cheltenham, but hey ho. The 3rd April it is. Tweed might be seen as a bit of a fuddy-duddy fabric, more suited to young fogeys and Cirencester types than the catwalk. But in recent years it has seen something of a renaissance, and the tweed industry – particularly Harris tweed – can be seen as something of a British success story. In the 2000s, Harris tweed was struggling. In 2009, one mill

James Forsyth James Forsyth

There’ll be no promotion for Maria Miller after her short, bitter apology

Maria Miller’s apology today to the House of Commons over her attitude to the investigation into her expenses was short, 32 seconds. But it was not sweet. Rather, it was bitter. ‘I wish to make a personal statement in relation to today’s report. The report resulted from an allegation made by the member for Bassetlaw. The committee has dismissed his allegation. The committee has recommended that I apologise to the House for my attitude to the Commissioner’s inquiries, and I of course unreservedly apologise. I fully accept the recommendations of the Committee, and thank them for bringing this matter to an end.’ listen to ‘Maria Miller’s apology’ on Audioboo

The Spectator

Full text: Tristram Hunt’s speech to the Spectator schools conference

listen to ‘Tristram Hunt’s speech + Q&A at Spectator’s schools conference’ on Audioboo Free Schools, For-profit Schools and the Swedish Slide Thank you. It is, as ever, a great pleasure to speak from the platform of England’s oldest continuously published magazine. And especially so on education, which has always been one of its uppermost concerns. Indeed, it was from these pages in November 1711, some seven months after the first edition, that your founder, Joseph Addison, offered one of the most memorable quotes about the nature of education. He said: “I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shews none of its inherent beauties till the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Tristram Hunt is wrong about free schools

‘I’ve come to exorcise you lot,’ said Tristram Hunt cheerfully, as he turned up to deliver the keynote speech in The Spectator’s schools conference today. He had come to explain why free schools, a project this magazine proudly supports, are going wrong. His speech was as elegant and clever as it was wrong, which is why it’s worth studying. We’ll post the audio of his speech soon, but here’s my take. Hunt started by claiming the free school system is in meltdown, because a few of them have failed. He mentioned IES Breckland in Suffolk. Then Al-Madinah free school in Derby – so bad, he said, that Ofsted had to