Society

Thursday

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 13 March 2014

The Night of the Stars charity bridge event, held in West London a couple of weeks ago, was every bit as fun as I’d hoped: 53 stars of the game mingled with — well, let us be known as the eclipses — for an evening’s duplicate. My partner wasn’t one of the official stars, but he’s without doubt one in the rising — young Tom ‘Mini’ Paske, aged 23. We did pretty well, finishing eighth out of 112 pairs. And he’s a gentleman to boot: when we were going through some of the hands afterwards, he pointed to one and said, ‘We did well here.’ ‘But that was entirely you

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 13 March 2014

Home Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, promised that, if elected, his administration would hold a referendum on membership of the European Union only if there was a new transfer of power to Brussels, which he called ‘unlikely’. If Scotland votes for independence, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds might have to move their legal homes to London under European Union law, the BBC reported. BBC Three is to be closed as an on-air channel, to go online only. The future of BBC Four is also in question. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, told the Treasury Select Committee that interest rates could reach

Columba

2153: Selling

Each of thirteen clues contains one misprinted letter in the definition part. Corrections of misprints spell a phrase involving a pair of items. Unclued Across lights are examples of one of these items, and unclued Down lights are examples of the other. Ignore an apostrophe in a clued light.   Across   1 Crease in leg left by special garter (8) 6 Hair’s restyled with new length (6) 11 Old-fashioned glance reflected trouble admitted by editor (5) 13 Chest well inlaid with silver line (7) 14 Palm in westward desert sheltering fowl (6) 17 Empress, for instance, fashionable (8) 21 Muse in retreat, not eager for material (8) 25 Spirit

Columba

Solution to 2150: Content

‘To fill the hour — that is happiness’ (given by initial letters of superfluous words in clues, and 3 4A) is a quotation by EMERSON (19). Thematically created entries at 12, 22, 31 and 33 are defined by 28, 34, 36 and 15D. First prize Leslie Purkiss, Southend on Sea, Essex Runners-up David Jenkinson, Matlock, Derbyshire; C. McCullough, Uppingham, Rutland

Molly Guinness

The Spectator: on popes and poverty since 1828

A year ago, a relatively unknown Argentine cardinal, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope. A few days later he announced he would take the name Francis, after Saint Francis of Assisi, because, he said, he had particular concern for the poor. In the 1880s, Pope Leo XIII also drew the attention of his clergy to St Francis’s teachings on poverty. The Spectator approved, and recommended it to Protestants as well as Catholics, but it took issue with the Pope’s argument that the spectacle of rich people joyfully embracing holy poverty would be enough to encourage the poor not to mind being poor. ‘It seems very doubtful whether the foundation of

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle: What I’d like to see in the Budget

A new National Minimum Wage of £8.80 per hour, both in London and beyond. Plenty of money set aside to police this arrangement. Four per cent stamp duty for all homes over £250,000, two per cent for all those under. We need to dampen down the housing market which has again become absurd. 60 per cent taxation on all incomes over £200,000. Cap on CEO pay to no more than 12 times the pay of their lowest employee. Re-nationalisation of the utilities and railways. Cut in subsidy to local councils of 98 per cent and a cap on the amount of money they can raise in council tax. Just empty

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Pope Francis’s revolution is just beginning – and the media will find it boring

Yesterday I took part in an interesting discussion at The Catholic Herald’s offices on the subject of Pope Francis’s first year. The question was, as it seemed to be for the BBC this morning, whether his ‘revolution’ has been one of substance or style. The answer, I reckon, is a bit of both – and a bit of neither. Yes, Francis has thrilled left-liberals everywhere by suggesting that the Church should be nicer to gays and women, by telephoning famous atheists for a chinwag, and by – altogether now – ‘snubbing the pomp and ceremony’ of the papal office. But I’m not sure how radical a departure all that is,

Douglas Murray

When Free Speech isn’t free

BBC3’s Free Speech programme is a good example of why the channel deserves to be shut down. Aimed at giving a voice to young people it is endlessly dumbing-down, seeks validity through instant Twitter reactions and all in all is a very degrading programme to appear on. I know because a couple of years ago I was on the first series and spent an evening at an ice rink in Doncaster debating the key issues of the day with a ‘Page 3 model’ and Owen Jones. Even now it makes me shiver. Anyhow – last night the show came from outside the Birmingham Central mosque. The panel included Mehdi Hasan and Julie

Steerpike Steerpike

ONS rebuke Guardian for zero hour reporting

‘Facts are sacred’ claim the Guardian, but some facts are evidently more sacred than others. Mr S was amused earlier this week when the Office of National Statistics rebuked the paper for its splash about the soaring number of ‘zero-hour contracts’. You may recall that the paper reported: ‘The scale of the use of zero-hours contracts has been revealed after official figures showed that nearly 583,000 employees – more than double the government’s estimate – were forced to sign up to the controversial conditions last year.’  Soon afterwards, the Office of National Statistics issued this statement: ‘In response to media reports about “official figures” showing a steep increase in the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Tristram Hunt should worry about failure in council schools, not free schools

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_March_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Toby Young and Fraser Nelson discuss the last stand of Michael Gove”] Listen [/audioplayer]Tristram Hunt seems delighted today that Britain’s first profit-seeking school has been deemed ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted. The scores of council-run failing schools, several in his Stoke constituency, don’t seem to be worthy of his ire. But when a free school stumbles, in Suffolk, he declares this to be… ‘…more evidence of the damage David Cameron’s Free School policy is doing to school standards. The lack of local oversight and a policy that allows unqualified teachers into classrooms on a permanent basis is the wrong approach. We know that this is not an isolated case. That’s

David Blackburn

Our own folly may yet lead us to a second dishonourable Yalta

‘He was back after less than two years’ pilgrimage in a Holy Land of illusion in the old ambiguous world, where priests were spies and gallant friends proved traitors and his country was led blundering into dishonour.’ Those words are taken from Officers and Gentlemen, the second volume in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour, his trilogy about the second world war. The words describe the disillusion of the protagonist, Guy Crouchback, as Britain sides with Soviet Russia to defeat Hitler: an alliance with an atheist tyranny to defeat an atheist tyranny, an alliance that led to the betrayal – perhaps necessary – of Eastern Europe at Yalta. The words resonate

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jobs for the girls | 13 March 2014

Martin Vander Weyer tells an interesting tale in his Any Other Business column this week of Business Secretary Vince Cable demanding that companies appoint more women to senior positions: ‘The Business Secretary has been busy behind the scenes, too. “We had a letter from Vince telling us we should appoint a female non-exec…” one chief executive told me last week “…and we’ve found a really good one, totally one of the boys, she even likes shooting.”‘ Martin points out that Cable’s campaign is ‘about equality for its own sake rather than the distinctive qualities of female decision-making, and the otherwise already emancipated objects of his support feel themselves patronised’. He

Anthony Horowitz

I always defended Michael Gove. Then I met him

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_March_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Toby Young and Fraser Nelson discuss Michael Gove’s personality and the attacks from all sides”] Listen [/audioplayer]A few weeks ago, I was a guest at a huge tea party for children’s authors, publishers and commentators at the South Bank, but the atmosphere, over the cupcakes and finger sandwiches, was decidedly frosty. There were three keynote speakers and their speeches all targeted a man so vile and destructive that the audience visibly recoiled every time his name was mentioned. He was, of course, Michael Gove — and I wasn’t sure I should tell anyone that I had always rather admired him and, moreover, was about to interview him for this

Ian Birrell

Crimean notebook: ‘They’ll have to break all my bones to make me a Russian citizen’

Vladimir Putin still swears that there are no Russian troops in Crimea, so their mission is to say as little as possible as they invade this holiday region in their unmarked uniforms and vehicles. It is remarkable how soon you get used to shouting questions at these heavily armed special forces soldiers while they pretend not to be Russians. They tend not to take the bait: the most you’ll get out of them is a curt ‘Nyet’. I wandered up to an officer who seemed to be in charge of seizing a Ukrainian naval base in the old Tartar capital of Bakhchisaray. He wore all black, his face hidden by

Lucy Vickery

Fifty-something

In Competition 2838 you were invited to submit a short story entitled Fifty Shades of whatever you chose. It was a bit of a mixed bag this week but I liked Gerard Benson’s twist on Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, Josh Ekroy’s 50 Shades of Ukip and Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s clever, grisly tale of a woman reduced to a piece of meat. Not all of you went the E.L. James route, but Chris O’Carroll’s winning entry clearly took its lead from the queen of erotica. He is rewarded with 50 lashes and £30. His fellow winners pocket £25 each.   Fifty Shades of Dan Brown ‘The Pope!’ he hissed in her

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The plan with three brains

This month Daniel Kahneman turned 80. Long revered among experts in the decision sciences, his work reached much wider public attention with the publication of the bestseller Thinking Fast and Slow.The central tenet of the book, what he calls a ‘useful fiction’, is that we obviously have more than one way of thinking. The ‘fast’ way — imagine answering ‘What is two plus two?’ — is unconscious, effortless, decisive and fast. The second — ‘What is 17 times 34?’ — is conscious, effortful, dithery and slow. There’s nothing new about mental dualism, of course. But what is useful about Kahneman’s simple model is that he names them neutrally ‘System One’

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Happy 25th birthday to the World Wide Web. What comes next?

On this day in 1989, the World Wide Web was born. Tim Berners-Lee, a contractor at CERN, published a paper called ‘Information Management: A Proposal‘. Although it’s tricky to pin down exactly how and when the Internet was formed, Berners-Lee’s concept of a global system of interlinked pages was key. It wasn’t until a year later when Berners-Lee published a more formal paper, along with the necessary tools to create and host web pages, that the project took the name and form — WorldWideWeb. Since then, the WWW has changed the world in a way that Berners-Lee never predicted. Instead of listing platitudes about all the wonderful things the web

Tuesday

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Weighed in, weighed in. Cheltenham 2014 is underway

The Cheltenham Festival kicks off today, and this year marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Arkle’s winning streak of 3 consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups, from 1964-1966. Here he is winning in both ’64 and ’65: Known to many racing fans simply as ‘Himself’, no other horse has even come close to beating his astounding triple in the Gold Cup. Indeed when he first ran, in 1964, many believed that his rival Mill House was invincible. But beaten he was, and Arkle went on to be thought of as at least one of the greatest – if not the greatest – steeplechaser in history. Nowadays many racehorses are household

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Powys County Council reaches dizzy new heights

This must count as the most bizarre government decision in a long time. But from 31 March, Powys County Council will take over the Office for Fair Trading’s role as the lead enforcement body for all UK estate agents. When I was first told this, I assumed it was a joke. Powys County Council might have many strengths but one struggles to see how they are qualified to be the lead enforcement agency for estate agents in London or Birmingham or, frankly, anywhere other than Powys. But when you check Hansard, it is confirmed by the relevant minister the Lib Dem Jenny Willott: ‘The Office of Fair Trading has a duty