Society

Thursday

Taki

Taki: Come on then Saatchi, name a time and place. I’m serious, are you? 

OK, folks. We’ve had enough of Hollande and his rather silly antics, although I do understand the man. Ever younger is not a bad policy, in sport as well as in sexual matters, but it does give off a certain bad smell (it’s called a Saatchi) and is something real men actually never get caught doing. Seducers have been the whipping boys in books, plays, poems and in films from time immemorial, starting with Paris of Troy. Someone called it the most ‘unspeakable type of masculinity’, a bit harsh, I agree, but there are some chaps out there whose only goals are conquest and belt notches. Although highly ridiculous —

Dot Wordsworth

Challenging ‘challenging’

‘Pistols at dawn,’ said my husband, flapping a pair of Marigold rubber gloves from the other side of the kitchen. ‘I don’t want to know what you mean by that,’ I replied, hoping not to encourage him. ‘Being challenging,’ he said, ignoring my implied request. We had been discussing a report in the Daily Telegraph about the impenetrability of the language of the art establishment. Sir Peter Bazalgette had been complaining about this, but the examples given came from a book by Philip Hook called Breakfast at Sotheby’s. In his amusing devil’s dictionary, honest meant ‘inept’, unmediated ‘direct’, challenging ‘obscure’, and difficult one step in obscurity beyond challenging. Challenging comes in two flavours:

Robin Oakley

When lawyers take to racehorses

Can you be both restless and content? Standing last week with Graeme McPherson on the viewing platform over his sharply rising gallops near Stow-on-the-Wold, I found a man who answers to both descriptions. An in-demand QC with a big sporting practice, Graeme is also a racehorse trainer with a fast-expanding yard, a glorious Cotswold hillside house and a plan for the future. Like most journalists, I live by the next deadline. My lawyer daughter and her husband, another advancing QC, chide me for my lack of a life plan, so perhaps it reveals something about the legal profession that Graeme started his racing career with two. The five-year plan was

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 23 January 2014

2014 has started with a bang! The second weekend of January saw TGR’s fifth Auction Pairs in which 71 pairs were sold in record time by the world’s most glamorous auctioneer, Ruth Zandberg. This event has become a wild success, with top international players coming from all over the globe. After two days, five pairs could have won in the last session, and up until the last board it was neck-and-neck, but finally the trophy was taken by Californian rubber bridge player Kevin Castner, playing with England’s  golden boy David Gold. On the following hand, David showed his not inconsiderable skills in the card play. West led the ♥K. How

Raymond Keene

Nimzo style

As promised, this week a victory by chess aficionado Dominic Lawson, former editor of The Spectator. Dominic’s distinguished opponent was Peter Lee, who has been British champion in both chess and bridge — a unique achievement I believe. The following is a fine Nimzowitschian game, not least in the amazing versatility of the Black knights. Notes based on those supplied by the winner.   Lee-Lawson: Hamilton-Russell Cup, London 2010; Modern Defence   1 e4 d6 2 d4 g6 3 Nc3 Bg7 4 Be3 a6 5 Qd2 Nd7 6 0-0-0 b5 7 h4 h5 8 Nh3 Bb7 9 Ng5 Rc8 10 f3 c5 11 dxc5 Nxc5 12 Bd4 Nf6 13 Qe3 Qc7

Raymond Keene

No. 298

Black to play. This is from Wojtszek-Jobava, Wijk aan Zee 2014. This week’s puzzle is a fine finish from the ‘B’ group at Wijk aan Zee. The white position is a mess, but what is the key winning move for Black? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 28 January 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 Rxe7+ Last week’s winner Jeremy Putley, Harrogate

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 January 2014

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that he was in favour of increasing the minimum wage by an amount greater than that of inflation. The International Monetary Fund raised its expectation of growth for Britain in 2014 to 2.4 per cent, from a forecast of 1.9 per cent last October. Unemployment fell to 7.1 per cent. More than 3.3 million people between the ages of 20 and 34 were living with parents in 2013, 26 per cent of that age group, the Office for National Statistics said, and a number 25 per cent bigger than in 1996. London’s share of national output reached 22.4 per cent in

Peter Jones

Dieting with Hippocrates

There is, apparently, an ‘obesity epidemic’ in the UK, such that two million people could benefit from weight-loss surgery. Ancient Greeks would have argued that they would benefit much more from a dose of self-control. The ancients associated fatness with a lazy lifestyle. No change there, then. The doctor Hippocrates, well aware that sudden death was associated with obesity, knew that ‘dieting which causes excessive loss of weight, as well as the feeding-up of the emaciated, is beset with difficulties’. The Roman doctor Celsus (1st C ad) advised thin men to put on weight through rest, constipation and big meals, and the fat to take it off through late nights, worry

The Spectator

When they warned you about eight for the road

One for the road Road safety campaigners were angered by the opening of the first pub at a motorway service station, on the M40 in Buckinghamshire. — Drink-driving campaigns pre-date the motor-car: it was in 1872 that the first law was enacted that made it an offence to drive carriages, horses, cattle and steam engines under the influence of alcohol. — The law didn’t catch up with motor cars until 1925, when a more general law made it an offence to drive any vehicle while drunk. — The first drink-driving advert on TV appeared in 1964, warning drivers that after eight whiskies they were 25 times as likely to have

Doc

2146: 4 ÷ 4 = 8

The unclued four-letter words can be paired in a particular way to form the remaining unclued lights (one of two words).   Across   5    Be in contact with a jock’s love-in (6) 10    Isolation of actors Chaney and Wallach by headland (10) 12    Scar on saint is something of a problem (6) 13    Still the champion, having downed the sticky bun first (8) 16    Little US heads (5) 17    Hermes’ footwear for 100 sene at ‘The Valley’ (7) 18    Does the gallery own something like Trident? (7) 20    European calls young lad back (8) 25    German listener returned letter (3)

Doc

to 2143: Revising geography

The unclued lights are all geographical locations – paired as anagrams: 13/9, 23/28. 30/17, 34/6 and 42/33. (33 Down is a river rather than a place-name, but DONETSK (33+K) would have maintained the theme more specifically, but then it is not an anagram of OSTEND!)   First prize Magdalena Deptula, Eton, Berkshire Runners-up D.G. Tallis, Oxford; Alexander Caldin, Salford, Oxfordshire

Steerpike Steerpike

What’s causing the stink at 5 Hertford Street?

Robin Birley’s 5 Hertford Street, the eye-wateringly expensive club in Mayfair, has been given until March to sort out its kitchens or face serious consequences after receiving an abysmal one star rating for hygiene from the food inspectors of Westminster Council. This comes after the departure last summer, in apparently acrimonious circumstances, of the designer of the kitchens, former executive chef Alberico Penati. Penati, who used to work for Birley’s father at Harry’s Bar and Aspinall’s, has had a chequered history: a waitress who worked under him at another establishment was awarded £124,000 by a tribunal for sexual harassment in 2006. James Armitage, Westminster City Council Food Safety Manager, revealed:

The Spectator

Iain Duncan Smith’s speech on welfare reform – full text

The Work and Pensions Secretary was speaking to the Centre for Social Justice this morning. Introduction It is a pleasure to be hosted today by the Centre for Social Justice – setting out a vision for Britain’s welfare state alongside the organisation where, in a sense, it all started. Within their critique, the CSJ set out a plan for reform for Government, and today I want to look at that. But in 2010, we inherited an economy which had entered the worst recession in living memory, with the deficit rising, costs spiralling, and GDP shrinking. People were losing their jobs and feared for the future. It was vital that we

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Islam’s 30 year war, Westminster’s wandering hands and the Tories’ NHS legacy

Is the Sunni-Shia conflict in the Middle East making a new great war ever more likely? On this week’s podcast, Douglas Murray discusses the battle involving Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arbia with Tom Tugendhat, a former solider and advisor to General David Richards. Why has the West failed to control the region? Can anything be done to save the situation? And how likely is it that the Sunni-Shia battle will end in a nuclear standoff? Do the men of Westminster also suffer unwelcome advances? Former Lib Dem advisor Miranda Green and Guido Fawkes’ Alex Wickham discuss the culture of Westminster’s wandering hands. How endemic is the problem for both

Lucy Vickery

Essence of…

In Competition 2832 you were invited to compose what might be a quintessential opening paragraph from the pen of either Graham Greene, Frank Kafka, Jane Austen or Tolkien. It was a tall order to channel such literary genius, but on the whole you did it pretty well. Greene, with his immediately distinctive voice, was by far the most popular choice. As Nicholas Shakespeare wrote, ‘It rarely takes more than three …sentences to situate you in Greeneland, a place whose moral temperature would wring sweat out of a fridge.’ Kafka proved the most difficult nut to crack. None of you quite managed to capture his finely calibrated blend of the nightmarish

Clarissa Tan

Clarissa Tan’s Notebook: Why I stopped drinking petrol

Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though through steam. The Arno river was a dense strip of dew. At the Piazzale Michelangelo, the statue of David was etched by the surrounding murkiness to a stark silhouette, the renaissance defined by gothic cloud. I peered through a telescope that overlooked the city and saw nothing for miles. My friend Alessandro told me this was unusual for sunny Tuscany, which made me feel quite pleased. Perhaps with each day that passed I would see less of Florence — the ultimate tourist experience. At a nearby cemetery, the milky arms

Sarah Wardle

On Lambeth Bridge

I am halfway across a bridge and midway through my life, staring at the midday sun. How I love politics! I recall hearing debates over there in the Commons, and I know that democracy is about working days like this, taxpayers in trucks and buses, the business of pleasure boats, foreign policy of tourists and waiting lists in St Thomas’s, and as the Eye revolves like economic cycles, the nation’s travelled full circle, and the distance seems to widen between Lambeth Palace and the Square Mile, and upstream MI6 runs information espionage, while joggers run past dog-walkers and mothers with love’s child benefit in Battersea Park, and Big Ben strikes

Wednesday

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

16 and Pregnant does not glamourise teen pregnancy. How could it?

16 and Pregnant is an MTV show – a show that, as the title suggests, follows the lives of American teenage girls who are ‘facing unplanned pregnancies’. The programme – and its spin off shows, Teen Mom (1,2 and 3) – is one of the channel’s most popular documentary series; but it has also been dogged by accusations that it glamourises teen pregnancy. Even Kim Kardashian has had her say, writing on her blog, ‘girls, these are not people you should idolize’. But a study released earlier this week shows that the programmes have actually had an inverse effect on the number of teenage births across the US. The research noted spikes

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Charles Saatchi’s letter to Taki – I’m a cage fighter. Still want to insult me?

We’re putting the new Spectator to press this morning, and we have an interesting reader’s letter from Charles Saatchi. It’s addressed to Taki, as opposed to the editor, and takes issue with his disobliging references last week. He has this to say: ‘Dear Ms Taki [sic], Although the Spectator is a lovely read, I always skip your column, I’m afraid. I am simply not interested in your social life.  I know that you delight in telling readers that your friends of Prussian nobility find you hilariously entertaining company at their swanky Europoncy parties. But it was very hapless of you to spring to Nigella’s defence last week, as she always found you toe-curlingly vile, and