Society

Thursday

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 13 February 2014

A couple of Sundays ago, in London, Zia Mahmood and Demetri Marchessini held the first ever ‘Goulash Individual’ tournament. ‘Goulash’ deals involve wild distributions of suits — and the day was bizarre and fun in equal measure. Several superstars flew in to play, including 86-year-old Benito Garozzo, 13 times world champion, and 28-year-old Marion Michielsen, arguably today’s best female player. Everyone partnered everyone for two boards; on this deal, my great pal Neil Mendoza got to play with Zia — but not altogether successfully:   North’s spectacular opening was passed round to Zia (West), who made a ‘Lightner’ double, asking for a ruff. Had Neil (East) been sure that’s what

Dot Wordsworth

A learned poet’s mystifying mistakes

I enjoy Poetry Please, but was shouting mildly at the wireless the other day when a northern woman poet was using the whining intonation that some seem to think the proper voice in which to recite verse. So I was glad that Bernard O’Donoghue came on, with an accent formed by a childhood in Co. Cork. His poem ‘Gerund’ was about an only child who ‘grew up in a county council cottage by the roadside’ but was allowed to go on to secondary education (as many in Ireland then did not) because of his intelligence. At school, the poem says: ‘When Joe Garvey asked/ “What part of speech is desperandum?”,/

Doc

2149: Super!

Each of the unclued lights (one of two words and one of three) can be preceded by the same word which solvers must state when submitting their entry. All resulting phrases are verifiable in Brewer 19th edition.   Across   1 Detached from musical backed by censor (8) 6 Thoroughfares more important than Norfolk waterways, apparently (6, hyphened) 11 Copy of period furniture with small repeat and gold backing (5) 14 Overtake again taking time out from meals (6) 16 Public showing Eastern cross by river (4) 17 Cake with bit of icing authorised at first for Athenian assembly (8) 21 They give out decorations without bits of ice (8)

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sales of The Spectator: 2013 H2

It’s that time of year again, where The Spectator‘s circulation figures are out – and our success continues. In October, I announced that we had more than one million unique visitors in a month. This week, we passed the 1.3 million mark with more than 3.2 million pageviews — something even I didn’t expect. Here’s how our analytics look: Interestingly, a quarter of our traffic now comes through social media. Another 26 per cent is from search engines, up from 20 per cent last year. Google, Twitter, Facebook and Flipboard are fast becoming the new newsagent – people can browse headlines, click what they like and discover for themselves that The

Doc

Solution to 2146: 4 ÷ 4 = 8

One 4-letter word is to be placed in the middle of another to yield an 8-letter solution: 6 ÷ 19 = 44: 14 ÷ 8 = 1A; 31D ÷ 37 = 31A; 22 ÷ 25D = 9   First prize John Bartlett, Shirley, Solihull Runners-up Anthony Harker, Oxford; Mrs D. King, Leeds

Steerpike Steerpike

Delingpole quits Telegraph ahead of UK launch of Breitbart.com

Green-baiter James Delingpole has quit his blog at Telegraph with customary flair: ‘Today is the sad day when I must bid you all farewell. I have been appointed Chief Sustainability Consultant at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, working directly to one of my all-time-heroes Ed Davey, with a juicy, taxpayer-funded salary, a ring-fenced pension and a bio-fuel-powered Aston-Martin just like the Prince of Wales’s. No, not really, about the second bit. Just the first bit: I’m off to pastures new.’ Mr Steerpike hears that the pastures new are the launch of a London office of right-wing muck-racking website Breitbart. Set up by the late, but always missed, troublemaker Andrew

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Why are Rupert Murdoch’s men damning Andrew Mitchell?

If you want to picture Rupert Murdoch imagine an old man on a tight rope. On the one hand, his newspapers must pursue his interests – say that everyone but the rich must pay the price of austerity, for instance. But as he wobbles over the void, Murdoch must also balance his rather brutal class interest with populist attacks on ‘the elite’ to assure readers of modest means that he is, despite everything, ‘on their side’. Normally the Murdoch press can stay upright by confining itself to savaging the liberal elite, which to be fair, never fails to provide him with a rich choice of targets. But every now again

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

One Yorkshireman’s commendable bid for freedom

Richard Milburn, a burglar, broke out of Kirkham Prison near Preston because he was sick to the back teeth of the Scousers in the place. And the Mancs. And the Scallies and the La’s (not my apostrophe; I think it’s a local peculiarity). Richard is a Yorkshireman, even if his surname suggests a still better provenance a hundred or so miles north east of there. But given what he was up against Yorkshire will do just fine. This blog has not always been understanding towards the complaints and aspirations of our criminal underclass. But I think I will make an exception for Richard. The Scousers with their hilarious ready wit,

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Somerset vs. the Environment Agency, the politics of flooding and being a dirty old man

Did the people of Somerset see the floods coming? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Sunday Telegraph’s Christopher Booker discusses why the Environment Agency was so ill prepared for the floods and ignorant towards the Somerset Levels. Was European Union regulation at fault? Would more dredging have totally prevented the floods? And has the Agency been as careless with their attitude towards the River Thames? Cosmo Landesman also debates Mary Wakefield on whether he is a dirty old man. What now defines a ‘dirty old man’? Is it creepy for older gentlemen to compliment younger women? Are there more 50+ men who are remaining sexually active? Is it

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The dream pill may not always be worth it

A couple of years ago, I was put on the third-generation contraceptive pill Yasmin. ‘It’s good for your skin and stabilises your weight,’ the doctor said. And it’s true. I’ve found it to be wonderful. Most of my friends are on similar types of third–gen pill, like Femodene and Marvelon; many swear by them. Out of the 3.5 million women in the UK using the combined contraceptive pill, 1 million are on third–gen versions. But things aren’t all rosy. In the past week, all British GPs have been ordered to warn anyone taking these popular pills that they are at risk of developing potentially fatal blood clots. The statistics make for

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

February Wine Vaults – Private Cellar

We’re planning to go seriously upmarket with our briefer offers this year, with each merchant tasked to rootle out exceptional wines that you cannot find elsewhere. This first offer is a cracker. The 2005 Bordeaux vintage was a remarkable one — so sought-after that much has vanished from the market. But Private Cellar has kept two special parcels for our readers. These wines aren’t available anywhere else, even on Private Cellar’s list. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. The first is (1) 2005 Ch. Tour Baladoz, a St Emilion Grand Cru and neighbour to the fabled châteaux of Troplong-Mondot and Le Tertre Roteboeuf. It’s disarmingly approachable and utterly sublime with masses of soft

Christopher Booker

Revealed: how green ideology turned a deluge into a flood

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_February_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Christopher Booker explains how the EA failed to prepare for the floods ” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]It has taken six long weeks to uncover the real hidden reasons why, from the West Country to the Thames Valley, the flooding caused by the wettest January on record has led to such an immense national disaster. Only now have the two ‘smoking guns’ finally come to light which show just how and why all this chaos and misery has resulted directly from a massive system failure in the curious way our country is governed. Because I live in Somerset, I first became aware that something very disturbing was going on back

Lucy Vickery

Hard-boiled Blyton

In Competition 2834 you were invited to submit an extract from a classic of children’s literature rewritten in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction. My word, you were good this week. The entries came flooding in and were a joy to judge. Much-loved children’s classics, filtered through the prism of gritty 1930s urban America, were given a new, hard-boiled lease of life. All the hallmarks of the genre were there: sharp repartee, staccato delivery, economy of expression, psychological drama, black humour and the liberal use of simile. Honourable mentions go to Barbara Lightfoot and Poppy McLean. The winners earn £25 each, except Adrian Fry who gets £30. I’m looking for

Lisa Kelly

A&E

If this waiting is hellish, then the sick are limbo dancing; only those who are bent double, or on the floor, puddles of their former selves, have a hope of getting under the bar, progressively lowered as more contorted squeeze through. If the woman in a white coat is god, then the boy with bleeding hands has stigmata, the man with closed eyes on the stretcher is Lazarus, and the toddler pushing donkey-on-wheels up and down, up and down, is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If this is a place of worship, then the grey kidney-shaped receptacles are donation plates passed around for contributions from the faithful,

Wednesday

Robin Harris

Cameron betrayed public trust – and sounded like Arthur Scargill – when he said ‘money is no object’

There are some things that as a politician you really mustn’t say – things that suggest your priorities are so wrong, and your understanding of public duty so defective, that you can never be entrusted with anything serious. When David Cameron announced yesterday that, in coping with floods, ‘money is no object’, he said one of those things. For any responsible politician, money – tax payers’ money – is always an ‘object’. As Mrs Thatcher endlessly reminded her colleagues, the government, itself, has no money, only the money it takes from the people. She was right. To declare that there is no limit to what the government is prepared to

Sebastian Payne

Betting on the future of Scotland — Parris vs. Massie

How would you bet on the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum? With Ladbrokes offering odds of 1/5 on a ‘No’ vote, its a much better return than any savings account. But should writers put a wager on something they can possibly influence? Matthew Parris discussed how he might bet with Alex Massie on our podcast last week — a conversation that has stuck in his mind. This was what Parris says on the matter in his Times column today (£): ‘Something came over me. Last Wednesday, in the middle of a debate about Scottish independence with Alex Massie, a Scottish columnist who writes for The Spectator and The Times,

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Let’s ignore George Clooney’s vapid comments about the Elgin Marbles

George Clooney may be many things, but an art historian he is not. Speaking at a press conference promoting his new film The Monuments Men, both he and co-star Bill Murray waded into the long-running row about the Elgin Marbles. The British Museum should hand them back, they both said. Murray began with a twee plea: ‘They’ve had a very nice stay here, certainly. London’s gotten crowded. There’s plenty of room back there in Greece. England can take the lead on this kind of thing – letting art go back where it came from. The Greeks are nothing but generous. They would loan it back once in a while.’ Clooney

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Could beavers really solve our flooding crisis?

All this talk about dredging is well and good; but could the humble beaver in fact be the solution to the nation’s floods? Well, as far as the Mammal Society are concerned, yes. The animal has been extinct in the UK since the sixteenth century, but in recent years people have been pushing for its reintroduction. There are already two separate wild beaver colonies in Scotland, which have elicited a mixture of good and bad reactions from locals. But could they really help with the flooding? The Mammal Society’s argument is that beavers – ‘the master river engineer’ – create ‘impoundments’ with their damming, which help to keep water upland

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Smoking in cars is banned. The state’s next stop is your living room

How the hell do we keep the kids quiet in the car now that we can’t subdue them with tobacco smoke? I suppose we’ll have to resort to slipping a tranquiliser into their in-car snacks, somehow. Parliament has now voted to make it illegal to smoke in a car when there are children in the back. Or the front, I suppose. I don’t know anyone who does this anyway, frankly. The British Lung Foundation, a pressure group which campaigns for equal rights for all lungs, regardless of colour, creed or gender, has stated that 430,000 children aged between 11-15 are subjected to cigarette smoke in cars every week. Where did