Society

Thursday

Alexander Chancellor

Alexander Chancellor: The Chinese must save the cigar from extinction

In Dorchester during the Christmas holiday I bought a two-slice electric toaster at Currys. It was a nice little toaster that worked very well when I got it home. And it cost only £4.50, which turned out to be little more than half the price of a packet of Marlboro cigarettes. It’s some years since I gave up smoking; but at my peak I smoked three packets of Marlboros a day, which now would cost the same as more than five two-slice electric toasters. Or, put another way, with the money I have saved from giving up smoking I could buy nearly 2,000 electric toasters a year. I could by

Robin Oakley

How jockeys play dirty

At Christmas a friend from CNN sent me the story of a US officer on a European train. Searching for a seat, he found one occupied by a miniature poodle and asked its French female owner if she would put the dog on her lap. She not only refused but also remarked loudly as he moved on, ‘God spare us from these bloody Americans who think they own the whole world.’ Ten minutes later, the visibly weary American returned to say that there was no seat vacant on the entire train. Again he requested politely that madame move her dog. Again she refused, this time snarling, ‘Won’t somebody protect me

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 9 January 2014

First up, HNY to one and all and especially my regular reader (no, not you mummy) John Hinde, who wrote me a charming email very politely pointing out the absurdity of one of my columns. I am so with you John — it was ridiculous — but it happened! Secondly, congrats to my good friend Simon, the talented Mr Gillis. Simon has some great Teams wins under his belt — Gold Cup, Iceland twice — but, as he was the first to admit, Pairs tournaments had always eluded him. Until now. He and Espen Erichsen, playing at the London Year End, romped home to take the coveted Open Pairs title.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What should I do when my dinner guests dive for their iPads?

Q. We had our son’s fiancée and her family to stay recently. After dinner, expecting conversation, we were shocked to see them all slumped in our drawing room staring at their ‘tablets’ and, I presume, playing on the internet. What should my wife and I have done? I was tempted to do the crossword or read a book but this seemed rude. — C.T., Dorsoduro, Italy A. You would have done well to turn the discourtesy to your own advantage — namely to use it as a tool to find out more about your son’s prospective in-laws. Acting daft, you might have said, ‘Oh what fun! Are we all going

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 9 January 2014

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made it clear in a speech that he intended to cut £25 billion after the next election, with about half of the savings coming from cuts in welfare payments. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister, said that the means proposed were ‘unrealistic and unfair’ and showed that the Conservatives wanted to ‘remorselessly pare back the state for ideological reasons’. Nick Clegg told the Commons that official estimates suggest that more than 1,500 Syrians had entered Britain last year through the asylum system. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said that Mr Clegg had ‘a very important ceremonial function as David Cameron’s lapdog-cum-prophylactic

Dumpynose

2144: Leonids

1D is the title of a work minus a word that is suggested by three further unclued lights. Other unclued lights include the person to whom the word refers, who is addressed in the work as ‘9’ (three words, one hyphened), and the addresser and his servant, both of whom are in disguise.   Across   1    Pricking pain has put out pint-size person (5) 6    Fashionable neckwear available for sale (7, two words) 11    Odd drop of arabica can’t top an afters (10, two words) 13    English form following story about bitumen (9) 16    ‘Groovy’ divorcée with active manner (7) 17    American Red Cross treats fatty deposits (7) 18   

Dumpynose

to 2142: Wintry

Extra letters in clues give ‘wrapped in wild snow’, a quotation from a poem by ALEXANDER BLOK (10). Partially indicated answers are treated accordingly, the resulting entries at 1D, 14, 17, 22, and 40 being defined by 4A, 27, 3, 19, and 11. First prize Dr J. McClelland, Bangor, Northern Ireland Runners-up Mrs R.J.C. Shapland, Ilkeston, Derbyshire; Chris James, Ruislip Manor, Middlesex

Ed West Ed West

My January diet and detox – anything to stay in the middle class

Like many of you folks out there, I’m currently engaged in the thinly-disguised admission of alcoholism that is ‘Dry January’. I’m also on a diet, and this week have eaten what looked like two shrivelled gonads for lunch, (they were boiled potatoes, I think) and yesterday a ‘salad’. The goal is to be down to Class I Obese by the summer. The diet means no white bread, no pasta (white pasta but I don’t recognise brown pasta as such) and most of all no sugar, which is now thought to account for a large number of deaths from heart disease. The Telegraph’s Tom Chivers makes the perfectly sensible, if thoughtcrimey,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

George Osborne: Minimum wage rise must not cost jobs

Amid continuing confusion on what on earth the Tories do think about raising the minimum wage, George Osborne has had a go at clarifying things. He has just told Sky News: ‘Well look, I think everyone wants to see an increase in the minimum wage. I’d like to see an increase in the minimum wage, but it has to be done in a way that doesn’t cost people their jobs, because that would be self-defeating and we have the Low Pay Commission as a body that exists to make exactly that judgement, and what we’ve got to do as a country is get that balance right between supporting business, growing

Charles Moore Charles Moore

How is Alex Salmond like Robert Mugabe?

Who owns Scotland? The people who most commonly ask this question believe that the land has been wrested from ordinary Scots by evil lairds and rich foreigners (by which they chiefly mean the English). Now the Scottish government is bringing out a report on how to correct this alleged injustice. It may recommend extending community ‘right to buy’ powers and allowing tenants to buy their holdings even if the owners do not want to sell.  This would have the unintended effect of ending all new tenancies. But the SNP’s misunderstanding of the situation is even more radical than that. It believes that big Scottish landowners are rich because they own

Luke Coppen

Sorry — but Pope Francis is no liberal

[audioplayer src=’http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_9_January_2014_v4.mp3′ title=’Luke Coppen and Freddy Gray discuss Pope Francis’] Listen [/audioplayer]On the last day of 2013, one of the weirdest religious stories for ages appeared on the news wires. The Vatican had officially denied that Pope Francis intended to abolish sin. It sounded like a spoof, but wasn’t. Who had goaded the Vatican into commenting on something so improbable? It turned out to be one of Italy’s most distinguished journalists: Eugenio Scalfari, co-founder of the left-wing newspaper La Repubblica, who had published an article entitled ‘Francis’s Revolution: he has abolished sin’. Why would anyone, let alone a very highly regarded thinker and writer like Scalfari, believe the Pope had

Lucy Vickery

Culture shock?

In Competition 2829 you were invited to imagine what Philip Larkin might have made of the news that Hull has been anointed 2017’s City of Culture. Despite its unpromising image, this city-of-culture-in-waiting has nurtured a wide range of creative talents: from poets such as Andrew Marvell and Stevie Smith, to the actor Tom Courtenay, the film director Anthony Minghella and folk legends the Watersons. And of course Larkin himself, who sought refuge in the university library from celebrity and the metropolitan literati. Most of you had the poet conform to his self-perpetuated image of right-wing curmudgeon, but there was a glimpse here and there of a softer side too; that quiet

Wednesday

Philip Booth

We need to reform pensions – here are some ideas

The government is facing a fiscal crisis. In the face of that crisis David Cameron has promised to continue to raise pensions in real terms. The biggest item of welfare spending – it makes up around half – is therefore set to get bigger. Indeed, over the next 50 years, pensions spending will rise by £330 billion (in today’s prices) partly because of an ageing population, but also because of the coalition’s populism. It’s likely that the only safety valve left in the system – raising the state pension age – will be used more and more by the government to balance the books. As the IEA’s latest research Income

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Storm in the Sound of Jura; Mainland Cut Off

Digital Detox is grand even when, as this New Year, it’s partly unplanned. Back today from an extended break on the Isle of Jura which, like much of Britain, has been lashed by gales. Unlike most of Britain, however, this has meant a) no ferries running and b) not much in the way of internet access (thanks to said storms). There are worse places to be marooned even if, like George Orwell, we ran dangerously low on tobacco… Still, good to be back and all that. I trust you all had a splendid Christmas and an even finer New Year. Normal posting to resume forthwith. Meanwhile here, somewhat belatedly are

Carola Binney Carola Binney

There’s nothing wrong with Prince ‘one-A’ William studying at Cambridge

Prince William has arrived in Cambridge today to study agricultural management at Cambridge. According to the Guardian  his admission is ‘an insult to every student, whatever their background, who got into Cambridge by getting the required A-level or degree results’. The average Cambridge undergraduate had to get A*AA at A-Level to secure their place, but Prince William got one ‘A’, a ‘B’ and a ‘C’. What no one mentions is that Prince William’s course isn’t an undergraduate one, and neither are his A-Levels his most relevant qualifications. He’ll be studying a ‘bespoke’ concoction run by the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership. The most similar “commoners’ option” I could find is the Department of Land Economy’s

Bruce Anderson

Can Lord Heseltine save the England cricket team?

Apologies may be in order. A few weeks ago, I was advocating aid for Australia. As we had set the place up, we had a duty when this once-proud daughter house was sliding into decline. We used criminals to get the country going, which worked well. Hard, amoral characters, they built a nation in their own image. That was Australia for two centuries: hard, amoral – and good at cricket. Then everything seemed to be going wrong. Perhaps it was the southern sun’s fault: melting down toughness and leaving a vacuum for decadence. It was time for the mother country to come to the rescue with fresh supplies of convicts

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

RIP: Simon Hoggart. The finest and funniest sketch writer to date

Terribly saddened to hear of the death of Simon Hoggart, a lovely writer and to my mind the finest and funniest purveyor of the House of Commons sketch that we have seen. I saw Simon, surprisingly, in concert in Canterbury, around about this time last year, delighting the audience with anecdotes from his many years watching politicians talk rubbish. We went for a curry afterwards and he seemed on good form, if frail from the punishing bouts of chemotherapy. He was a hugely gifted writer; certainly, the only writer in the English language who could tempt me to read anything about wine, other than the words ‘half price £4.99’. His