Society

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

As high speed rail is being dropped in California and France, it’s time for Britain to take the hint

In June last year I predicted in these pages that the government would allow High Speed 2 to die a quiet death. Although the government has since reaffirmed its commitment to the proposed railway line, I am sticking to my prediction. Indeed, if the line is ever built I will book a ticket on the first train out of Euston and consume my hat in the dining car. How can I be so sure? Because the projected costs of the project are now so ridiculous that it cannot possibly go ahead. Even before George Osborne, in his spending review in June, added another £8 billion to the estimate cost of

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Richard Dawkins attacks Muslim bigots, not just Christian ones. If only his enemies were as brave

It’s August, and you are a journalist stuck in the office without an idea in your head. What to write? What to do? Your empty mind brings you nothing but torment, until a thought strikes you, ‘I know, I’ll do Richard Dawkins.’ Dawkins is the sluggish pundit’s dream. It does not matter which paper you work for. Editors of all political persuasions and none will take an attack on Darwin’s representative on earth. With the predictability of the speaking clock, Owen Jones, the Peter Hitchens of the left, thinks the same as Craig Brown, Private Eye’s high Tory satirist. Tom Chivers, the Telegraph’s science blogger, says the same as Andrew

Raymond Keene

Dortmund

Britain’s top grandmaster Mickey Adams has won clear first prize in the tournament at Dortmund, ahead of former world champion Vladimir Kramnik. The full final scores (out of 9) were as follows: Adams 7; Kramnik 6½; Leko and Naiditsch 4½; Andreikin, Meier, Wang Hao and Caruana 4; Khenkin 3½; Fridman 3.   The last time a British grandmaster won outright at Dortmund was in 1980, when I took first prize, but the field then was far less impressive than the elite group over whom Adams triumphed. This week, some key extracts.   Adams-Andreikin: Dortmund 2013   Although this position features opposite-coloured bishops White’s active pieces and passed g-pawn create too

Raymond Keene

No. 280

White to play. This position is from Williams-Brown, British Championship, Torquay 2013. What is the most direct route to victory for White? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 27 August 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 Nd6+ (1 … Kg5 2 Nf7+ Kf5 3 g4 mate) Last week’s winner Jonathan Clark, Oxford

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 22 August 2013

If jealousy is measured in twinges my twinge-o-meter has gone viral. On my self-imposed sabbatical, otherwise known as a holiday, I was painfully aware, day after day, that I was missing the Brighton Bridgefest. Ten days of pairs, teams and midnight speedballs while I ‘relax’. Ouch. Twingeing again. The last event is the hugely popular Swiss Teams where the top 16 teams qualify to play the prestigious A and B finals, and everyone else plays a consolation Swiss. My regular partner, Artur Malinowski, playing with 90-year-old wunderkind Bernard Teltscher, sailed into the A final (ouch!) with Bernard’s son Mark and Tom Townsend as their teammates. Here is Artur in action:

The Spectator

Letters: GPs reply to J. Merion Thomas

Some doctors write Sir: Professor Meirion Thomas (‘Dangerous medicine’, 17 August) may be an excellent surgeon but he is uninformed about the nature of GPs’ work. For many older consultants in the NHS, it will have been decades since they last spent any time in a GP setting, if they have at all. He fails to realise that 95 per cent of the work of diagnosing, treating and caring for patients takes place within general practice. Common illnesses range from depression, to diabetes, asthma and hypertension, as well as many others. Dr Meirion Thomas’s idea that nurse specialists are the answer betrays his lack of understanding that most patients present

The Spectator

The FA’s 99.6pc conviction rate, and other weird facts

We will remember them A German diplomat called on Britain to commemorate but not celebrate the centenary of the Great War. Some of the events planned so far: — Candle to be extinguished in Westminster Abbey at 11 p.m. on 4 August — First world war paintings to be displayed on 22,000 poster sites around the country — Memorial arch to be constructed in Folkestone, from where many soldiers left for the front — Replicas of biplanes to be flown from Dover to St Omer — Bus used at the front to be restored by London Transport Museum A sense of conviction The Football Association has been attacked for clearing

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: Modern Egypt vs ancient Athens

Whatever problems Greeks and Romans faced, a politicised priesthood was not one of them. They might have made three observations on Egypt’s current plight. First, though Roman emperors were autocrats, the plebs regularly expressed their displeasure at them, sometimes in street riots, over matters like food shortages. But they did so fully expecting the emperor to respond. Only very rarely did he fail to do so. He was not that stupid: for all his power, he knew he had to keep the plebs onside. This basic insight seems to have escaped the fanatic ex-president Morsi. Second, the most important consequence of the Athenian invention of democracy was to generate a

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 22 August 2013

Q. My boyfriend, an artist, is driving himself and others mad by his inability to keep track of his mobile. This he keeps putting down randomly on any old surface of his disorganised cottage, even though he knows there is signal only in certain places, so he can’t depend on locating it by hearing it when someone rings. Since he has also had the landline disconnected, it is often impossible to get through to him, but he seems unable to learn from his mistakes. T.D., Burford, Oxfordshire A. Next time you have access to this irritating man, programme the alarm feature of his mobile to go off, say, at 4

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 22 August 2013

Home The cost of the HS2 railway line was expected by some in the Treasury to rise from £43 billion to £73 billion. The number of new homes being built in England rose by 6 per cent in the three months to June. The United Kingdom has lost more than 40 per cent of its bank and building society branches since 1989, according to a report by Nottingham University. The proportion of candidates achieving A or A* grades at A-level fell a little to 26.3 per cent, from 26.6 per cent in 2012. The overall pass rate rose marginally to 98.1 per cent from 98 per cent. David Cameron, the

Dot Wordsworth

After ‘literally’, is it time to start a Neighbourhood Watch for the OED?

There was outrage last week when it was found that the Oxford English Dictionary had listed one sense of literally as ‘virtually, as good as’ — in other words, the reverse of its established meaning. Pedants were literally up in arms (in the new sense). The funniest thing was that the offending entry in the OED had been inserted in 2011, and the pedants hadn’t noticed for a couple of years. So I thought I ought to see what else the dictionary-makers had been doing on the quiet. I started with hopefully. This word is much deplored when used to mean ‘it is to be hoped’. In that sense, it

Columba

2127: Dire straits

Each of twelve clues contains a superfluous word. 9 of these words are unclued lights, which are of a kind.  Ignore an accent in one unclued light.   Across 7 Crowds around gold bowls (6) 12 Mole shuffled by, skirting soft fruit (9, hyphened) 15 Begin harangue imbued with independent spirit (9) 16 Catch including aged shell (6, two words) 21 Soprano, a singer about old bar (6) 22 Ordered appeal, on reflection, passed (6) 24 Adventure aces arranged meant positive trouble (8) 26 United in silence, left synagogue (4) 27 Turned tree sap strange (3) 29 Area in zodiac reversed (4) 32 Flog novel at par value, accepting pence

Columba

To 2124: Pack

Seven unclued lights are STUFFED ANIMALS (13 18) — i.e. deer, horse, anoa, cat, seal, tup and boar, filled with material supplied by TAXIDERMY (20).   First prize Peter Done, Turramurra, NSW, Australia Runners-up Dr S.M. Sheerin, Princes Risborough, Bucks; D.P. Shenkin, London WC1

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Stephen Fry: the high-priest of juvenile atheism

Well, well, well. Nick Cohen’s excellent column in this week’s mag  has caused a stir today. Sadly, though, Nick’s astute argument became another excuse for a boring slanging match between atheists and believers. And of course Stephen Fry waded in: Mary had a little lamb It’s fleece was white as snow All you religious dicks Just fuck off and go. No more discussion with dickheads. Sorry. — Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) August 22, 2013 Really? Fry’s Twitter cronies lapped that up. They always do. He’s so clever and civilised, our Stephen, bless his colourful cotton socks. Unlike those credulous maniacs who believe in God. In 2013! Celebrity atheists always claim the

Stephen Twigg

Multiple entry is making a mockery of the GCSE system. Michael Gove needs to clamp down

When I took my O Levels in 1983, I was nervous enough taking each exam once. But this year, increasing numbers of teenagers will take their GCSE exams in the same subject more than once. Some took their maths GCSE more than seven times. Michael Gove will be familiar with this – he took his driving test seven times in total before he passed. Today, he needs to get a grip on multiple entry at GCSE. More and more pupils are sitting exams in the same subject with more than one exam board. Many are also being entered for alternative ‘IGCSEs’, originally designed for international students, alongside a GCSE in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How fracking could be sent packing by a poor offer for locals

After the noisy protests over oil drilling in Balcombe, you might be forgiven for thinking that there are just two groups in the fracking debate: the Caroline Lucases, who oppose the technique outright, and then those who think shale gas is the best thing we ever discovered, better even than sliced bread. But there is a third group, which is quieter than the others, yet yields a great deal of power over how impressive this country’s shale gas revolution will really turn out to be. I introduce this group of worried locals, still unconvinced by the incentives currently on offer from the government, in my Telegraph column today. MPs whose

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — death of the middle class, entrepreneurial gypsies, HS2 and binge drinking

Is the great stabilising force in British society disappearing? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, deputy editor of the Catholic Herald Ed West discusses the strange death of the middle class and why economically, the ‘squeezed middle’ is a valid concern. Is it the government’s fault, and can anything be done to reverse the trend? Author Katharine Quarmby and Freddy Gray also discuss the rise in gypsy entrepreneurs, and explain why the travelling lifestyle is well suited to running a globalised business in the twenty first century. Fraser Nelson also debates whether HS2 will ever actually be built, and why high speed lines across the world are becoming a flawed proposition. Plus, writer Mark Mason and the Spectator’s Lara Prendergast discuss whether bingeing is preferable

Ed West Ed West

The strange death of the British middle class

To Voltaire, the British class system could be summed up in a sentence. The people of these islands, he said, ‘are like their own beer; froth on top, dregs at bottom, the middle excellent’. A harsh judgment, perhaps, but one that might still have some truth  in it today. Yes, we have horrible poverty in our council estates and toffery on our country estates. But Britain is a country that has always taken pride in what we think of as middle-class virtues — hard work, honesty, thrift and self-help. Today, however, we are witnessing the strange death of the middle class. In Britain, as in the United States, it isn’t