Society

Thursday

Alexander Chancellor

Alexander Chancellor: It seemed a little creepy that thousands of people wanted to

My village, Stoke Bruerne in south Northamptonshire, is just getting back to normal after a great influx of visitors for its annual weekend festival called ‘Village at War’. Stoke Bruerne is a small place that sits astride the Grand Union Canal about halfway along its route from London to Birmingham. Its fame, such as it is, rests on its seven locks and the fact that it houses a Canal Museum; and the ‘Village at War’ event was started six years ago by the Friends of the Canal Museum to raise money for that excellent institution. I don’t yet know how well it has done this year, but last year it

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 19 September 2013

If you are allergic to wasp stings, may I give you a word of advice? Keep away from them! Don’t hang around. Don’t flap your arms. Just leave the vicinity quickly and quietly. I wish I had shared these words of wisdom with Artur, my partner in Patrick Jourdain’s highly enjoyable Welsh Invitational Pairs last weekend, before he got stung and had to rush himself to hospital for an injection! The valiant Mike Hirst stepped in as substitute. Thanks, Mike! My teammates, David Burn and Nick Sandqvist, won the event for the second year running — the first time the double has been achieved. Nick claims that David was red-hot

Peter Jones

Plebs rule!

Momentarily banish thoughts of policemen on duty at the House of Commons, and picture a Roman pleb. You will probably visualise a toothless peasant howling for ‘bread and circuses’ (i.e. chariot races), and rioting if refused. But if you were then told that the Roman statesman Cicero and Caesar’s rival Pompey the Great were both plebs, you might reconsider; even more so if you were to discover that the plebs were involved in shaping some of the most dramatic events in the ancient world. For Romans, the term ‘plebeian’ took them right back to the foundation of Rome in, as they calculated, 753 bc. Rome was an agricultural society. Wealth

Max Hastings

Max Hastings’ diary: I love the British Army (but not the Blackadder version of it)

The looming centenary of the outbreak of the first world war offers an opportunity to break away from the Blackadder/Oh! What a Lovely War vision, which dominates popular perceptions. Nobody sane suggests a celebration. But, in place of the government’s professed ‘non-judgmental’ approach to commemoration, ministers could assert that although the war was assuredly ghastly, it was not futile. Whatever the shortcomings of the Treaty of Versailles, a peace imposed by a victorious Germany would have been much worse. David Cameron often mentions with pride Britain’s role in resisting Hitler. In 2014, it would be good to hear him acknowledge that Britain, and those who died in her name, were

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Charles Moore’s notes: Liberal-leaning Muslims are the people most opposed to the niqab

We are not allowed to know any details about the Muslim woman, charged with intimidating a witness, who has been ordered to take off her full-face veil to give evidence in court. But when it is all over, it will not be surprising if she turns out to be a convert. All mainstream religions have some sort of teaching about what to wear. Within living memory, for example, it was all but compulsory for women to have their heads covered in church. But general teachings in favour of modesty have different cultural applications, and it is usually false to claim that a religion absolutely insists upon a particular garment. What

Raymond Keene

World Cup

The recently concluded Fide (World Chess Federation) World Cup held at Tromso in Norway resulted in a triumph for Vladimir Kramnik. The ex-world champion’s form has been variable this year, including shared first place in the London Candidates’ tournament, with Carlsen, but a disastrous last place finish in the Tal Memorial in Moscow. Kramnik missed out on the qualifying slot in London, when he crashed to defeat against the ever mercurial Ivanchuck in a tense final round. However, Kramnik gained his revenge in a crucial game against the same opponent in Tromso.   Ivanchuk-Kramnik; FIDE World Cup, Tromso 2013   (Diagram 1) Here Ivanchuk, who stands only marginally worse, due

Raymond Keene

puzzle no. 284

Black to play. This position is from Riazantsev-Felgaer, Tromso 2013. Black’s forces have invaded the white kingside. Can you spot the winning move? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 24 September 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 … Rh3 Last week’s winner Alan Ward, Burgess Hill

Toby Young Toby Young

Why I want my schools to ban the burka (and the miniskirt)

For most people, the question of whether to ban the burka is a purely theoretical one. Not for me. As the chairman of a charitable trust that sits above two schools, it’s something I’m obliged to consider. Usually, the heads of the schools fight tooth and nail to preserve their autonomy, claiming that such and such an issue is an ‘operational’ matter and therefore none of my beeswax. But in this case, they’re happy to kick the decision upstairs. It’s not a matter for me alone, but for the trust’s board of directors, of which I’m only one. And I can’t predict how the board will vote. Nevertheless, I will

The Spectator

Finally, the IPCC has toned down its climate change alarm. Can rational discussion now begin?

Next week, those who made dire predictions of ruinous climate change face their own inconvenient truth.  The summary of the fifth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be published, showing that global temperatures are refusing to follow the path which was predicted for them by almost all climatic models. Since its first report in 1990, the IPCC has been predicting that global temperatures would be rising at an average of 0.2° Celsius per decade. Now, the IPCC acknowledges that there has been no statistically significant rise at all over the past 16 years. It is difficult to over-emphasise the significance of this report. The IPCC

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 September 2013

Home The government sold 6 per cent of Lloyds Banking Group to big investors for £3.2 billion. It still owns 32.7 per cent of the bank. Barclays published details of plans to raise £5.95 billion by issuing new shares. The Financial Conduct Authority warned Barclays of a £50 million fine for a deal with Qatari investors in 2008, in which it failed to ‘act with integrity’ towards shareholders; Barclays contests this. Blitz Games of Leamington, a computer games designers, closed its doors after 23 years. Inflation measured by the consumer prices index fell from 2.8 per cent to 2.7 per cent, but by the retail prices index rose from 3.1

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I make my host pour me a drink?

Q. Some years ago, on holiday in Egypt, we found ourselves in the company of a couple who wanted to see us when we got home. Out of politeness we agreed and we have now fallen into a rut of reciprocal dinners. It has become a bore — perhaps for them as well. How can we stop it without seeming rude? — B.K., address withheld A. Next time provide entertainment as well as dinner.  A talk, concert or play would give new shared references to discuss, just like in the days when you had Egypt in common. It would also halt a slide into cultural complacency. In London, for example,

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

A restaurant in a synagogue. How strange can it be?

A restaurant in a synagogue may be too mad even for this column but we are Jews, so why not? (Column shrugs with the secret frisson of negative stereotyping.) 1701 is adjacent to Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London; it is the oldest, wisest and most camouflaged synagogue in Britain, disguised, presumably for safety, as a Christopher Wren church. This anticipates the joy of confusion — rabbis (I have long stopped calling them rabbits, being above such idiocies, as in Orthodox Rabbit, Progressive Rabbit, Welsh Rabbit) being asked for salad dressing, waiters being asked for blessings, security men (Jews love security men, in a complex way) being asked

Dot Wordsworth

Capital letters

One man’s grammatical nicety is another man’s grotesque solecism, I thought, as I perused a report in the Gulf News, where gold prices and prayer times jostle at the masthead. It concerned standards of grammar at schools in Manama, the capital of Bahrain. ‘Our students should be trained on getting the message across,’ said a mathematics teacher. ‘Some sacrifices might have to be done, such as doing away with capital letters, but that should not be a major point of contention.’ Well, I don’t know. We have grown used to capital letters in our writing system, inconsistent as their use may be. We may find it strange that the ancient

Lavatch

2131: Present

16/17 (four words in total) is a work by 11 which suggests the remaining unclued lights. Five clues contain a redundant word; these can be rearranged to provide the twenty-two unchecked and cross-checking letters in all unclued entries.   Across   1    Take lead from better Iraqi writer (6) 5    Opposed awfully stupid ado with journo (8) 10    Headgear as Scottish chill’s endless (4) 12    Religious leader lost heart in harvest (4) 14    Secretary, one keeping distance, is a dish (6) 20    Hindu custom, say, cut short during earthquake (9) 21    Some work as soil almost covers house (7, hyphened) 23    Girl touring meadow runs back wanting foliage (8) 24   

Lavatch

Solution to 2128: carbon copy

The puzzle marked a DOUBLE TON (42/27) by DUMPYNOSE (11) in THE SPECTATOR (17/19). Remaining unclued lights suggest a DOUBLETON: two hearts (13 & 7), one diamond (1), one spade (6A) and one club (29). PLUCK (13) & SPIRIT (7) were to be shaded.   First prize Elizabeth Feinberg, Carlsbad, CA, USA Runners-up Ian Shiels, Leeds; Nigel Wooliscroft, Eccleshall

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why doesn’t David Attenborough blame Muslims for overpopulation?

The national treasure and naturalist, David Attenborough, has been pronouncing, yet again, on the subject of world population growth. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph he opined that the famines in Ethiopia are about too many people competing for too little land and in the circumstances it’s ‘barmy’ to address the problem by sending them bags of flour. The great thing about being 87 is that you can stop worrying what people think but Sir David seems unusually alert to the ‘huge, huge sensitivities’ about his opinions. And one is that: ‘When you talk about world population … the areas we are talking about are Africa and Asia. To

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Piggies in the middle: why we need to have confidence in our food labelling systems

Just 9 months after the horsemeat scandal revealed that products labelled as beef did, in fact, contain horsemeat, one might have expected the food standards authority to have cracked down on food labelling – particularly when it comes to meat. But in an investigation broadcast earlier this week by the BBC’s Farming Today programme, a reporter bought a pork chop ‘at random’ from Tesco. It was labelled with the ‘Red Tractor’ logo, which ought to mean that it ‘is fully traceable back to independently inspected farms in the UK’. However, lab tests showed that the meat probably came from a Dutch farm – in fact there’s less than a 1%

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

The View from 22 – Ed Miliband’s last laugh, the IPCC’s latest climate change report, and Lib Dem party conference

Are the Tories right to see Ed Miliband as a joke? On this week’s Spectator cover, Peter Brookes has drawn Miliband as Wallace, with Ed Balls as his ‘Gromit’ sidekick. And on this week’s View from 22 podcast, presented by Fraser Nelson, he and The Telegraph’s Dan Hodges discuss whether people are right to dismiss him as a cartoon figure. Do Labour have any hope of winning the next election with Miliband as their leader? Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be publishing their latest report next week, which appears to show that there has been no statistically significant rise over the past 16 years. Benny Peiser, of