Society

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Puzzle no. 264

White to play. This position is a variation from Alekhine-Hofmeister, Petrograd 1917. A typical Alekhine conclusion. A queen down — how does he force the win? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 7 May 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 Rxf7 Last week’s winner Malcolm Burn, Gloucester

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 May 2013

Home In the run-up to local elections, Kenneth Clarke, the Minister without Portfolio, described the UK Independence Party candidates as ‘clowns’. RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, assumed control of ten Reaper drone aircraft in use over Afghanistan. Irfan Naseer, 31, from Birmingham, the ringleader of a plot to use eight suicide bombers in attacks that could have killed thousands, was sentenced to five life sentences; of ten others charged, four men who admitted an offence of travelling overseas for terrorism training were sentenced to three years, and six men to between four and 18 years. Six men from the West Midlands pleaded guilty to planning to bomb an English Defence League rally

Toby Young Toby Young

How can I write like that about my family? Easy. My wife isn’t reading

People often ask how I get away with writing about my wife so often. Doesn’t Caroline mind being cast as the matronly foil to my errant schoolboy? I’d love to say that she perches on my shoulder, chortling with pleasure as she vets every word, but the truth is she never bothers to read any of my stuff. That’s how I get away with it. The same is also true of my children, which is just as well considering the things I write about them. In last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph, for instance, I wrote a 1,600-word essay about why men with demanding jobs are less likely to complain about their

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 2 May 2013

It is fascinating watching the great welfare debate as the universal credit starts its life. The ruling elites have very, very slowly caught up with public understanding. The simplest way to think about the question is this. At every level of society people tend to be acutely aware of what their approximate equals are paid, and usually unaware of what those richer or poorer receive. Therefore the people who best understand how welfare works are either its recipients or those who work on low wages and are scarcely better off for doing so. These people recognise that being on welfare is — in effect, though not morally — like having

The Spectator

Barometer | 2 May 2013

Dots on the map An Edinburgh man is planning to stay 60 days on Rockall, a rocky island in the Atlantic 200 miles off the Western Isles — the longest-ever stay. Rockall was claimed for the United Kingdom in 1955, but it is far from our remotest colonial possession. Other islands include: Oeno A 120-acre island set within a three-mile-wide atoll in the Pacific 89 miles northwest of Pitcairn. It is known as the place Pitcairners go when they want to get away from it all. And unlike Rockall, it has a tap. Ducie Island For those who find Oeno too busy, there is always Ducie Island, a 1.5 square

Doc

2111: Father figures

When paired, the unclued lights (one hyphened) are of a kind. Ignore two accents. (The solution at 15D is not listed in Chambers and that at 36D only at its definition.)   Across 3    Global popularity of a lecturer in Keele, say (12) 13    Covered pathways badly made inside, unfortunately (8) 18    Race-course records medal (5) 19    Forced Alan to be involved with U-turn (9) 22    Chemical company is here in France (3) 24    Endless yearning to embrace secretary causing gloom (7) 25    Allowed fellow to enter, then departed (4) 26    Would it provide some relief and relaxation? (7) 28    Novel

Doc

Solution to 2108: Capital Fellows

The unclued lights are the surnames of the London WORTHIES, which had to be highlighted along the top row.   First prize Eleanor Parker, Broadstairs, Kent Runners-up Roger Baresel, London SW7; D.G. Page, Orpington, Kent

Steerpike Steerpike

Unpopulus

Steerpike is back in print in today’s Spectator. Here’s a taste of what to expect: ‘It’s been a tricky few days for Populus, the ultracool research organisation. Once the Tories’ favourite pollster, Populus has long enjoyed the patronage of Fleet Street’s most prestigious client, the Times. But no longer. The Thunderer is about to sever the link and cut a new deal with deadly rivals YouGov. The blow is compounded by news that Cameron’s election guru, Lynton Crosby, is unlikely to hire ‘not-so-Populus’ in the run-up to the next election.’ Subscribers, you can read the rest of the diary here. Non-subscribers, you can join us for as little as £1

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — Ukip vs Westminster, Ukip vs the Tories and intervening in Syria

Is UKIP a bunch of fringe lunatics, or a party ready to shake the establishment to its core? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, James Forsyth examines the Ukip mission and Nigel Farage’s plan for dominating the political landscape. On the latest View from 22 podcast, James reports in from South Shields on how Farage is being received on the stump, how the party is coping with growing into a serious force and what to expect in this week’s local elections. Someone who certainly doesn’t think they should be ignored is James Delingpole. Having previously written in the magazine of why he is a convert to the Ukip cause, Delingpole

Molly Guinness

We must save the bread-and-butter letter from extinction

When my parents received a thank-you letter from a good friend recently, we all read it with (I’m afraid) not affectionate pleasure but a rising sense of indignation. The trouble with the letter was its extreme banality. It had been a lovely party, wrote the friend, the food delicious and the company great. The nerve, we all thought. He must think we’re mindless, to send us such a string of clichés. The writer must have felt a weight lift from his shoulders as he dropped his note into the postbox, but the truth was it would have been better had he never written at all. Platitudes by post are not

Lucy Vickery

Palinode

In Competition No. 2795 you were invited to submit a palinode (a poem retracting a previously expressed opinion) on behalf of a well-known poet.   We’ve done this before and the results were so impressive I thought we should give it another go. This time round I reluctantly disqualified some extremely funny, well-made poems because they didn’t quite meet the brief. Unlucky losers included Martin Parker, Mae Scanlan, Ray Kelley, John Whitworth and Robert Schechter, whose pithy Bardic about-turn raised a chuckle: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Nah’.   Chris O’Carroll takes the extra fiver. The rest earn £30. Again upon my couch I lay. My mood

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator sport: Here’s hoping Sachin Tendulkar has an Indian summer after 40

Sachin Tendulkar did not have the happiest of 40th birthdays last week. The man who has been worshipped as a god in India for most of his career lasted only six balls, playing for Mumbai in the Indian Premier League, before being clean bowled by a young West Indian off-spinner who was only a year old when Tendulkar made his international debut. His dismissal silenced the huge crowd who had turned out for him in Calcutta, disappointed the TV executives who know that Tendulkar at the wicket means higher ratings, and left him plenty of time to eat some of the 40lb chocolate birthday cake presented to him before the

Paul Wood

The Free Syrian Army is being taken over by groups of jihadist thugs

Ghadi had spent the past two years on the run from the Syrian regime but it was the rebels fighting against the government, the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) who finally caused him to abandon the revolution and flee Damascus. He had made the mistake of speaking out against one of the big FSA brigades running the Yarmouk district of the capital. ‘They are thieves and gangsters,’ he told me. ‘One Facebook post about what they’re doing will get you killed.’ I met Ghadi in a Beirut café, after he had made the long trek over the mountains from Syria to Beirut. Other activists joined us, all bitterly disillusioned by

Michael Tanner

Opera: Maria Miller is a candidate for inclusion in a Dictionary of Political Philistinism; The Answer to Everything; Giulio Cesare

Maria Miller, the new Minister for Culture,  Media and Sport, indicated in her first speech on culture that when she hears that word she reaches for her calculator. ‘When times are tough and money is tight, our focus must be on culture’s economic impact’ is already a candidate for inclusion in a Dictionary of Political Philistinism, though it is the kind of thing we have come to expect from a politician of any party in the past 20 years or so, when they have gone out of their way to distance themselves from any ‘elitist’ activity. Even so, such a blatant statement of the supremacy of the economic gives pause,

Mary Dejevsky

Why Russia’s diplomats should learn swimming-pool etiquette

The first couple of evenings there was just me and a middle-aged couple swimming decorously up and down. On the third day it changed. There were three more people, spread out at the shallow end. You would not have thought that an extra three people in a decent-sized pool could have caused such irritation and havoc. They contrived to occupy an inordinate amount of space and move around in a way that caused maximum disruption. Sometimes they swam widths; sometimes diagonals. They would stop and change direction without warning. Sometimes they floated with their toes under the rail, or disappeared under water and surfaced far too close for comfort. And when

Peter Phillips

Pick of the Proms

With the publication of this year’s Proms brochure it is clear that what was already large has just become larger; and what was already a smooth production has just got smoother. Whether this is sustainable growth, or even desirable growth, are questions for the future; but I think I’ve discerned one of the main reasons for the current expansion — Wagner’s anniversary. Verdi’s has had less impact. It is inconvenient when two great names share a year. Bach and Handel made 1985 difficult to manage, while Lassus and Palestrina caused some of us agonies of balance and regret in 1994. On both of those occasions, one composer got a larger

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Peter Oborne should stop apologising for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

There was an extraordinary meeting of the Juche Ideas Study Group (England) in London last week, held to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army. For various domestic reasons I was unable to be present, but I think it went off quite well. Sandwiches, tea and coffee were served after the various speeches. Juche is the political ideology of North Korea, emphasising a steely self-reliance in the face of Yankee and Jap imperialist aggression. The meeting was taken by a chap called Dermot Hudson, who may or may not have recited the poem he wrote a while back about Kim Il Sung, the founder of

John R. MacArthur

Don’t believe the hype: the French still live better than Americans

In recent months I’ve read at least ten articles about French malaise — all of it apparently due to some mysterious Gallic trait that makes the world’s luckiest people unable to make the best of things. Granted, unemployment is over 10 per cent, the Germans are again running Europe, and François Hollande’s ‘socialist’ government is coming apart at its hypocritical seams. But I don’t buy the thesis that the French are generally ‘miserable’, as Paris School of Economics professor Claudia Senik argued last month in the Financial Times. Indeed, I felt almost defiant as my wife and I boarded the Eurostar in London two weeks ago and headed off to