Society

Thursday

Piers Paul-Read

Diary – 7 February 2013

In a recent exchange of emails, my Member of Parliament, Mr Andy Slaughter, told me he intended to vote in favour of same-sex marriage. No doubt by now he has done so. He said he believed it to be an extension of human rights. I replied that, just as there can be reductio ad absurdum, so there can perhaps be extensio ad absurdum, but I am not sure that my Latin is correct. Anyway, MPs do not to have to reply to replies. Indeed, I feel slightly sorry for Andy Slaughter, bombarded not just by letters and emails protesting against same-sex marriage, but some of the million postcards distributed through

Raymond Keene

Rock solid | 7 February 2013

The Gibraltar Masters, where I was last week, has been won by a quartet consisting of Vitiugov, Short, Sandipan and Vachier Lagrave. In the final knockout to determine who would receive the £20,000 first prize, Nigel Short lost out narrowly to Vitiugov. In my opinion, the British grandmaster’s display of fighting spirit after an early loss would have justified his winning top honours for a fourth time. Here is a sample of his uncompromising play.   Short-Nieto: Gibraltar Masters, Caleta 2013; Ruy Lopez   1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 Nd4 Named after the 19th-century English master Henry Bird, this knight sortie is strategically suspect but rich in

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 7 February 2013

Q. I understand that a free version of Eton will be opening in a village near Windsor next year. One of my boys is already at School, but for financial reasons I would like to get him moved across if the educational and aspirational standards at Freeton are the same. How do I get his name on the list? Obviously I do not wish to ask School for advice. —Name and address withheld A. The school you refer to is to be called Holyport College, not Freeton. It opens in September 2014 and is entirely funded by Eton College, to help state-style pupils enjoy some of the inspirational teaching given

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Tanya Gold reviews Maxim’s, Paris

Maxim’s! The very name is drool from Maurice Chevalier’s lips, as he perved around Gigi and sang, ‘Thank heaven for little girls/ And hebephilia generally.’ Myths sprout up around Maxim’s, which was always, in restaurant terms, a kind of Prince Michael of Kent with sex appeal. The female customers were so overdressed in 1913 according to Jean Cocteau that taking their clothes off was ‘like moving house’. Ho Chi Minh was apparently a bus boy, so the food at Maxim’s and the communist revolution in North Vietnam are obviously connected — although exactly how I cannot say. Maxim’s is off the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotine stood. This

Raymond Keene

No. 252

White to play. This position is from Adams-Ehlvest, Gibraltar 2013. White’s next essentially destroyed the black position. What was it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 12 February 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 … Rf4 (planning … Bxf3+)   Last week’s winner Ian Johnson, Cambridge

Dot Wordsworth

Vulnerable

‘I’m a vulnerable adult,’ said my husband when I asked him why he was shouting the other morning. He had spilt some water from the hot kettle on his slippered foot. Unlike Achilles, his vulnerability extends beyond the pedal extremities. But I shouldn’t like it to be thought that he was making fun of anyone who is called vulnerable. Their numbers seem to be growing. When that policewoman was jailed last week for talking to the News of the World, the judge said he would have put her down for three years had she not been in the process of adopting a ‘vulnerable child’. I thought all little children were

The Spectator

The defender of faith

If the secret of success is to follow failure, then Justin Welby has had the perfect start as Archbishop of Canterbury. He was appointed at a time when the Church of England’s efforts to reach a conclusion on women bishops have collapsed and when its pews were emptying at the fastest rate in recorded history. It has fallen to a former oil company executive, a softly spoken Old Etonian with an unusual appetite for danger, to move to Lambeth Palace. His mission is not to run the church, but to save it. By some measures, Britain is the least religious country in the developed world. Some 64 per cent of

Doc

2099: Lover’s Knot

The unclued lights are presented in the form of the Lover’s Knots below. Each ‘Knot’ can be unravelled into two words which are connected only for the purposes of this puzzle. These are then to be entered in the grid, always as pairs of consecutive lights.   LOVER’S KNOT CLUES a) A thin bride b) Bach ate tenderloins c) Clara’s feminine d) Islander’s mural e) Norse warfare   Across 1 Fractures both bits – a betrayal (13, three words) 9 Redhead notices extremists (4) 11 0 and O (for instance) sent between the unclued lights? (10, two words) 12 Cheesy saint at river through Biggleswade (4) 14 A chart brought

Doc

2096: new world symphony

The unclued lights are six US composers, at 4 and 24,  and the pairs at 9/11, 21A/32, 25/16 and 35/3. First prize Jed Brignal, Nottingham Runners-up Alan Hook, York; Lewis Corner, South Fremantle, Western Australia

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Being squeamish about the NHS won’t stop another Stafford Hospital

Should heads roll over the Mid Staffordshire Hospitals Trust scandal? I ask only because as I listened to Mark Carney giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee for several hours this morning, I found myself browsing through a number of articles on this site and others about the Libor scandal. Back in those heady days of George Osborne accusing Ed Balls of having questions to answer, and Bob Diamond resigning from Barclays ahead of his appearance before the same select committee, people were very keen for heads to roll, and not just those sitting on bankers’ necks. They were also keen that those who performed badly when questioned about their

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Whisper it, but the British economy may in better shape than you think… – Spectator Blogs

Doom and gloom is all around. This is another winter, if not of discontent, then certainly of persistent grumbling. Optimism is as rare as a Scottish victory at Twickenham and, frankly, just as fanciful a thought. That, at any rate, is today’s conventional wisdom. Fleet Street looks to a Triple Dip recession and ponders what side dishes will best complement the Chancellor’s broiled reputation. And yet, and yet, I wonder – hesitantly, I grant you – if all this is quite accurate. Fleet Street, like Westminster, is often fighting the last war. Worse still, it tends to presume that what has happened will continue to happen and that present trends

Andrew Green

Reducing the ‘pull factor’ for Romanian and Bulgarian migrants

Whisper it but the government have a fighting chance of reaching their immigration target. The main risk now is an inflow from Romania and Bulgaria when our labour market is fully opened to them next January. That is why the issue of child benefit is important; if we continue to pay it to children left at home it could greatly encourage such migration. Opposition to the government’s immigration policy is now starting to dissipate. Much of it has come from special interest groups who stand to gain from unlimited immigration. Unfortunately for them, their raucous campaigns are colliding with the facts. It is hard to argue that business is suffering when there is

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Sickness in the health service

A former editor of this magazine, Nigel Lawson, once described the NHS as ‘the closest thing the English have to a religion, with those who practise in it regarding themselves as a priesthood’. He meant to imply that blind faith tends to take over from observation. But there are other likenesses: bickering cardinals, grandiose PFI cathedrals that suck money from the pockets of believers — and now, finally exposed after being covered up for years, a shocking scandal of abuse. Hospital managers like to commission paintings of the premises to hang in their corridors. In the case of Mid Staffordshire Hospitals Trust, William Hogarth would have been a suitable choice

Lucy Vickery

Short story | 7 February 2013

In Competition No. 2783 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘Death of a Ladies’ Man’. The title — shared by an unadmired, Phil Spector-produced album by Leonard Cohen and an as-yet-unproduced screenplay by the literary and erudite rocker Nick Cave — connects two of pop music’s masters of melancholy. Rock music didn’t feature in the entry but ladies lavatories loomed large. You also drew inspiration from history — Henry VIII, Lord Byron — and from the natural world. Sid Field, Lynn Haken, Juliet Walker, Alan Millard and John MacRitchie earn honourable mentions. The prizewinners, printed below, take £25 each except Frank McDonald, who has £30. He was

Roger Alton Roger Alton

A classic weekend at the Six Nations

Has there ever been a more wondrous start to a tournament than the first weekend of this term’s Six Nations? In any sport for that matter. England playing like the All Blacks, with Owen Farrell in stupendous form and Billy Twelvetrees, the face of a choirboy and the frame of Hercules, blasting all before him; a reborn Ireland on the way to crushing Wales in Cardiff before beating off a thrilling fightback; and then the best of all, on a sunny afternoon in front of a roaring Roman crowd. When you saw Italy’s warrior prop, Leicester’s Martin Castrogiovanni, hirsute and terrifying, belting out the last words of his country’s anthem

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Old school joy

Let’s not beat about the bush: Howard Goodall’s Story of Music (BBC2, Saturday) is landmark television, a documentary series that deserves to rank with such unimpeachable classics as Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation and which, if you haven’t seen it yet, you absolutely must for it will answer so many of the questions that have been bugging you all your life. Questions like: ‘Bach — was he really as good as I think he was?’ ‘So what did music sound like in Roman times?’ and ‘Where did Lurpak butter get its name?’ Of course that last one is a fake question. I’d hazard a fortune you’ve never once asked it — but

Steerpike Steerpike

Steerpike

Stanley Johnson, replete with energy and charming as ever, is touring the country looking for a safe Tory berth to ease himself into at the next election.No takers so far, I’m told, but the wily old bird has devised a brilliant ruse to boost his chances. He’s been dropping hints that his occupancy would last only until May 2016, when Boris’s second mayoral term ends. Johnson Snr would then fall gracefully on his sword, leaving the seat vacant for the blond bombshell to launch his bid for the Tory leadership and Downing Street. The so-called ‘baby lotion strategy’ (Johnson & Johnson) is proving hard for constituency chairmen to resist. One snag is that sister

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Remember the lesson of Shaun of the Dead: some zombies eventually come back to life

Funny how little phrases go viral. Suddenly everyone’s talking about ‘fasting diets’, ‘zombie companies’ and ‘leadership plots’. As to the first, the idea of the ‘5:2 intermittent fasting diet’, I gather, is to eat as little as you can for two days a week. It’s all over the media, and any moment now someone will call George Osborne’s fiscal strategy ‘the 0:7 fasting diet that’s starving us of protein for growth’, or some such. There you are, Mr Balls: yours on a plate, as it were. But ‘zombie companies’ are not so easy to explain. Financially speaking, these are businesses that are surviving but unable to invest in new capacity,