Society

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 13 September 2012

Back in July I booked a cottage in its own wood for the last week of the school summer holidays. I was fondly thinking of my boy and his partner’s five kids, aged between one and nine, and what larks they would have running free in Nature. I was, I suppose, romantically casting them as the innocent characters in books such as Five Children and It and Swallows and Amazons, and bestowing on them the same idealised kind of camp-making, fire-lighting opportunities as I enjoyed at their age. Let me introduce them in descending order of age. The eldest three’s father, my boy’s partner’s ex, is a mild and gentle

Melissa Kite

Real life | 13 September 2012

Being blonde and female, I should have known better than to take my Fiat to a main dealer to get it serviced. It’s not that I’m stupid, per se. It’s just that main dealers have an invisible automatic scanning system so that, when a blonde woman walks through the door, an alarm goes off inside the service centre, a red light starts flashing, a till ringing sound reverberates throughout the workshop, and greasy mechanics stand ready with their spanners and clipboards bearing long checklists of mechanical failings. I always swear I will never do it again, but like most women I’m a stickler for doing things by the book. So

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 13 September 2012

There are moments when I suddenly realise how old I am, and one was during the closing ceremony of the Paralympics last Sunday. The pride that had gradually swelled within me during this long patriotic summer was extinguished at a stroke by the performance of the rock band Coldplay. Coldplay may be one of the most successful and popular bands in the world, and its leader may be married to Gwyneth Paltrow, but its grim music filled me with despondency and bewilderment. It seems to have been the underlying aim of all four Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies, from Danny Boyle’s onwards, to redefine Britishness for the world, and it may

Robin Oakley

Quality will out

Ronald Reagan once told his staff that they were always to wake him if there was an emergency ‘even if I am in a Cabinet meeting at the time’. All of us, Mrs Oakley included, have our definition of an emergency and the other night she shook me awake at 4 a.m. to confront one. I was led to the bathroom where, safely entrapped under a glass, was a spider. He was admittedly a beady-eyed, muscular and long-legged spider but there was no way he could have escaped that glass before morning. Nevertheless, such was Mrs Oakley’s agitation that he had to be defenestrated at that instant. I duly earned

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 13 September 2012

A friend told me (no, honestly — it was a friend) that she had had a dream from which she awoke screaming abuse and practising kick-boxing on her (no longer) boyfriend’s sleeping head. ‘What was the dream?’ I, her awestruck audience, gasped. Well — it turned out that said boyfriend’s ex-wife had told him that she (friend) had gone off in a totally cold contract in the worst played hand of the year. I nodded in sympathy and understanding. That would do it. One man who does not floor a frigid game is David Burn. Sixteen pairs played the prestigious Welsh Invitational Pairs last weekend and David, partnered by Nick

Raymond Keene

Schools challenge

The indefatigable Michael Basman continues to identify future chess superstars with his annual Delancey UK Schools Chess Challenge for schoolchildren. Eight-year-old Alex Golding won an astounding £1,000 prize in the most recent edition of the challenge, which attracts a world record entry of 60,000 every year. Brandon Clarke emerged as the overall winner of the event. In this game young Alex found himself on the losing side for once. Clarke-Golding: Delancey UK Schools Chess Challenge; Bird’s Opening 1 e3 d5 2 f4 Nf6 3 Nf3 c5 4 Be2 Nc6 5 0-0 e6 White is playing the Bird’s opening, but it is more a reverse Dutch. One of the most attractive

The Spectator

Letters | 13 September 2012

For richer, for poorer? Sir: Liza Mundy (‘The richer sex’, 8 September) concludes that ‘history has shown that human beings are above all adaptable’, and should therefore adapt to women earning more than men. Her article appears to be mostly about women who are already married and I think this is probably true of married couples — they will adapt. As for the ‘partner’ brigade, I think the inequality will prove to be just another excuse for an easy break-up. Michael Holden Lewes Sir: As a 17-year-old girl, I’d like to congratulate Liza Mundy on her refreshing, well-balanced piece. I was heartened by the idea that more men will embrace

The Spectator

Barometer | 13 September 2012

The start of the tape Business secretary Vince Cable announced another crackdown on red tape. But where did red tape come from? It seems to have been a product of the Holy Roman Empire. — Spanish officials in the reign of Charles V (1516-56) would tie up documents relating to issues which had to be discussed on the Council of State with red tape; other, lesser documents were bound with rope. — The tape was called Boldoque, after the Dutch city in which it was manufactured (S’Hertgenbosch in Dutch). The Spanish have retained the word for red tape. — As for the Dutch, they have made amends by inventing the

Peter Jones

The Athenians’ mansion tax

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has said he may support Nick Clegg’s suggestion of a mansion tax. All houses worth more than £2 million will annually pour a certain percentage of that down the Treasury black hole. But how appealing is that going to be? And what if X, whose house comes into the category, believes that his shouldn’t, but Y’s up the road should? Let the ancient Athenians ride to the unhappy Clegg’s rescue. In Athens, the property tax levied every year on the richest 300 was called the leitourgia (‘public service’, origin of our ‘liturgy’). Those liable were worth about four talents or more (that meant 24,000 drachmas — a skilled workman was paid

Raymond Keene

No. 235

White to play. This position is from Akshaya Kalaiyalahan-Callum Brewer, UK Schools Challenge 2012. White concluded this game with an extraordinary tactic. What did she play? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 18 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 … Nxf3+ Last week’s winner Terence Marlow, Northants

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 13 September 2012

Q. I was fishing in the Highlands and had to take a two-hour taxi from Inverness to the cottage where I was staying. In such a situation, how does one silence a well-meaning but overly chatty driver? — Marcus W., London A. Ideally, you should take more of an interest in people. However, if you really dread such conversations on long taxi journeys, then make a point of entering the car wearing a windproof jacket (such as a Barbour) and a hat, regardless of forecast and condition. In this way, if it should turn out that the driver is a bit garrulous, you can chat animatedly for a short while

Dot Wordsworth

Fudge-a-rama

‘It’s just a fudge-a-rama,’ exclaimed Boris Johnson of the government stance on Heathrow. ‘And it’s just an excuse for a delay,’ he added by way of gloss. I was surprised to find that a fudge-a-rama, or Fudgeorama, already existed: Salerno Fudgeorama Fudge Covered Graham Cookies. They are American, or were till production stopped in 2008 on the death of some members of the Salerno family. A Graham cookie is a biscuit invented in 1829 by a New Jersey clergyman, Sylvester Graham, who thought their consumption helped ward off carnal urges. I don’t suppose adding fudge helps. The -rama suffix has been around for longer than you might think. ‘Visited the

Columba

2080: Players

Each of twenty-one definitions contains one misprinted letter. Corrections of misprints spell two items of the same kind as the unclued lights. Two unclued lights consist of two words each. Across 1      Visits made by guys (5) 9      Bearers of nominal offices in knots about strange ritual (10) 11     Scrape preceded by college rags (5) 12     Marks by English tutor mostly giving reminder (7) 15     Stains around suits (5) 16     Slanting section, see, in copy (6) 22     Constant line endlessly producing sausage (7) 24     Son variable with attention (4) 25     Lost gold returned with thanks (4) 27     Move

Columba

2077: below par

Extra letters in jumbles, plus INITIALS (37) of clues, give the saying ‘Where the carcase is, there shall the eagles be gathered together’.  The carcase in the grid is a MORKIN, accounting for the presence of six eagles. First prize Mark Rowntree, London SE10 Runners-up C.V. Clark, London WC1; M.F. O’Brien, London N12

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What will happen to the NHS budget?

George Osborne has long regarded support for the NHS as the most important aspect of Tory modernisation. For this reason, I think it is highly unlikely that the ring-fence will be removed from around the NHS budget. But I suspect that the practical, as opposed to symbolic, importance of the ring-fence will be diluted by more and more things being classified as health spending. At a Quad meeting on the Dilnot proposals on social care, George Osborne told Andrew Lansley that the £1.7bn cost of them, which rises to £5bn within 3 years, should be met out of the NHS budget. Lansley resisted this idea. But I understand from senior

Sunder Katwala

Richard III should be buried in the north

History is written by the victors. So Richard III might have anticipated that his death at Bosworth Field in 1485, the last English monarch to be killed on the battlefield, would only be the start of a downward reputational spiral. The last five hundred years have not been good for the man whose remains may just have been found under a Leicester car-park yesterday. Shakespeare did much of the damage, forever fixing our image of this hunched Machiavellian schemer and his ignominious downfall – ‘my Kingdom for a horse’ – though the Bard was popularising an existing Tudor narrative. Sir Thomas More, seven when Richard died, deserves at least equal

John Simpson

Rebel island

Hong Kong isn’t what it was. Under British rule it was meek and mild, careful not to rock the boat, forever nervous about its future under China. The rich bought property in Chelsea and Vancouver, put their children into good schools and universities in Britain and America, and did whatever it took to get another passport. Nowadays Hong Kong fizzes with political radicalism. Last week mass student protests obliged the Chief Executive, C.Y. Leung, to cancel the introduction of mandatory ‘patriotism’ classes in schools — that is, lessons for children about the superior nature of Chinese Communism. And the following day, at the Legislative Council elections, the democratic groups won

Bruce Anderson

Some eggs and a glass of wine

Caviar feasts stay in the memory. I remember one occasion when I scoffed a satisfactory quantity of the stuff with that old monster Bob Maxwell. As he wanted a favour, he was the acme of charm and encouraged me to dig in to a tin of beluga ‘given to me by President Gorbachev himself’. At that, I thought I saw the butler twitch. I gathered from others that the Gorbachev tin was in constant use for favoured guests, so there were only three conclusions. First, that Mr Gorbachev was using a sizeable proportion of Russia’s GDP to fund Bob’s entertaining. Second, that Bob had discovered the philosopher’s stone, or at