Society

Friday

Jonathan Jones

The public’s verdict on the Autumn Statement

We’ve only had two days to digest it, but the early signs from YouGov are that George Osborne’s Autumn Statement has gone down a lot better than his March Budget. The Chancellor’s personal ratings are still dire – just 24 per cent think he’s doing a good job — but that’s a lot better than 15 per cent five months ago. His approval rating had tanked after the Budget, but Osborne does seem to have turned that around: And the government’s approval rating on the economy similarly seems to have been helped by the Autumn Statement, and is back up to pre-Budget levels: Though a 35 per cent approval rating

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Do teaching unions not trust head teachers?

Michael Gove had a very good autumn statement: not only did he get £1bn for new free schools and academies, but he also got performance-related pay for teachers. Gone will be the days of automatic rises and pay based on length of time served, replaced by rises based on merit as in many other professions. As James notes in his column this week, accepting the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body is a ‘full-bore assault on union power’. So, unsurprisingly, the unions are terribly upset by the change. Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, released this response: ‘The war on teachers waged by the Coalition government continues. The

The Spectator

University personal statements under attack, but who actually writes them?

The Sutton Trust today criticised the system of personal statements for university admissions, as they favour well-connected children from private schools. Spectator readers might not be surprised by that, though: in September Molly Guinness revealed in the magazine that those who can afford to often contract the writing of the statement out to graduates for a generous fee. Guinness wrote: ‘They need help, and they’d be crazy not to get it. ‘Why would anyone write their own?’ says my cousin Malachy Guinness, who set up a tutoring agency. He points out that with no interviews, there’s no way of checking the authenticity of the statements. His company fields dozens of

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s ghost of Christmas future

There was plenty to welcome in George Osborne’s budget, from the proposed corporation tax cut to scrapping the 3p fuel duty rise. But to read Jonathan’s seven-graph summary is to realise that Osborne’s 2010 plan is not now enough. I look at this in my Telegraph column today. Here’s a festive summary of my pain points:- Osbrownism – the ghost of Christmas Present  Osborne’s words – tough on deficit, dealing with debt – are very encouraging. The figures: not so much. The main features of Osborne’s plan are identical to the Brown plan he inherited. ·      Slow-motion deficit cuts (Francis Maude on Question Time last night boasted about cutting deficit by 25%

Thursday

Raymond Keene

London pride | 6 December 2012

This week I continue my homage, during the London Classic which finishes this coming week, to great players who have achieved outstanding things in London. In 1866 Wilhelm Steinitz defeated Adolf Anderssen in what was, to all intents and purposes, a World Championship clash. Steinitz marked it as the beginning of his World Championship tenure, which lasted until 1894.   Anderssen-Steinitz: London (Game 13) 1866; Ruy Lopez   1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 Nf6 4 d3 d6 5 Bxc6+ bxc6 6 h3 g6 ‘Preparation for an assault by a mass of pawns as taught by Philidor. For this purpose it is essential to maintain many obstructions in

Raymond Keene

Puzzle

White to play. This position is from La Bourdonnais-McDonnell, London 1834. White has various ways to finish off, but what is the cleanest kill? Owing to early printing deadlines, we regret that this week’s is not a prize puzzle.   Last week’s solution 1 Qf6+   Last week’s winner Philip White, Wirral, Merseyside

The Spectator

Letters | 6 December 2012

The North in need Sir: Neil O’Brien’s article on the North-South divide is welcome (‘The great divide’, 1 December). As a Geordie who spent much of his working life in the West Midlands before being immersed in the Westminster bubble for the last decade, London increasingly feels like a separate country. The wealth, the economic activity and the jobs are something that many communities only an hour and a half away on the train can only dream about. Many of the heavily industrialised towns and cities never recovered from the recession of the early 1980s. We have generational unemployment and significant pockets lacking any aspiration. There is a lack of

Taki

High life | 6 December 2012

Why do so many respectable newspapers and magazines go weak at the knees the moment an unreadable autobiography of some illiterate rock star is published? I guess no hack, however literate, can resist dropped names, or perhaps it is simple hero worship, tout court, as they say in French. I’ve never read a single one, just the reviews of some, and they leave me absolutely cold. So they took a lot of dope and slept with lotsa groupies, and then trashed the hotel suite. Big deal. Seen and done that and it’s no longer fun. But give me something well written about someone I met, however briefly, when I was

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 6 December 2012

When I rang for an appointment, the receptionist said, ‘Can you be here within the hour?’ I arrived with ten minutes to spare and presented myself before her. ‘Have you been here before, Mr Clarke?’ she said. ‘I have, yes,’ I said. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, studying her computer screen with interest. She wrote a six-figure number at the top of an appointments card in black Biro and pushed it across the counter. On this visit and on any subsequent visit, she said, I would always be referred to by this number instead of by my name. I took a seat in the waiting area. In the past I’ve always

Melissa Kite

Real life | 6 December 2012

The renovations were too much for me. I had to get the builder boyfriend back. But before you call me weak, manipulating, cheap, pathetic, or (if you’re into American self-help books) co-dependent, just hear me out. I defy anyone to go through what I went through with a consignment of ill-fitting MDF and not make a panic-stricken phone call to an ex-boyfriend who happens to be a building contractor. And it’s not as if I rekindled the relationship entirely in order to get my house halfway back to habitable. I missed him. I missed his funny south London builder ways. I missed his deafeningly loud laugh, his tousled, blond,  dust-filled

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 6 December 2012

I was sad to read that Larry Hagman had died. As J.R. Ewing, the conniving Texas oilman in Dallas, he may have been ‘an overstuffed Iago in a Stetson hat’, but he was curiously lovable in a way that no Iago ever is. This could be because he was rather lovable in real life and this niceness may have seeped through into the evil television character to temper its hatefulness. Unusually for a Hollywood star, he remained happily married to the same woman for 50 years; and even more unusually, he did so despite being at various times a very heavy drinker, smoker and drug-taker. It was an odd combination

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 6 December 2012

A few years ago I used to play Rubber Bridge from time to time with an elderly gentleman called Leo Halpern. Leo was unfailingly polite, good-humoured and kind. He was also very, very slow. One day, when he was playing a laydown 3NT he thought for ages and one of the other players finally said: ‘Leo, what on earth are you thinking about?’ He looked rather surprised and answered, ‘I’m not thinking about anything, but the slower I play the less money I lose!’ Rubber Bridge is about getting as many games into a session as possible for most people, and while occasional long tanks are not a problem, too

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 6 December 2012

Q. I disagree with your advice to A.B. (8 September) about enlisting a restaurant management’s support to go on smoking his cigar despite the displeasure of the nearby patrons. We can assume that they booked in the garden because they liked the fresh air. The etiquette for any cigar smoker has always been to ask the people around him if they would mind before he lights up. —J. McC., Geneva A. This protocol will often backfire, as so many people do mind. However, cigar rooms and lounges are becoming de rigueur in top hotels. The Lanesborough and Bulgari boast the facility, as will the new Wellesley Hotel in Knightsbridge, which

Toby Young Toby Young

The tyranny of the Twitterati

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville identified ‘the tyranny of the majority’ as the main shortcoming of democratic societies. His fear was that the principle of majority rule could cross over from the political arena to the realm of ideas. After all, if being able to command the most votes is the main source of political authority, what’s to stop it becoming the main source of intellectual authority? Tocqueville wasn’t worried about people being oppressed physically in democratic societies. Rather, it was their independence of mind that was at risk — and this ‘mild despotism’ was, in some ways, even more pernicious than the overt despotism of European monarchies.

Dot Wordsworth

Principle

‘Have you read it then?’ asked my husband on the afternoon Lord Justice Leveson’s report was published. Of course I had not, and he only asked to annoy. But, then, nor could that strange Mr Miliband have read all 2,000 pages when he urged the world: ‘We should put our trust in Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations.’ He sounded like the sort of person who ticks the little box saying ‘I agree to the terms and conditions’ only to regret it when the flight is cancelled. Anyway, I am not going to discuss the Leveson report. What did catch my ear, though, were some words of David Cameron in his Commons

Susan Hill Susan Hill

Diary – 6 December 2012

Finding an outfit for a wedding is a doddle compared with finding one for an investiture and I wonder how sensible it was to buy my hat first. I love hats. My mother was a dressmaker and designer and she also made hats and wore them with style and aplomb, in the days when women never went hatless, even just to go shopping. When I was a child she embarrassed me beyond endurance when turning up at school events in one of her rakish creations. I remember the Christmas play and a small black felt number worn jauntily on one side of her head. It had protruding bright turquoise feathers

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 6 December 2012

You will have read in every news outlet that the baby whom the Duchess of Cambridge is bearing will be third in line to the throne if she is a girl, because of a new law which equalises the succession of the firstborn between males and females. This is untrue — first because, as the child of the heir to the heir, she will be third in line to the throne under existing law (unless a brother comes along), and secondly because this new law does not exist. All that has happened is that the Commonwealth prime ministers of the 16 countries of which our Queen is Queen agreed in

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 6 December 2012

Home In his Autumn Statement, held nearer the winter solstice, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confronted the need to extend austerity measures for reducing the deficit to 2018. The economy would shrink by 0.1 per cent in 2012. He cut corporation tax to 21 per cent from 2014, cancelled January’s fuel tax rise and promised consultation on tax incentives for shale-gas exploitation. All but four Whitehall departments would be asked to save an extra 1 per cent next year and a further 2 per cent the year after, with the hoped-for £5 billion going to schools and roads. Battersea should get its own Underground connection. Mr Osborne sketched

Columba

2092: Attend

Clues in italics are definitions only. In each of their answers, it is necessary to 32 10 (a four-word phrase) to create the word to be entered in the grid. Each of these entries (one of which is hyphened) is defined by an unclued light.   Across 1 Lies not specified by one entering expenses (8) 6 Centre of spiritual power provided by coach, keeping constant (6) 11 Policeman certainly about to seal chamber (5) 13 Welcome luxury 14 Mantles necessary to help alliance (6) 17 Spoil label beside lily (8) 21 Weak augur prepared to accept greeting in name of God (8) 23 Examine worried legator (7) 25 Labourer