Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 14 July 2012

What went wrong Sir: I hope our Prime Minister read your editorial (7 July) on why as a country we have been engulfed in such a profound financial upheaval. Many months into this crisis, we’ve still heard no coherent account from our political leaders as to what went wrong, just a bit of populist banker-bashing and some strange metaphors about the need for big bazookas. No leader refers to those countries, Australia and Canada to the fore, who got their response to the crisis right. Jonathan Campbell-James Dubai Legal fiction Sir: Rod Liddle (‘The rule of lawyers’, 30 June) is entirely right in his view that judges are no better

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 14 July 2012

There have been enough monsters after them — Denis Nielsen, Peter Sutcliffe, Harold Shipman, Fred West — but the 1960s Moors Murderers still arouse the greatest revulsion. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley didn’t murder as many people as those other serial killers: their victims were only five. But they were all children, sexually abused, tortured and then killed with unspeakable cruelty. The case of the ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey is the most dreadful. Brady, with Hindley’s collusion, not only undressed her, gagged her, forced her to pose for pornographic photographs, raped her and killed her, probably by strangling her with a piece of string; he also made a 13-minute tape

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language: Encaustic

‘I hope you’re not having a go at P.D. James,’ said my husband, looking up from Devices and Desires (1989), which I had just finished. I am certainly not, for I admire and enjoy the author. My article last year about mistakes in Death Comes to Pemberley was intended to raise the question of the responsibility of the publisher of such a successful author. Does Faber not have a duty to correct literal and verbal errors? Thus, in The Lighthouse (2005), we read of a house with ‘a ponderous central tower, so like a battlement that the absence of turrets seemed an architectural aberration’. Obviously, it should be ‘so like

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 14 July 2012

Much as I love chit-chatting, there’s no space this week. The hand I want to describe, played by Frank Multon (Monaco) in the recent Europeans, requires not one but two diagrams. Multon worked out the answer in his head during a pressurised match. The rest of us get to view all four hands at leisure, and still we can’t visualise the ‘end position’ without seeing it in writing. At least, I can’t. If you can, I’m available for a game any time:  West led the ♣7, which Multon ducked to East’s ♣Q. East switched to a trump. Believe it or not, the contract is now unbeatable: East can be squeezed

Raymond Keene

Puzzle no. 226

White to play. This position is from Kasparov-Ivanchuk, Moscow 1988. White’s next caused Black’s instant resignation. What did he play? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 17 July 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 Ng5 Last week’s winner Charles Mutter,  St Albans, Herts

Raymond Keene

England expects

The English Opening was essentially invented by Howard Staunton in the mid-19th century. The strategic point is to commence with c4, then fianchetto White’s king’s bishop and eventually to strike at the central and queenside light squares. This week’s game is a perfect example of this strategy in action. White’s light-squared bishop dominates proceedings and White combines this with pressure along the b-file in order to increase his domination. A sacrifice of rook for knight then emphasises his complete control of the board. The game is taken from an illuminating new book from Steve Giddins, Move by Move: The English (Everyman Chess). Andersson-Seirawan: Linares 1983; English Opening 1 Nf3 c5

The Spectator

Barometer | 14 July 2012

Out of proportion The bill to reform the House of Lords looks like being another failed attempt by Liberal Democrats to bring proportional representation to Westminster. But where did the idea of PR come from? — The first such system was proposed by Louis Antoine Saint-Just, a deputy in France’s National Convention after the revolution. The suggestion was beaten down by Robespierre. — The first public election by PR was in Adelaide in 1840, instigated by Sir Rowland Hill, inventor of the postage stamp, while secretary of the Colonisation Commission of South Australia. He was inspired by a system used by his father, a Worcestershire schoolmaster, to elect committees. —

Columba

Solution to 2068: Hard case

‘ALAS, POOR YORICK’ (4) is an utterance by HAMLET on discovering the SKULL of the JESTER (11).  Six unclued lights are features of a skull. First prize Susan Tims, Sutton Coldfield Runners-up Paul Jenkinson, Zollikon, Switzerland; Mike Underwood, Auvillar, France

Columba

Crossword 2071: 14-7

Each of twenty-four clues comprises a definition part and a hidden consecutive jumble of the answer including one extra letter; the extras spell five words identifying an event, which could result in 14 7. Another possible result is given by the lights symmetrically opposite to 14 7. Definitions of the components of these results are supplied by four other unclued lights. Across 1     Politician in story, tense, in disgrace (8) 6     Stand and stop tremulous effect (6) 10     Ascribe acid trip to incorrect drug (12) 13     Eminence parvenu shattered (7) 16     Court right in sight (4) 17     Chinese team avoiding issues (8) 21   

Clarissa Tan

Everybody duck! It’s macho Merv

Just as Mervyn King, as Isabel flags in her blog, is being dragged into the Libor scandal, comes a truly remarkable article from the FT headlined ‘The bank that roared’. This bank, in case you are wondering, refers to the Bank of England. The FT says the central bank – led by the good ol’ Governor – is ‘back in charge’ and showing that ‘it means business’. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, which in past years had been taking a more ‘laissez-faire’ approach to bank funding and lending, is firmly in the saddle once again. The BoE has a ‘new attitude’ and is now ‘more muscular’. By way of

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Friedman’s genius

Milton Friedman would have been 100 later this month, and there is likely to be much commemoration – much of it nostalgia for an era where the right had a clear idea about how to get out of the mess the left had left. I always believed that Friedman’s ability to articulate – his gift for aphorisms and jokes – was his greatest single talent. The arguments for the basics of human liberty are made all the time, but no one has quite made them with as much force and effectiveness as Friedman. His 1970s series Free to Choose remains, in my view, the most powerful TV documentary ever filmed

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Political verse

In Competition No. 2754 you were invited to submit an example from the Selected Poems of a contemporary politician. Politician-poets have met with varying degrees of success. While Jimmy Carter’s efforts prompted literary heavyweight Harold Bloom to pronounce him ‘in my judgment literally the worst poet in the United States’, the youthful dabblings of Barack Obama have been judged more kindly. Closer to home, Dominique de Villepin has published several well received collections of poetry. So how did your chosen victims fare? Step forward, Dennis Skinner, George Galloway, Nicolas Sarkozy and Tony Blair. Brian Murdoch as Alex Salmond channelling William McGonagall takes £35. The rest get £30. T’will be in

Emily Rhodes

Gone with the corsets

Painful, barbaric and Victorian are the words I think of when someone says corset, and yet these torturous contraptions are enjoying a resurgence in popularity. Rigby & Peller, Marks & Spencer and eBay all report a huge increase in demand — corset sales on eBay, for instance, have risen nearly 200% over recent months. It seems that more and more women are willing to sacrifice comfort for a corset’s sculpted silhouette, with its tiny waist and rather larger upper region. Ladies, before you lace yourself in, think back to Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Near the beginning of this enormous novel, Scarlett, bent on seducing Ashley Wilkes, decides

Roger Alton Roger Alton

The beauty of the Tour de France

Amid the weeping in SW19 last weekend, Andy Murray essayed what was a clunky if well-meaning compliment to his opponent’s longevity. ‘Not bad for a 30-year-old,’ he said. Shortly after, Roger Federer opined that he thought Murray might indeed win a Grand Slam one day. Probably deserved it, too. Unspoken seemed to be the thought, ‘Listen sonny, I might be 30 but I’ve got 17 of these buggers. Don’t talk to me about how old I am.’ Moral: never ever make jokes about people’s age, no matter how friendly you’re trying to be. No one can understand the joy of being Roger Federer better than Federer himself. The great are

Andrew Gilligan

A matter of taste

With the moment of truth nearly upon us, the great danger of the London Olympics is not, I think, that they’ll be a failure, just an anticlimax. They won’t be disastrous, just a bit naff. Brits will win medals. The Tube will probably cope. But from the smallest things upwards, the London Games give the overwhelming impression of being run by people with no taste, no imagination, and no idea how to have fun.  I still remember Beijing 2008. I was lucky enough to go. The Bird’s Nest stadium stood there, more random and more beautiful than any mere camera lens could show, its outer tendrils waving in white against

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Never mind the banks, look at what pharma giants have been mis-selling

The biggest mis-selling scandal to break this month was not the one which involved banks forcing small business borrowers to buy expensive interest-rate hedging contracts, under threat of not lending to them at all if they refused. The FSA hasn’t got to the bottom of that one yet: in terms of identifiable victims it could be at least as damaging to the reputation of the banks as the Libor scam. But it is dwarfed by goings-on in the pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline, which has been fined $3 billion by the US Department of Justice for a set of offences that deserved much bigger headlines than they got in a week which

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Sorry, but landscapes are better without barriers

From the moment I arrived in Bakewell, Derbyshire, as a carpet-bagger politician nearly a quarter of a century ago, I knew I’d never leave. The attractions of the county and its sweet green hills and dales only grew. And in the end, though I had meant the Peaks to be just rungs on my ladder to the peaks of politics, politics turned out to be just a rung on my ladder to the Peaks. Here I stayed and here, I hope, I always will. So what comes next is difficult to write: so difficult that I’ve never written it before. But here goes… I don’t like dry-stone walls. There. I’ve

Michael Tanner

Marriage minefield

There are two places in Le Nozze di Figaro where the music undergoes a brief but potent change, which indicates how much deeper the undercurrents are than the busy actions we are witnessing. If either of these is short-changed or mismanaged, the whole work is rendered less moving and serious than it really is. The first and less conspicuous is in the finale to Act II, when the Count is trying to trap Figaro about the letter of assignation. The Count says he can tell from Figaro’s face that he is lying, and Figaro replies that in that case his face is the liar. The music to which he sings

Alexander Fiskeharrison

A good run

I have just finished running — with a thousand like-minded souls from around the world — down a half-mile of medieval city streets while being pursued by a half-dozen half-ton wild Spanish fighting bulls. They were accompanied by an equal number of three-quarter-ton galloping oxen, but we didn’t worry about them: they know the course as well as anyone and keep the bulls in a herd. This is good, because when fighting bulls are on their own they become the beast of solitary splendour and ferocity you may see in bullrings across Spain, France, Portugal, Mexico and much of Latin America. However, every second week in July, during the festival

Michael Henderson

What Federer isn’t

This summer, like so many others in the past decade, belongs to Roger Federer. By reclaiming the men’s singles title at Wimbledon, after giving Andy Murray a set start, the peerless Swiss revealed what true greatness looks like in sporting togs. Seven times a Wimbledon champion, 17 times a winner of Grand Slam events: his record compels not so much admiration as awe, and it will surprise nobody if, next month, he retains the Olympic title he won four years ago. He is, by general assent, the greatest of all tennis players, standing a cubit taller than Rod Laver, the Australian champion of the Sixties, who was at centre court