Society

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

A U-turn on rail fares would buoy up backbenchers

It’s not unusual in politics for what would in abstract seem a sensible policy to become hugely unpopular when it hits Westminster. Most Conservative MPs would agree, in principle, that placing the burden of the cost of rail travel on the shoulders of those who actually travel by train is far more sensible than the money coming from all taxpayers, regardless of whether they use the rail network, and regardless of whether they live in commuter-land or not. But it was also inevitable that this week’s huge price rise would be very difficult for MPs to sell to their constituents when the cost of living is rising across the board.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Gove, sports and school freedom

The problem with granting independence to schools is that you never know what they’ll do with it. Quite a few of them want to use pre-existing freedoms to sell their school sports ground which happened all the time under Labour and was (like forest disposals) not much remarked upon. But now, post-Olympics, the issue of school sports grounds has become hugely political and Michael Gove is being portrayed as the enemy of sports because he is not casting a ministerial veto. This is a small taste of what is to come for Gove: he has granted independence to hundreds of schools, who now have Academy status, and they may make

Saturday

Toby Young Toby Young

A bright outlook for Britain

A few weeks ago, I went to a party at Paul and Marigold Johnson’s house and fell into conversation with Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, a journalistic idol of mine. In addition to being one of Britain’s foremost conservative intellectuals, he was my first proper boss on Fleet Street. He employed me to write opinion pieces and profiles for the Sunday Telegraph in 1990 and his editorial comments were always shrewd and helpful. We talked about a range of subjects, including David Cameron’s premiership and whether Boris Johnson would make a good leader of the Conservative party. But the topic we spent the most time on was the future of the United

The Spectator

The next Governor

When Sir Mervyn King steps down as Bank of England Governor next June, even his most loyal supporters will struggle to describe his tenure as a success. He failed to spot the massive asset bubble which burst so spectacularly. His job was to keep inflation down, and Britain has instead suffered the worst inflation in Europe. He has injected £375 billion of digitally created money into the economy, to no apparent benefit whatsoever. The Governor has many qualities: he is learned, amiable and resolute. But he has not proven to be much good at running a central bank. The hunt for his successor will begin in the autumn, when the

Taki

High life | 18 August 2012

Gstaad My chalet lies far above the village of Gstaad, but I happened to be ‘en ville’ when I heard the pleasant sounds of an oompah band and saw the Swiss burghers dressed up in their finest Lederhosen marching through. It was a magnificent morning, the mountains glistening in the sun, the air fresh and clean, the kind of day Papa Hemingway could describe like no other. An elderly but very friendly American man asked me if a war had been declared. Nothing special, I told him, just the day the cows are brought down from their pastures up high. In America they call it fife and drums, which has

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 18 August 2012

Cider was her drink. Pint of. She was a reserved, deliberate, thoughtful woman, aged about 40. She went out hardly at all these days, she said, because she was raising a toddler. On the rare occasion when she did go out, nobody seemed to be having fun any longer. It wasn’t like the old days.  What’s happened to everybody in this town, she said? It used to be a party town full of interesting characters having fun. Where did they all go?  Then she saw me at that party, she said, and she thought, well, at least there’s one person left having fun, keeping the spirit alive, which is why

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 18 August 2012

Q. My son works in fashion and he does well, but he still lives at home. I am a good cook so I cook big dinners for him and his friends. When I see these silly thin girls sit at my table who eat hardly anything, I want to let them know that it is not healthy for them, it is wasteful; also demoralising for me to have made something very special that they will not try to enjoy. But my son says no — I must not spoil the atmosphere. Over to you, Mary? — Name and address withheld A. Load up the leftovers into personalised doggy bags in

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 18 August 2012

Home The closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, watched by an average of 22.9 million people in Britain, included a mixed choir of deaf and not-deaf children singing: ‘Imagine there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try’; Pete Townshend (67) and Roger Daltrey (68) singing ‘My Generation’, omitting the line ‘Hope I die before I get old’; and Eric Idle, surrounded by Welsh women in national dress, Scottish pipers and rollerskating nuns, singing: ‘Life’s a piece of shit when you look at it.’ David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that the primary school curriculum would in future include competitive sport; but requirements for schools to provide stipulated space for playing

Joseph Connolly

Diary – 18 August 2012

And so the Olympics are done. I am still reeling from the information — I simply cannot unremember it — that two million people applied for tickets to the final of the men’s 100m, 80,000 of them succeeding. The race was over in less time than it has taken you to read this little nugget. I thought it insanity rampant, but then I know nothing of sport — despite having been at the Atlanta Olympics way back in 1996, in order to write some fairly flippant pieces for the Times. British Airways had managed to lose all my luggage, though it was restored to me one hour before my flight

Melissa Kite

Real life | 18 August 2012

Horses are dreadful hypochondriacs. They also hate work. We may kid ourselves that horses enjoy being ridden. But horses, if truth be told, just want to be left alone to eat. They are willing to do almost anything to achieve this end. Tara, the chestnut mare, has over the years tried every ruse. She once bucked me sky-high in the woods, then galloped home on her own: down the main road in Cobham she went, reins and stirrups dangling, stopping traffic all the way. She negotiated several major junctions before swerving into the yard and putting herself to bed in her stable where, after trudging back on foot, I found

Peter Jones

A lesson from St Jerome

The educational bien pensants are up in arms because Michael Gove wants children at primary school to learn their times-tables not in ‘real-life contexts’ but ‘by rote’. The ancients, whose education was thoroughlpractical, had no problems with rote at all. Take St Jerome. In ad 403 he wrote a letter to Laeta, instructing her on how to teach her daughter Paula to read and write. Laeta must get Paula a set of letters, made of boxwood or ivory, and call them by their proper names. Paula must be encouraged to play with them and get used to their shapes and names. Then she must learn their right order — a rhyme

The Spectator

Letters | 18 August 2012

State of the Union Sir: One did not expect Iain Martin (‘Unionist Gold’, 11 August), a former editor of the Scotsman, to turn up in the Spectator, still arguing against Scottish nationalism and promoting the union. So that is what the Olympics are about — waving the Union flag. Not for itself. We do not rejoice in other countries’ golds, only in those of Team GB. Ah well, I said farewell to the Scotsman and will do the same to the Spectator if we cannot have a slightly higher standard of debate. How about: why is it beneficial for all countries except Scotland, one of the oldest nations, to be

Raymond Keene

No. 231

White to play. This position is from Duchamp-Smith, London 1928. Can you spot White’s artful conclusion? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 21 August 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 … Rxb3+ Last week’s winner  Trevor Lloyd, London WC1

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 18 August 2012

Here I sit, in hot, sunny, glorious France, pretending to be on holiday but feigning lots of headaches so I can nip up to my computer. BBO is showing the second World Mind Games which started last Friday in Lille. In each Group the 16 teams play a complete Round Robin and the top four qualify for the play-offs. England got off to a slow start in both the Open and Women’s Series but hopefully they can pull back some of the magic they generated in the recent European Championships and qualify for the next stage. Happily our ‘Oldies’ are leading their group and appear guaranteed to go through. Here

Raymond Keene

Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was the strongest chessplaying artist the world has seen. He defeated a number of master players, including Koltanowski, the Knight’s Tour expert and exponent of blindfold play, and represented France in the Chess Olympiad. Chess permeates his work; there is even a chessboard pattern concealed beneath his work Étant donnés in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Duchamp’s obsession with the game influenced other artists of the Dada and Surrealist schools such as Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Francis Picabia and Man Ray, to incorporate chess themes in their work. René Clair’s 1924 film Entr’acte, which has been described as an absolute Dadaist movie, starts with a chess game on

Dot Wordsworth

What Nodwe isn’t

‘Lady Day,’ it said in the New Oxford Style Manual (one of ‘the world’s most trusted reference books’, as it said on the jacket), ‘25 May, the feast of the Annunciation.’ Well, it is the Annunciation, but it isn’t in May but March. Of course, one does not look up ‘Lady Day’ in the New Oxford Style Manual to find out what it is, but whether to use capital letters, perhaps. But even so… The odd thing about this mistake in one of ‘the world’s most trusted reference books’ is that it has languished there since 2005, when it was last revised. You’d think someone would have told them. Perhaps

Robin Oakley

Team spirit

Sometimes it is all about how you look at things, as was made clear to a clean-living accountant who had helped old ladies across the road, given generously to charity and even found something nice to say about George Osborne. When he shuffled off the mortal coil he found himself sharing a heavenly cloud with an old crone. Peeved when on the first cloud they passed he saw Saddam Hussein sharing a duvet with a gorgeous blonde he put in an official complaint to St Peter. ‘Ah, you just don’t get it,’ he was told. ‘He is her penance.’ I, too, may have been looking at something from the wrong

Doc

2076: Carte blanche

The crossword is of the usual barred pattern and is symmetrical whichever side is uppermost. The Across clues are presented in order and precede the Down clues. Three solutions are hyphened, and one is of three words. Solvers are required to  insert the bars; clue-numbers are not required. — Former Foreign office abroad revealed in smallest Welsh shire — Garland unknown county — Small shovel for Scottish climb — A spike … – obtained from indigo — Palm giving a g-gentle hit — MacVicar’s domain with capital and money — not good — Filthy places for Bond on board — Vinegar’s that’s turned – a deception — Answer distracted persons

Doc

2073: Yonkers bonkers | 18 August 2012

The unclued lights (including the pair at 36/9) are islands on the ORKNEYS (an anagram of     ‘Yonkers’). Solvers had to highlight the three letters HOY of the solution at 39D (Ahoy), which is ‘a call’, hence the wording in the preamble. First prize M. Williamson, Chelmsford, Essex Runners-up Mrs Pamela Bealby, Stockton-on-Tees; Robert Hinton, Swansea

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Saturday Afternoon Country: Robert Earl Keen – Spectator Blogs

Saturday country sessions have been delayed while the new Spectator website was being built. But that’s been done now and, hell, it’s good to be back with all you good folks. It’s a beautiful afternoon in Edinburgh and Selkirk Cricket Club have just been confirmed as – oh, my giddy aunt – champions of Division Six of the East of Scotland Cricket Association. What better, then, than a cold one and Robert Earl Keen, that under-rated Texas troubador, reminding us that The Road Goes on Forever? It’s summer, at last.