Society

Thursday

The Spectator

How many countries have conscription?

Halfway points Rishi Sunak told us we would have an election in the second half of the year, and we will have one on 4 July. When, exactly, is the halfway point of 2024? – There are 366 days in 2024, so we will be halfway through after 183 of them. That brings us to midnight at the end of 1 July, a day later than many might assume. – However, there is also the effect of daylight saving, which takes a hour away from March and puts it in October, shifting the halfway point of the year forwards by an hour to 1 a.m. on 2 July. Only two days of

Mark Mason

Assassination attempts, executions and volleyball: a history of Horse Guards

Will they never learn? The signs are very clear: ‘Beware! Horses may kick or bite.’ Yet last week a woman became the latest tourist to get a shock at Horse Guards, when the animal she was fussing suddenly turned its head and bit her arm. She was unhurt, but you can see why the animals occasionally lose their rag. They’re there to protect the monarch, after all. Sending a gentle message once in a while can’t do any harm. This small patch on Whitehall is where the King’s Life Guard do their thing because it’s still classed as the official entrance to Buckingham Palace. The building also used to house

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

The not-so-French roots of chicken cordon bleu

We all have our quirks when it comes to cooking. I have clear mental blocks over what is and is not a complicated supper, many of which do not follow any kind of logic. I wouldn’t think twice about setting a sauce or ragu going early in the day, blipping gently, returning to it every so often for a stir and a taste, knowing that it will take hours and not inconsiderable attention before it is ready. I don’t mind at all making dough which will need proving and shaping as the afternoon wanes. I even find the act of slicing or chopping various different components meditative. The result is

Luke McShane

Sharjah Masters

The top Emirati grandmaster Salem Saleh is an imaginative, dynamic player whose games are a treat to watch. But his win at the recent Sharjah Masters against Vladimir Fedoseev (formerly Russian, but now representing Slovenia) was surely the artistic highlight of his career. The combination which ends the game is dazzling, but both players deserve credit for energetic play in the earlier part of the middlegame. Vladimir Fedoseev-Salem SalehSharjah Masters, May 2024 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 h4 A modern extravagance, mainly used by players who wish to avoid the combative Grünfeld defence which would arise after 3.Nc3 d5. If Black stubbornly insists on a Grünfeld-style approach with 3…

Max Pemberton

Could Ozempic bankrupt the NHS?

The NHS spends around £6.5 billion every year treating obesity. People who are overweight cost the health service twice as much as those who maintain a healthy weight. Half of all cancer cases are linked to obesity and being severely overweight significantly increases the risk of other conditions, such as diabetes, strokes and heart attacks. No public health campaign or intervention has ever worked. Obesity rates have nearly doubled in the UK since the 1990s. More than 60 per cent of adults are overweight. It’s hoped that weight-loss injections, known as GLP-1 agonists – semaglutide (also known as Wegovy or Ozempic) and the more recent market entry tirzepatide (Mounjaro) –

Luke McShane

No. 803

Black to play. Elisabeth Paehtz-Michael Adams, Salamanca Masters, May 2024. With his next move, Adams induced immediate resignation. What did he play? Email answers to chess@-spectator.co.uk by Monday 3 June. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1…Ne3! and White resigned, in view of 2 fxe3 Qxg2 mate or 2 f3 Rxg2+ 3 Kh1 Qxf3 wins. Last week’s winner Peter Bray, Cardiff

Victoria Lane

Competition: Vote for us

In Competition 3351 you were asked to send in an election manifesto in verse (lucky timing). The entries threw up plenty of bold ideas for strategists to pick over, though a degree of cynicism was in evidence – the general mood captured by Basil Ransome–Davies’s ‘Opportunist party’: ‘If you favour easy answers,/ Vote for us, the British chancers’. I’m sorry not to have had room for Alan Millard’s Cross Your Fingers party, Bill Greenwell’s Horny-Handed Sons of Toil, Adrian Fry’s Bigots of Britain, Frank Upton’s moon-is-green-cheese promises, Sylvia Fairley’s manic-festo, and more. A special mention for Chris O’Carroll’s last-ditch Tory plea: ‘Vote with us for a Parliament that’s hung.’ Those first

Nicholas Farrell

Who will my wife marry next?

Since I had a brush with death a couple of years ago, I have often wondered who my far younger wife, Carla, might marry after she has buried me. When I was out for the count in intensive care in Ravenna, the hospital’s duty priest, an Argentinian, even administered the last rites. ‘They do it just in case these days,’ Carla told me, as if it had all been a bit of a laugh, which I suppose it may well be if you believe, like her, that death is the prelude to eternal life. The other day, a herd of donkeys came charging into our garden out of the blue

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

I’m taking mental notes for my old age

I know straight away, from the look on my friend Alice’s face, whether it’s a ‘bad carer’ day. Five years ago Alice had a fall and she can’t now do stairs, so she lives just on the second floor of her maisonette in north London. When I drop round, the carer is usually in the kitchen and Alice in her bedroom/sitting room next door. If it’s a bad carer day, she’ll look towards the kitchen, do a thumbs-down sign, purse her lips and shake her head, then she’ll wriggle her shoulders – hoity toity – to indicate that she feels bossed about. Alice is entirely dependent on the care company

Melissa Kite

I’m setting up a ‘climate crisis hub’

‘We thought the house would make the most fantastic centre for climate action,’ I heard myself telling the cat rescue lady as she let the two moggies out of their carriers into the living room. I was trying to reassure the socially conscious liberal who had brought the two cats we were adopting that she was leaving them in what she would consider a good place. I said: ‘We want it to be somewhere schoolchildren can come to learn about biodiversity…’ What was I on about? Still, pretending I was turning my house into a climate crisis hub was a bit much. I had just come back from the bank

Lavatch

2656: A la carte

Unclued lights, including one of two words (all in Chambers) display nine items of a kind in the grid, appropriately positioned in relation to each other. All nine must be highlighted. Across  1    Bear dire deed to resolve neurosis (7)  7    Indian city cleric lacking force (7) 13    Running into water ebbing for ages (5) 14    Flaw of terrible mishearing (7) 15    Expert to restrain lawyer’s friend (8) 16    Record one bovid with adult parasites? (6) 17    Unwise or silly, eating seconds (6) 18    Coal dust around German city (4) 23    Old instrument’s din heard (7) 24    New line in French church showing mercy (8) 25    Some feeding us tomato

Robin Oakley

Why experience beats flair at Goodwood

 Faced with a field of 13 two-year-olds in the British Stallion Studs EBF Maiden Fillies Stakes at Goodwood last Saturday a friend and I agreed the best thing for our Placepot was to go with experience. Just three of the fillies had run before and sure enough two of those three, Jakarta and Royal Equerry, came home first and second, separated by just three-quarters of a length, with the previously unraced Jewel of London the same margin away in third. Expect all three to be winning races this season. Abdulla Al Mansoori paid 250,000 guineas for Jewel of London, whose trainer Richard Hannon was in Ireland watching his Rosallion and

The Spectator

2653: Order! Order! – solution

The twelve symmetrically placed unclued entries NATURAL, MAIL, MONASTIC, STANDING, PECK, LOGICAL, BATTING, APPLE-PIE, OPEN, EVICTION, BANKERS and SIDE can precede the word ORDER, and the title alluded to an ‘A to Z’. Thus unclued entries had to be entered in alphabetical order. First prize Seonaid Chapman, Brampton, Cumberland Runners-up Peter Lawrence, Durham; Julie Sanders, Bishop’s Waltham, Southampton

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 1 June 2024

Thomas Charlsen and Boye Brogeland continue to delight the teams they invite to their World Bridge Tour (WBT). First-class playing conditions, impeccably run and with huge cash prizes; this time it was held in Bodo, northern Norway, and I had a new (to me) pair playing for my team, Dutch champions Simon de Wijs and Bob Drijver. I thought Simon’s declarer play on this hand was very elegant: What would you do on the South hand when East opens 3♣? Those who don’t bid argue that it’s too dangerous as you can easily go for 800 against a part score. Those who do bid argue that it’s equally dangerous to

Toby Young Toby Young

Labour’s plans to rewrite the National Curriculum

Michael Gove’s decision to stand down in this election was a reminder that the one really bright spot in the past 14 years was the education reforms he steered through between 2010 and 2014. These policies were vindicated in the most recent PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey, which showed England climbing the OECD’s international league table and outperforming Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In maths, England rose from 17th place in 2018 to 11th in 2022, whereas Scotland, significantly above England in 2010, fell below the OECD average. I was involved in the most successful of these reforms, the free schools programme. Many of these schools are now

Roger Alton Roger Alton

The perils of going to Manchester United

Plodding up Wembley Way to the FA Cup Final at the weekend surrounded by a phalanx of well-refreshed Manchester United fans was not a savoury experience, but the game was something else. What was clear was how good United were, full of bite and high-throttle energy, ready to go for broke against the best team in the world, and playing in a way that hasn’t been seen all season. So Manchester City couldn’t pull off their ‘double-double’ – the League title and the Cup in two successive years. For the first time, United played for their manager, Erik ten Hag, and Pep Guardiola couldn’t do anything about it. On this

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how do I stop my book club banging on about their grandchildren?

Q. At the Ludlow Piano Festival, during a Tyler Hay concert, my husband and I spotted a fascinating-looking couple who were fellow members of the audience. We longed to know who they were and are kicking ourselves that we never found out the identity of this charismatic pair. During the interval we could have approached them but didn’t want to seem pushy or pervy by just introducing ourselves. What could we have said? – S.S., Abergavenny A. ‘Sorry to bother you but do you happen to be a friend of Derek Duck? Oh… he gave us a jumper to return to someone he said would be at this concert but

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

‘Grand and isolated’: The Wolseley City, reviewed

I am fretting about this restaurant column’s election coverage and then I alight on something superficially grand and lovely, which has been hollowed out and is now useless and barely able to function: a shell. It is the Wolseley 2 – the Wolseley City – and this is perfect. I name it the election restaurant, and Tories should eat here while they still have their shirts Few restaurants are important, though I treasure Martha Gellhorn’s description of an operating theatre for the wounded of the Spanish Civil War which was once a restaurant in a grand hotel. But was it any good? Tales of society folk eating are self-serving: real

Dot Wordsworth

Are you ready for the ‘Genny Lex’?

‘It sounds like Polari to me,’ said my husband, who can remember Julian and Sandy (Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams) on Round the Horne, 1965 to 1968. They used Polari, an assorted camp slang popular in the years when homosexual acts were still illegal. It was the phrase Genny Lex that my husband had heard, popping up as a jocular name for the general election. This annoys people. On that old-fashioned social medium, X, someone with the handle bewilderedyorks posted: ‘*Opens Twitter* *Reads post about “the genny lex”* *Burns iPhone*.’ ‘Right, if you’re gonna call it the gennylex, I’m calling the protagonists Richie Soons and The Starmeister General,’ wrote GlennyRodge,