Society

Thursday

Luke McShane

No. 786

White to play. Maghsoodloo-Warmerdam, Tata Steel Masters 2024. Maghsoodloo’s situation looks desperate, but he found a surprise winning move here. What did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 5 February. 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 Rxd7! Qxh4 2 Rxd8+ Kh7 3 Rcc8. Black resigned, e.g. 3…Qxf2+ 4 Kh2 g5 5 Rh8+ Kg7 6 Rcg8# Last week’s winner Alan Bracher, Claygate, Surrey

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: poems about conspiracy theories

In Competition No. 3334 you were invited to submit a poem about conspiracy theories. Trawling the net for examples, I found, alongside the more familiar ones – a reptilian elite, JFK’s assassination, commie fluoridation – whispers of chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay and that Finland is a myth. In a hotly contested week, Adrian Fry, Sylvia Smith, Janine Beacham, Nicholas Lee and Nick MacKinnon earn honourable mentions while the prizewinners, printed below, snaffle £25 apiece. Our WhatsApp know what’s what. We knowthe council’s spying on our binswith microchip-type spyware, sothey know who puts out unwashed tins.Ken says they read our post as welland pick on those

Bruce Anderson

The miracle of limoncello

Consider the paradox of lemons. In Italy, one associates them with scented groves. A few years ago, Helena Attlee wrote the book The Land Where Lemons Grow, in which citrus fruits become a golden thread running through the history of Italian agriculture. Yet though the lemon is arguably the most beautiful of fruits, its tart taste is bracing. A spremuta di limone finds a swift route to any shaving nicks. Most limoncello is produced on the Amalfi coast but there is an outlier from Godalming But the lemon can be sweetened, in the form of limoncello, an after-dinner drink of no great subtlety, good for pouring over puddings but hardly a

Dot Wordsworth

Is retro-fitting really ‘retro? 

I read in the New Yorker about people who make sound effects ‘in a large, retrofitted barn, painted baby blue’. It made me wonder again how people imagine retrofitting works. It seems to be the work of time-travellers. Do they think that refitting a barn now implies that a photo taken of it 50 years ago would show the new fittings? Retro– signifies ‘backwards’. I am quite retro. I like looking at the past. My husband is almost entirely so. He lives in it. Six centuries ago a child of ten was expected to understand what the retrograde movement of a planet entailed. A planet such as Mars appears to

Fieldfare

2639: Spelling the end

22 said ‘29 11’ (five words, ignore an apostrophe), suggesting the placing of theother unclued lights. Across 1    Once rush from county, as ire subsides (5) 4    Essential component of maximum break for players (3,6) 10    Open to sympathy as a barrel breaks cabinet (10) 12    Two ancients drinking a gallon in the shade (3,4) 14    In hospital, digesting a meal of blood (6) 16    Give preliminary payment for some guitar lessons (4) 17    Tidy number consumed (6) 23    In Ibsen role, book fast speaker (7) 24    Bills from Bible Society (4) 25    Anxious to drop a bore (4) 27    Aid poet to be quirky like Coleridge (7) 34    Lord,

The Spectator

2636: Happy Ever After – solution

The twelve unclued lights form three quartets, each of which comprises two words that follow and two which precede one of the three words of the puzzle’s title: HAPPY [TRIGGER, WALKING, MEDIUM and ENDING]; EVER [HARDLY, CANTIL (thus reading ‘cantilever’), SINCE and GREEN]; and AFTER [SHAVE and TASTE, LOOK and TAKE]. First prize Nicholas Grogan, Purley, Surrey Runners-up John Boyd, Ashtead, Surrey; Jenny Mitchell, Croscombe, Wells, Somerset

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Ban smartphones for kids!

News that almost all young people have gone mental will not surprise anybody who has met any of them recently. However, my suspicion is that while they were probably quite mental to begin with, they have been rendered even more so by constant warnings regarding their mental health by teachers, the mainstream and social media and quite probably their awful parents. It is probably true that 40-odd years ago we rather neglected mental health and became embarrassed when we talked about it – and were apt to use horrible words like ‘mental’ and ‘loony’ when doing so. The principal symptom is an inability to concentrate on stuff – it’s all

The Spectator

Who’s afraid of population growth?

In ten years’ time, there’s a good chance that the main concern in the western world will be the threat of population collapse. Fertility rates are falling everywhere and no government has found a way of reversing the trend. Plenty have tried. South Korea has so far spent $200 billion on tax breaks and lowering childcare costs and has succeeded only in beating its own record for the world’s lowest birth rate, year after year. In Italy, the situation is close to a crisis, and in France it’s not much better. If this continues, the welfare state model, which depends on a decent worker-to-pensioner ratio, will collapse. There will not

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The insanity of banning vape flavours

Nicotine may have some deleterious and costly health effects, but so do winter sports, mountaineering, motorcycling and many other activities we leave to personal choice. (I have never been asked to work on a government anti-skiing campaign, though if the opportunity arose I would happily volunteer my services for free.) But it is absurd that vaping is now the target of much more opprobrium than alcohol. I suspect part of the explanation can be found in an HM Government health warning which appeared on cigarette packets in the 1980s: ‘Most Doctors Don’t Smoke.’ Indeed so. Most doctors don’t vape either. But, in my experience, doctors drink a lot. (The idea of

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: vapes banned, Sunak fasts and royals leave hospital

Home Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, the Foreign Secretary, set off on his fourth visit to the Middle East after saying: ‘We – with allies – will look at the issue of recognising a Palestinian state, including at the United Nations.’ The Democratic Unionist party agreed to return to the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, in return for a change in the law surrounding the Windsor Framework post-Brexit agreement with the European Union. Separately, from the end of January veterinary certificates were legally required for fresh food and plant imports from the EU to England. The population of the United Kingdom would reach 70 million by 2026, the Office for

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Martin Bashir continues to haunt the BBC

In the annals of those connected with the contemporary Royal Family, it is hard not to see the journalist and broadcaster Martin Bashir as occupying the position of chief pantomime villain. He was launched to fame (some would say notoriety) when he interviewed Princess Diana for Panorama in 1995, eliciting the admission from her that ‘there were three of us in this marriage’. The show was met with mixed reactions. Prince William later suggested that it was a ‘major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse’. Bashir left Britain for a lucrative career in the United States, and, from a professional perspective, all seemed to be going smoothly for him.

Karl Williams

Mass migration will make the housing crisis so much worse

We can have mass migration or we can have affordable housing. But it’s hard to see how we can possibly have both. That’s the obvious implication of the revised long-term population projections released this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). According to the ONS’s projections, in the 15 years from 2021 to 2036, the population of the UK will increase by 6.6 million. Net migration accounts for a staggering 92 per cent of this – 6.1 million people, with emigration of 7.6 million more than offset by immigration of 13.7 million. This averages out to net migration of 405,000 per annum. Which is remarkable in itself, given that

Tuesday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The surprising truth about ‘Nanny State’ Britain

This week, a Conservative Prime Minister announced he was banning something – disposable vapes. The reaction to that ban – or rather, the lack of reaction – is a signpost to future UK health policy, which will lean towards interventionism in the years ahead. Companies making and selling food and drink should pay close attention. Over the last quarter-century around Westminster, I’ve watched many political debates about intervening to make it harder or more expensive for people to buy and consume things that are, in general, bad for them. There was Labour’s ban on smoking indoors, then Gordon Brown’s attempt to deter buy-one get-one free food deals. There was the

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

France’s farmers’ revolt isn’t all it seems

The toll station on the A9 motorway near the French-Spanish border is closed with cones and guarded by the local gendarmes. A few dozen trucks are parked on the grass verges, waiting for the farmers’ barricades to open. The farmers themselves have gone, heading north to barricade Montpellier. The autoroute is utterly, weirdly silent. A thundering corridor of commerce completely closed. The truckers I talk to like that I’m British, congratulating me on Brexit as if I was personally responsible. They uniformly support the farmers although it is their livelihood that is being disrupted. Why? It is long past the time that credulous French people should support petulant farmer ‘unions’ demanding ever more

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Lords’ debate exposed the holes in the Tories’ Rwanda Bill

What sort of trouble is the Rwanda deportation legislation going to get into in the Lords? It passed its second reading last night, as expected, and peers also defeated an attempt by the Liberal Democrats to block the legislation entirely. But the debate gave us some idea of the problems the Safety of Rwanda Bill will encounter when the noble Lords really get down to business.  There were truly stinging speeches from some peers who are not given to melodrama. Lord Hennessy, the foremost historian of the British constitution, has been increasingly frustrated by the ways in which he feels the past few iterations of Conservative government have been undermining

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Why is Michael Gove gaslighting himself about the Tories’ achievements?

Michael Gove has written a staunch defence of the government’s 14 years of ‘achievements’ for Conservative Home. ‘Do we really want to go back to square one?’ the Tory MP and ‘levelling-up secretary’ asks, reminding us of the dim, dark and distant days of the country after 13 years under Labour. If that was genuinely on offer, I’d snap Gove’s hand off. It may seem hard to remember but in 2009 it was still generally understood that jokes are jokes and not statements of genocidal intent, that there are two sexes, that economic growth is a pretty spiffing idea and that the police are there to enforce civic order. Yes,

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is Taylor Swift ‘profoundly powerful’ when it comes to politics?

It’s not yet February, and already we have a clear idea of what Joe Biden’s re-election will be all about: Donald Trump, abortion and, er, Taylor Swift.  The New York Times reported yesterday that Team Biden-Harris 2024 has made recruiting Taylor Swift as one of its endorsers a top priority. This, inevitably, has triggered a media storm because Taylor Swift is now a culture-war avatar. She’s the new Meghan Markle when it comes to dividing opinion, although Swift is arguably more controversial because she was once a conservative darling and a hate figure among left-liberals. Today she’s the opposite.   The Guardian called Swift ‘an envoy for Trump’s values’ Right-wing

Mary Dejevsky

Hit SUV drivers where it hurts: in the pocket

Heavier cars will soon be hit with higher parking fees. Good. As an urban pedestrian and a car driver, I have two groups of enemies. The first are dark-clad cyclists and scooterists who weave invisibly around other traffic as they ignore their own expensively-made lanes. The other are the drivers of so-called sports utility vehicles – who dreamt up that euphemism? – commonly known as SUVs. A while back they were branded Chelsea Tractors; these cars have since expanded in all directions and might be more accurately dubbed Chelsea Tanks. A crackdown on these vehicles – as proposed by London councils, including Lambeth – is overdue. It was a year or

Jawad Iqbal

Why Jordan is in Iran’s sights

The drone attack on a US base in Jordan that killed three American troops and injured dozens risks bringing one more country into the orbit of the war between Israel and Hamas. US president Joe Biden has blamed ‘Tehran-backed militants’ operating in Syria and Iraq for the strike on Tower 22, a US base on Jordan’s border with Syria, and has promised reprisals. Iran has denied any involvement: Tehran prefers to let its proxies do its dirty work. Watching on nervously is Jordan. Iran, whatever its denials, has much to gain by sowing instability in Jordan Iranian-backed militias in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have now launched more than 150 attacks on US positions in

Monday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

How will attacking the Mona Lisa save the planet?

Now the environmentalists are going after the Mona Lisa. Because of course they are. Just when you thought you couldn’t dislike these apocalyptic irritants anymore, now they’ve gone and pelted soup at another priceless artwork, the most famous artwork in the world no less, because they think their fever dreams about climate change are more important than ordinary people getting to marvel at da Vinci’s masterpiece. Two activists from Riposte Alimentaire – France’s answer to Just Stop Oil, only with a particular interest in food policy – took their chance at the Louvre yesterday. After emptying a bottle of orange gloop on to the Mona Lisa, one of the women was captured