Society

Thursday

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 20 January 2024

Bidding would be so much easier if you didn’t have opponents. Imagine if you and your partner were given a clear run, without interference from those pesky players on either side. But that’s not bridge. Getting in your way is what opponents do – at the highest level possible. Having to judge whether to bid up, shut up or double them is where the real money is. This deal from the first division of the 2023 English Premier League showed perfect judgment by all four players: North, Andrew McIntosh (‘Tosh’), opened a light 1ª. East, Derek Patterson, made a vulnerable pre-empt of 2«. South, Tom Paske, bid an artificial 2NT

David Abulafia

How the National Maritime Museum is trying to decolonise Lord Nelson

I spent Christmas in Turin, with its superb and often neglected museums that are a particular delight because they are uncontaminated by preaching about the evils of European colonialism. It is not that I have no moral perspective on how the creators of empire across four millennia have acted towards their subjects. But the use of objects in museums to tell a distorted picture in the interests of supposed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, infused with Critical Race Theory, is a betrayal of what museums are supposed to do. Museums are not political tools, as the Museums Association, with its rants against racism and colonialism, seems to think. Racism is indeed

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: air strikes, train strikes and missile strikes

Home Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, the Foreign Secretary, said that the ‘red lights on the global dashboard are very much flashing’. He was speaking after Britain joined American air strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen. The Houthis, backed by Iran and allied with Hamas in Gaza, had been attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, told the Commons it was ‘a necessary and a proportionate response to a direct threat to UK vessels’. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, supported Britain’s action, but said that future military interventions – especially sustained ones – should be brought before parliament. Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, announced

Charles Moore Charles Moore

What Nikki Haley has over Trump

In June 2022, I interviewed Nikki Haley on stage for JW3, a Jewish organisation in north London. She was personable, clear, well-briefed and pleasingly normal, with the interesting exception of her Sikh background growing up in small-town South Carolina (she later became a Christian by conversion). Her conservatism seemed strongly felt, coherent and not extreme. I also liked her way – now highly unusual in US politics – of addressing foreign policy and setting it in the context of her general political beliefs. At that time, she was mulling the presidential bid she launched the following year. Today, after Iowa, she remains in the race, but only just. Why would such

Henry Jeffreys

How Britain sobered up

The people of these islands have long been famous for their drinking. A Frenchman writing in the 12th century described the various races of Europe: ‘The French were proud and womanish; the Germans furious and obscene; the Lombards greedy, malicious, and cowardly; and the English were drunkards and had tails.’ By 1751, at the height of the gin craze that William Hogarth immortalised in ‘Gin Lane’, the English were drinking on average the equivalent of 20 bottles of gin per person per year. But Britain is losing its taste for alcohol. Around a quarter of 16- to 24-year-olds don’t drink at all. Gen Z said they associate alcohol with ‘vulnerability’,

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Sobriety isn’t worth it

Absolutely nobody feels better at the end of Dry January. Mornings are still a struggle, you’re as tired as ever, and if anything the neurotic voice in your head is even louder. Yes, you may have gone to the gym every Sunday, but how has your life improved? It hasn’t. My own Dry January was forced on me by antibiotics. Though the NHS guidelines said the pills are alcohol compatible, my doctor (who has a record of my alcohol intake) took the liberty of writing ‘NO alcohol’ followed by five exclamation marks. This has allowed me to experience sobriety firsthand. The main findings from my time on the wagon were

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Emirati ownership of The Spectator matters

George Osborne was originally meant to fill this slot. We were always rather mean to him when he was chancellor (deservedly so) so it pains me to admit what a good diary writer he is: always stylish, engaging, ready to spill some beans. He had agreed, but then suddenly pulled out, leaving us scrambling. Something had come up, he said. But what? The next day’s papers brought the news: he has been hired to advise the Emiratis in their bid to buy this magazine and the Telegraph. To write for us and sell us at the same time may have been a bit much, even for this famously adept multitasker.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Would King William really break with the Church of England?

The Royal Family may have hoped that 2024 would begin in a quieter fashion than last year did, but if so, they must be disappointed. Once again, the reason for their unease is a revelatory book, this time Robert Hardman’s new biography Charles III: The Inside Story. First came the disclosure that the Queen was incensed by Harry and Meghan naming their daughter Lilibet. Today’s story is that Prince William – not a man noted for his interest in ecclesiastical matters, it must be said – is considering breaking with the Church of England when he becomes monarch. It seems incredible that the new monarch would ever wish to disassociate

Terry Barnes

Why is Australia burying helicopters that Ukraine wants?

What do you do if you have dozens of combat helicopters you don’t want? If you’re the Australian government, you dismantle them and turn them into landfill. That’s the imminent fate of 45 Australian Army and Royal Australian Navy MRH-90 Taipan helicopters, grounded since a crash in Queensland last summer and withdrawn from service. Australia has had something of a troubled history with its European-UK designed MEH-90s, the Taipan being an adaptation of the NH-90 type currently in service with a number of Nato countries. Severe procurement and operating cost blowouts, mechanical failures, high maintenance costs, difficulty in obtaining spare parts, and several whole-fleet groundings have plagued the aircraft. Australian

Geoff Hill

Why Rwanda isn’t safe for migrants

Kigali is, for now, one of Africa’s safest cities. Walk down a street in the Rwandan capital after dark and there are lights everywhere, police are on the beat and tourists and locals are strolling back to their lodgings or dining al-fresco. There are no potholes where you might twist your ankle and the city feels, and works, like a European capital, without the pickpockets. The power of the state here is absolute; few dare to test it. Many travellers come to Rwanda to see mountain gorillas. As with Kigali, Rwanda’s national parks are safe and poachers risk being shot if they cross the fence. After decades in decline, gorilla

Tuesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Are kids starting to see through the climate cult?

Should it really be any surprise that not all teenagers are on the same page as Greta Thunberg? According to a poll by Survation, 31 per cent of Britons between the ages of 13 and 17 agree with the statement ‘climate change and its effects are being purposefully overexaggerated.’ It does rather restore faith in the current generation of teenagers to realise that a third of them can see through this guff I am not entirely sure what is meant by the now commonplace concept of ‘overexaggeration’ – which presumably means something beyond the optimum level of exaggeration – but never mind. I’ll take it as the teenagers themselves presumably

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why the Children’s Word of the Year makes me feel sad

Along with the Oxford University Press Word of the Year – usually something you’d never say yourself – and the Pantone Colour of the Year (seriously, has anyone ever asked for a revolting shade called Peach Fuzz?) there is rather an interesting index of our annual concerns: the Children’s Word of the Year. The exercise has been going on since 2014: the Oxford English Dictionary people ask children for a word to sum up the year. This year, it’s ‘climate change’ followed by ‘war’. Yep, adult concerns being foisted on our unfortunate young folk. And I can hear you now: blame Greta Thunberg. Actually, it turns out that children’s words

Jawad Iqbal

Jose Mourinho is no longer the ‘Special One’

Jose Mourinho, who has just been sacked by the Italian club AS Roma, is a once great manager on his last legs. The football his teams play is terrible, the results so-so, and his increasingly erratic behaviour on the touchline altogether disgraceful.  Mourinho has gone from fighting for league titles and Champions Leagues to waging war on officials and opposing teams. His sacking had an air of inevitability. Roma’s American owners, the Friedkin Group, thanked Mourinho ‘for his passion and efforts’. Tellingly though, the owners stated that they felt ‘an immediate change’ was ‘in the best interests of the club’. Good riddance, in other words. It is sad to witness Mourinho’s

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Nadia Whittome is deluded about drill music

Nadia Whittome, no longer Britain’s youngest MP but still quite possibly its daftest, has a new bee in her bonnet. Writing on Nottingham’s funkiest website LeftLion, she reveals that she has teamed up with campaign group Art Not Evidence and plans to bring a bill before parliament about rap lyrics (particularly the bleak subgenres of trap and drill) being used as evidence in court. Her bill will aim to raise ‘the threshold of admissibility to ensure that it’s only considered when it’s relevant and justified, and not indiscriminately.’  Nadia is upset about ‘negative stereotypes’. ‘[Rap] can still be viewed with suspicion, and associated with gangs, drugs and violence,’ she tells

Niko Vorobyov

How Ecuador became a narco state

Ecuador was once spared the worst of the narco-warfare and insurgencies that have plagued Latin America. No longer. The storming last week of a TV station in Guayaquil by gun-brandishing thugs showed how no one, and nowhere, is safe from the narco gangs who rule the streets. The latest chaos was unleashed after a major crime lord escaped from prison. José Adolfo ‘Fito’ Macías Villamar had been taunting authorities for months, even starring in a music video while ostensibly confined under heavy security. Now, he is on the loose.  In recent years, the murder rate has risen by 500 per cent as the once mostly-peaceful land has become a battleground for warring drug

Monday

Patrick West

Why do the French struggle to speak English?

Why are the French so bad at learning foreign languages? Yes, you read that right. This isn’t a lament as to how the British are so terrible at learning foreign languages, a theme so beloved by stand-up comedians, who insinuate that it reflects our outdated superiority complex and ingrained xenophobia. I meant the French. For they, too, are terrible at learning foreign languages. Many people in France don’t even know how to say the most basic greeting in English, according to a report in the Times. In a study published by Preply, a language teaching platform, there are 14,800 searches on Google Translate every month for ‘bonjour’ in English, with a

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Gay blessings and theological porn: why leading cardinals are distancing themselves from Pope Francis

22 min listen

Just before Christmas, the Vatican’s new doctrinal chief Cardinal Victor ‘Tucho’ Fernandez unveiled a new style of blessing designed to make gay couples feel at home in church without changing the Church’s teaching on marriage. The Argentinian Tucho has for years been Pope Francis’s protégé – but for how much longer? The new gay blessings, supposedly blessing the couple but not their union, have been decisively rejected by all the Catholic bishops of Africa, forcing Francis to backtrack and say they could ignore Fernandez’s decree. Then, last week, it was revealed that in 1998 Tucho published a book on, of all things, the theology of orgasms. It is jaw-droppingly graphic,

Alexander Larman

Meghan, Harry and the fresh row over Lilibet’s name

Amidst the endless controversy that surrounds Harry and Meghan, there was at least one topic that seemed to be innocuous enough: the Christian name that they chose to give their now 2-year old daughter. She was named Lilibet, a reference to the childhood nickname Elizabeth II was given by her father George VI. The choice of name was widely seen as a rather self-conscious form of homage by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to the one member of the Royal Family that both claimed to venerate. It was disliked by some courtiers who regarded its use as ‘bewildering’ and ‘rather presumptuous’. But according to Gyles Brandreth’s 2022 biography of

Nigel Jones

The thankless life of a Post Office mistress

One of the fascinating aspects of the Horizon Post Office scandal is the way that the sub-post masters and mistresses who were victims of the bungling or maybe malevolent Post Office management, are represented as a class. They seem to sum up the qualities that used to be thought of as quintessentially English: honest, respectable, truthful, yet quiet and reluctant to make a fuss – even when they suffered a monstrous mass injustice. Their suffering in near silence is one reason why it has taken so long for the scandal to break through into public consciousness. Perhaps from a misplaced sense of shame, many of the unjustly accused sub-post masters and

Harold Thimbleby

The terrifying truth about the Horizon scandal

While everyone is rightly calling for the Post Office Horizon postmasters’ convictions to be overturned and for them to be given proper compensation, there is arguably a deeper issue at stake: how much society trusts technology.   We now know that the Horizon accounting software was not reliable. But during the sub-postmasters’ original trials, prosecutors for the Post Office argued that it was dependable and the courts took this for granted.   Why did the courts rely on the evidence of such a faulty IT system? The answer is a society-wide problem – with people falling into the trap of thinking computers are infallible. You might think they are no more likely to lie