Society

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: tax cuts, hostage releases and highly rated horses

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said, ‘We can now move on to the next phase of our economic plan and turn our attention to cutting taxes,’ having seen a reduction in inflation. Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, followed suit in the Autumn Statement, cutting personal taxes. The government was to make changes to long-term benefits. The minimum wage, known officially as the National Living Wage, currently £10.42 an hour for those over the age of 23, will rise to £11.44 an hour for those over 21 from next April. The government also drew attention to £8.3 billion allocated to mending potholes, money purportedly saved from the curtailment

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Rishi Sunak can’t take the credit for falling inflation

Even the best-run companies have occasional leadership crises. But if you asked ChatGPT to come up with a blockbuster boardroom-bloodbath movie scenario, I doubt it would propose anything as extreme as this week’s events in its own San Francisco-based parent company, OpenAI. Chief executive and co-founder Sam Altman was fired last week for failing to be ‘consistently candid’ with OpenAI’s board, though no one was prepared to say what he had not been candid about. By Monday he had a new job leading AI research at Microsoft, OpenAI’s 49 per cent shareholder. One inside source claimed 743 of OpenAI’s 770 staff had signed a letter supporting him and many of

Piers Morgan

It’d be a shame if my death was as overlooked as Mother Teresa’s

My instantly infamous interview with Jeremy Corbyn, in which he refused 15 times to say if Hamas is a terrorist organisation, prompted many to ponder what on earth possessed him to do it in the first place? After all, the modern-day Wolfie Smith must have known I’d ask him the same question I’d asked many guests during the crisis, and his spluttering determination to avoid stating such a basic fact – well, unless you work at the BBC – made it obvious what he thinks and was always going to earn him the opprobrium his terror appeasement deserved. Rishi Sunak hammered him in PMQs, and Keir Starmer declared Corbyn will

The Spectator

2629: Urban Renewal – solution

Unclued lights are anagrams of US state capitals: 13A Boise; 18A Dover; 23A Raleigh; 24A Denver; 28A Madison; 38A Salem; 3D Austin; 22D Des Moines; 27D Lansing. 12A/2D is an anagram of Oklahoma City and 40A/29D of Baton Rouge. First prize Heather McLaren, Seaford, East Sussex Runners-up Iain Chadwick, Edinburgh; Raymond Wright, Wem, Shropshire

Lavatch

2632: Troublesome situation

Unclued lights (including one hyphened) are of a kind. The theme word must be highlighted in the grid. Across 1    Require clothing true eccentric altered (8) 8    Axes reportedly in bags (4) 11    Anything mischievous gets uncovered (5) 13    Sadly hugging Romeo, starts to offer love and pines (7) 14    Roman scholar in V&A takes over (5) 15    Gangster’s girl from America caught shellfish (7) 17    I demand to pay revered Norse lady (4) 18    Foreign pal’s husband in US 41 (5) 19    Marble bust by current earthwork (7) 23    Albert has hatred for medieval estate (7) 24    Parasite in bouquet given to mother (6) 25    A sailor grasps coppers

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: John Milton’s ‘Three Blind Mice’

In Competition No. 3326 you were invited to submit a nursery rhyme recast in the style of a well-known poet. One of my favourite twists on a nursery rhyme is Lewis Carroll’s ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat’, the Mad Hatter’s party piece in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!How I wonder what you’re at!Up above the world you fly,Like a teatray in the sky.   But ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ popped up only occasionally in the entry, outflanked by ‘Humpty Dumpty’, ‘Jack and Jill’ and, star of the show, ‘Three Blind Mice’. David Silverman leads the way with Milton’s version. He and his fellow winners take £25. Of murine woe and grief

Luke McShane

No. 779

Black to play. Muir-Subelj, Euro Team Ch, Budva 2023. White seems to have everything covered on the kingside, but the young Slovenian grandmaster found a weak spot. What did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 27 November. 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 Rxf4! exf4 2 h6+ Kg8 (else Qxf8 wins) 3 Rxg6+ wins Last week’s winner Jonathan Brogden, Horsell Birch, Surrey

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The real reason the civil service needs reform 

Just as Francis Maude was revealing his exciting plans for grand reform of the civil service, I received a message from a friend who once worked in Whitehall. In the subject field: ‘What fresh hell is this?’ Underneath, a screenshot of an email she’d just been sent by a civil servant. There was the name of the sender, Alex Smith, then underneath that another line: ‘SAY MY NAME: Aaa-Luhx Smeeth.’ My first thought was that Alex was taking the mick, making fun of people who couldn’t pronounce a simple name. Alex won’t be long in the job I thought. How wrong I was. It’s not just Alex. Great swaths of

Luke McShane

Highlights from Budva

My hotel room in Montenegro enjoys a picturesque view of the Adriatic sea. It’s a 15 minute drive to Sveti Stefan, the island where Fischer faced Spassky in their 1992 rematch, 20 years after Fischer won the world title in Reykjavik. I am here playing for England in the biennial European Team Championship, where we have just finished in 6th place in the Open event, and 13th in the Women’s event. More on that to follow, but for now, some highlights from the event. In the following game, a young Greek grandmaster defeated his elite Azeri opponent in ferocious style. In a Petroff defence (2…Nf6), Radjabov’s gambled with the rare and risky move 4…Bc5, presumably counting on the

Dot Wordsworth

The appeal of apricity

‘She’ll be telling us next how lovely the word petrichor is,’ replied my husband. I had told him that the redoubtable word-collector Susie Dent had said: ‘Probably my favourite winter-word of all, apricity, is the warmth of the sun on a chilly day.’ She has been saying this every winter for years, and why not? But I agree with my husband that petrichor is overdone. It was invented in 1964 by two contributors to the science journal Nature, and signifies the smell from rain falling on dry ground. The trouble is that petr– reminds me of petrol, and ichor, the ethereal fluid supposed to flow in the veins of the

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how do I make sure I’m left alone at a health retreat? 

Q. I have given in to pressure from a talented godson and agreed to introduce him to a successful businessman whom my godson thinks he could work with. Knowing them both well, I believe he is right. I have arranged a dinner party at my house but we are going to be four men and four women at the (round) table so it would look a bit obvious and pushy to put the two men beside one another. A complication is that the successful one cannot arrive until just before we sit down so they won’t be able to talk beforehand. Any suggestions, Mary? – J.W., London W8 A. Seat

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

How doughnuts took over my life

For almost a decade, doughnuts ruled my life. When I first began baking professionally, I fell into doughnut-making. It was entirely my own fault: after graduating from culinary school, I decided the best thing I could do to improve my pastry skills was to bake regularly. So I knocked together a product and price list and went to my local café to tout my hypothetical wares. Unfortunately I offered up as one of my products big, fat, artisan doughnuts made from brioche dough and filled with custards and creams, jams and caramels, the kind that certain big bakeries are known for. You can guess which item on my natty little

Toby Young Toby Young

I’m living in my very own hell’s kitchen

According to a friend who sold a successful consulting business a few years ago, the problem with employing middle-class Britons, unlike Americans, is that there’s a summit to their ambitions. Once they’ve earned enough money to trade in their BMW for a Porsche, install a new kitchen and create an attic room with a dormer window, they start taking it easy. ‘Those are the only three things they really want,’ he says. As a freelance journalist, I’ve abandoned all hope of owning a Porsche or getting the attic done. But after living in the same house in Acton for 15 years, I’m finally remodelling the kitchen. Or rather Caroline is.

Prue Leith

Should you ever eat wild salmon?

When I say ‘Scottish salmon’ what do you see? I bet it’s a muscular 20-pounder flashing up a river, or a silver grilse leaping out of the water for the sheer joy of it. I bet it’s not a flabby beast, covered in sea lice, possibly half-choked by micro-jellyfish in its gills, living in waters so polluted that the seabed beneath, contaminated by salmon poo, is lifeless. Fish kept in cages in comparatively calm loch waters do not get the exercise they need to firm up their flesh. They look good, pink and pretty, but their raw flesh is so soft you can spread it like butter. Fish kept in

Douglas Murray

When it comes to Palestine, the kids aren’t all right

Does anyone remember ‘Free Tibet’? Way back when, in the olden days of about the 1990s, if you knew nothing much about the world or politics but wanted to show you generally had the right outlook on things it was normal that you might have a sticker or a poster, or even go on a protest saying ‘Free Tibet’. It didn’t do any good, of course. Tibet remains doggedly unfree. For it turns out that the Chinese Communist party is not especially interested in the opinions of a few Devon-based sandal-wearers. The CCP occupies Tibet still, and continues to torture, repress and kill anyone there who stands against its brutal

Peter Jones

Do the gods drive current affairs?

To judge from current events in the Middle East, the god of Israel appears to be battling the god of the Palestinians, even though they both seem to be the same god. But are they guiding events? And if not, why not? The Greek historian Thucydides (d. c. 400 bc) had no truck with the idea. In his account of the long war between the two most powerful Greek city states of their time – democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta (431-404 bc), each with their respective allies – Thucydides was the first historian we know of to discount divine intervention in human affairs. Naturally he reported on the widespread phenomenon of

Rupert Christiansen

An awesome spectacle: The Mongol Khan, at the London Coliseum, reviewed

When the Ballets Russes first presented Fokine’s Polovtsian Dances at Covent Garden in 1911, such was its orgiastic savagery that ladies in the audience were said to be genuinely terrified that its grease-painted warriors were about to leap off the stage and ravish them. The Mongol Khan, a great hit imported from Ulan Bator, may not induce genteel screaming, but it has some awe-inspiring moments and belongs in the same ersatz orientalist tradition as Fokine’s ballet – primitive Asiatic culture made colourfully palatable to western tastes. I’m curious to know who put the money up for a production that must be costing millions It is based on a 1998 play

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 25 November 2023

At high-stake rubber bridge, it’s not uncommon for players – nearly always male, I should add – to react to a penalty double as though a direct challenge has been made to their manlihood: out comes the redouble card, essentially quadrupling the stakes. But they have a point: in bridge lingo, if you make a doubled contract you get a bonus not for the double, but for the ‘insult’. Besides, it’s sometimes right to redouble – the fact that it seldom happens outside of rubber bridge is simply because others are far less gutsy. Among tournament players, a redouble is used more commonly as an SOS: partner, please bid a

The Spectator

What is best: gas or electric?

Hobs choice Oxford City Council has banned the installation of gas hobs in new homes from 2025. What is best: gas or electric? – According to Which? running a gas cooker costs £23 a year, compared with £61 for an electric cooker. Boiling a large pot of water takes an average of 9.69 minutes on a gas hob, compared with 4.81 minutes on an electric induction hob. Getting a gas oven up to temperature will take around 15 minutes, and up to 25 minutes for an electric oven. – The nation is divided on the merits of gas vs electric cooking. According to the Office for National Statistics, 70% of