The Battle for Britain | 28 January 2023
Society
Wednesday
Solution to 2586: Inst
The unclued lights start with the trio JAN, the abbreviation for JANUARY which is ‘this month’ or ‘INST’, the puzzle’s title. First prize Thomas Williamson, Moygashel, Dungannon Runners-up Susan Bell, Reeth, N. Yorks; Richard Thorpe, Burntwood, Staffs
2589: Oddly stumps out
The unclued lights (one of two words, two singletons and four pairs) are of a kind in green. Across 1 Fair blood relation in awful surroundings hardly seen (4,7) 7 Equipment for Bell, Athey and Trescothick initially (3) 13 Light US railroad truck is a timeless barrow boy’s truck (7) 15 Head of Government in control when in office? (5) 16 Oil hostilities cut short by mufti’s decree (5) 17 Show criminal the cooler! (6) 18 Repaired snare and nets (5) 21 Crazy baby’s John (5) 22 Some problem (piracy) for Honduran currency (7) 27 Cryptically cast mimes (4,3) 29 Arcade piece is just for show (5) 32 Letters for
How the Tories can avoid falling into Sadiq Khan’s Ulez trap
Sadiq Khan has an inveterate desire to show Londoners who is boss: the mayor’s latest wheeze is an expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez). Khan is seeking to roll out Ulez to all of London’s boroughs from August – along the leafy lanes of Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire. Aside from ostentatious green zealotry, it’s difficult to see any convincing argument in favour of doing so. These areas already have sparser public transport than the rest of London. Charging hard-pressed residents who are unable to afford a fancy car £12.50 a day for the privilege of driving to the station to catch a sustainable train is a slap
Spectator competition winners: A peer’s lament
In Competition No. 3283, you were invited to submit ‘A Peer’s Lament’. There was a smattering of references to Baroness Mone, whose travails prompted this challenge. But of course members of the Upper House have plenty to worry about besides, as winningly detailed in a lively and varied entry that contained echoes ranging from Poe, Belloc, Thomas Hood and W.S. Gilbert to Boney M. The winners earn £25. By these drivellers of babble-on who wouldn’t weep? No wonder so many just drift off to sleep When others talk nonsense that leaves us agog With claptrap as clear as a thick London fog. There are those like the ‘Churchill dog’ stuck
No. 736
White to play. Bibisara Assaubayeva-Rakshitta Ravi, Delhi 2019. Assaubayeva is down a bishop for two pawns, but she had aimed for this position, foreseeing a knockout blow. Which move did she play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 30 January. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1 Rxf7! Qxc4 2 Ne7 mate. Or 1…Qxf7 2 Rxf7 Nxf7 3 Ne5 wins, or 1…Qe3+ 2 Kh1 wins quickly Last week’s winner James Maxwell, Farnham, Surrey
The next world championship
Fide’s clock was ticking, and their position looked difficult. But at last they have made their move, announcing that the next world championship match will take place in Astana, Kazakhstan with a €2 million prize fund, beginning on 7 April. Two factors explain the delay. One was Magnus Carlsen’s abdication, announced in July last year. Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi, who qualified to contest the match, are first-rate players, but obviously less marketable than the Norwegian. The second snag was that Nepomniachtchi is Russian. Notwithstanding his explicit opposition to the war in Ukraine, his nationality narrows the field of potential sponsors, especially since Fide renounced sponsorship agreements with sanctioned or state-controlled Russian companies
How did ‘mummies’ get their name?
Preserve us The British Museum said it would stop referring to ‘mummies’ and call them ‘mummified persons’ instead, out of respect to their dignity. How did they come to be called mummies in the first place? – The term has been traced back to 1615, and derived from the Latin Mumia, and the Arabic Mumiya, referring either to an embalmed body or the bituminous substance in which they were embalmed. The terms ‘mummified’ and ‘mummification’ did not come into use until the 19th century. Spent Has the Conservative government cut health and social care funding? NHS and social care funding in England at 2022/23 prices: 2008/09 £121.5 bn 09/10 £129.7 bn10/11
The C of E is right to prevaricate on gay marriage
On Tuesday morning it was theology hour in the House of Commons. The Labour MP Ben Bradshaw had requested an urgent question on the Church of England’s latest prevarication on homosexuality. Ahead of next month’s synod, the bishops have decided that gay marriage will not be up for discussion, even though a full debate was expected after six years of consultation. Can the established Church continue to be out of kilter with the law of the land? Can MPs legitimately put pressure on it to reform its teaching? Bradshaw and others, including Penny Mordaunt, are muttering threats of disestablishment. Their case is weakened by the fact that parliament promised, ten
My Transylvanian horror
My first taste of proper street violence came in a Transylvanian town square 30 years ago. Ethnic Romanian and Hungarian villagers were going at each other with pitchforks, knives and strips of wood they had ripped from park benches. In an attempt to separate the two sides, the Romanian army had driven half a dozen armoured vehicles into the middle of the square. Just as things seemed to calm down, a group of villagers came running out of a hotel, pursued by fired-up Hungarians. As I ran to avoid the melee, a man appeared holding a chunk of wood and hit me over the head. For a second I was
Pride comes before a fall
Hockey is one of those games, like lacrosse, that alters as it crosses the Atlantic. In Britain, if a man says he is a passionate hockey or lacrosse player, he may get a certain ‘Fnar fnar’ response. In North America by contrast, it would be most unwise to ‘Fnar fnar’ at your average hockey player. A good example comes in the form of Ivan Provorov. He is a big Russian-born ice-hockey player who currently plays for the Philadelphia Flyers in the National Hockey League. Not all readers will be following the NHL carefully, and I admit that I am teetering at the very edge of my knowledge as I type
Where do the Elgin marbles belong?
Where should the Elgin marbles be on show? Their display in the Duveen gallery of the British Museum is not impressive. To put it crudely, a Greek temple consisted of a sturdy shoe box surrounded by columns. The purpose of the shoe box (cella) was two-fold: to support the massive weight of the roof, and to provide a secure house for the god, represented by a statue, to live in. People did enter to venerate the statue, but the focus of worship was the altar outside. The external view of the temple, then, was crucial. Visitors walking round the Parthenon saw 46 columns, around 34ft high, supporting a sequence of
The war against words
The University of Washington technology department has banned the word ‘housekeeping’. Not because the ‘problematic’ noun is overtly ist (ableist, sexist, racist, ageist…; by now, you must know the ist list). No, because it ‘feels gendered’. Would that they’d simply banned housekeeping. I hate scrubbing the shower. This month, the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work proscribed the word ‘field’. ‘Field work’ might have unpleasant connotations for the descendants of slaves. (Sorry! Descendants of ‘enslaved people’. Nouns that reference persons – like, you know, ‘doctor’ – are reductive and dehumanising.) A ‘field of study’ is henceforth a ‘practicum’. Presumably we’ll now protect corn crops from ‘pasture mice’ and
Letters: Scotland’s gender law doesn’t add up
Scottish muddle Sir: The Scottish Sentencing Council guidelines, introduced last year, affirm research as showing that young people, defined in the guidelines as those up to 25 years of age, ‘are not fully developed and may not have attained full maturity’ (‘Gender wars’, 21 January). As a result they are seen as less able to exercise good judgment; are more vulnerable to external influences; may be less able to assess the implications of their decisions; and may take more risks. However, Scottish people nine years younger than that, faced with the complex experience of perceiving their bodily habitus to be at odds with their sense of their gender, are judged
Where Britishvolt went wrong
As a scattering of snow settles on the desolate site at Blyth in Northumberland that might have become the £3.8 billion Britishvolt battery factory, differences of opinion over the failure of this would-be flagship of the UK’s electric vehicle revolution become clearer. For Andrew Orlowski in the Daily Telegraph, it’s ‘a surprising success’, ministers having rightly declined to inject public funds into a venture with no market-ready technology, no customers and an executive team with a taste for private jets: at least ‘we know we won’t have another DeLorean to rue’. For the Observer, by contrast, it’s ‘a new low for ministers… to boast about cash they saved by not investing
Is sloppiness our new national vice?
The Germans have a word for it. When they wish to criticise their Austrian cousins’ alleged tendency towards carelessness and inefficiency they call it schlamperei. The rough equivalent in English is ‘sloppiness’ – and a flurry of current cases suggests that it may be Britain’s new national vice, too. How many times in recent years and months have we witnessed some public service official go before the cameras to express doubtless heartfelt – but utterly futile – apologies for failing to carry out their basic elementary duties? Failings that, all too often, have cost a human life. The latest example of sloppiness in public service is the tragic case of Zara Aleena, the young
Bridge | 28 January 2023
Susanna and I are very pleased to announce we have a Fan! His name is Tony Graham and he edits the newsletter for the Oban Bridge Club. In his email he says: ‘Of all the bridge columns I read weekly [insert all the top names], yours are the ones I enjoy the most and find most useful.’ As Susanna said: ‘Who is this marvellous man??’ Thank you, Tony. I hope you like today’s hand played by England International Ben Norton in TGR’s Superleague, which has just begun its new season: North’s 5♠ was a good, practical slam invitation, and Ben had an easy raise with both a control in the
A new star in the saddle
I can always tell when Mrs Oakley has walked our flatcoat retriever. On our next outing Damson nudges my pocket every 200 yards having been encouraged to consider completion of that distance sufficient accomplishment to be rewarded with a treat (although, truth be told, it is Mrs O. who deserves the treat for three-mile dog walks just two months after breaking her hip). Rewards were much harder-earned at Lingfield Park’s Winter Million meeting last Saturday on the all-weather polytrack surface. To my shame I had travelled there grudgingly: plan A had been to watch the mighty Energumene at Ascot, plan B to see if Bristol De Mai could do it
The rise of the johnny-come-lately anti-vaxxer
‘No way am I having it now,’ said a friend, as she insisted on discussing the latest scare stories. And she shook her head so violently that her long blonde hair was flung sideways across her face, and the resemblance to an anti-vaxxer in the throes of hysteria was extremely convincing. But then she regained her composure and said: ‘No. I’ve had my two jabs. That’s enough.’ ‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘so you are vaccinated?’ ‘Oh yes, but I’ve only had two. I’m not having any more.’ And she emphasised the ‘I’m’ with a smug look that said she was no fool, unlike others unspecified. This is what is happening
The joy of French hospital food
I woke up in the wake-up room (salle de réveil). The clock on the wall said half past ten. I’d been out for a couple of hours. What lifted me to the surface was the sound of the wake-up team persuading someone to wake up who was absolutely refusing to do so. The entreaties increased in volume and urgency. Then I heard a male voice say, in English: ‘Wake up please, Mr Clarke.’ I nodded my sleepy head to show him that I was already there. The voice then asked me in French whether I was in pain and I answered in French that I was not. After that I
