The Battle for Britain | 26 November 2022
Society
Wednesday
My prescription for surviving the winter
Winter is finally upon us and I’m relying on my usual array of tablets and powders to ward off seasonal viruses. Caroline and the children constantly ridicule me, saying I’ve been taken for a fool by snake-oil salesmen, but I tell myself these concoctions are responsible for my robust good health. I’ve tested positive for Covid twice and usually get two or three colds a year. But I haven’t taken a day off due to illness since 1987. My basic daily intake consists of a multi-vitamin tablet, 1,000iu of vitamin E, 1,000µg of vitamin B12 and 4,000iu of vitamin D3, all washed down with 1,000mg of vitamin C. Since developing
Wine Club: Private Cellar’s masterclass in alternatives to the classics
So that’s another term done at the Spectator Wine School. And what a term! We had such a fine teacher – take a bow Mrs Taylor, Head of Vinous Studies, on loan from Private Cellar – and such bright pupils that everyone passed. Not only did our conscientious students pull their weight in class, eschewing the spittoons (I’m sending the damn things back, they were a foolish purchase), many continued their oenological discussions in The Two Chairmen after school. Their diligence and dedication quite brought a tear to my eye. Our most popular class was that of Alternatives to the Classics, which featured such tasty wines that Laura Taylor and
What Gary Lineker could learn from Herodotus
Gary Lineker has unfolded his thoughts on the World Cup in Qatar (Romans called them Catharrei). ‘It’s a delicate balance between “sports-washing” and trying to make change,’ he intoned. Actually, the issue is quite different. Let Herodotus (5th C bc), the first western historian and a man of inexhaustible curiosity and vitality, put you right. Herodotus’ aim was to discover the reason for the enmity between Greeks and Persians that led to the Persian Wars (491-479 bc). Researching Persia’s rise to power took him around the Greek East, Persia, Egypt, Africa and South Russia, and the different cultures he came across filled him with fascination and wonder. Of course he
It’s time to replace the Society of Authors
The most important job of any union is to support its members against bullies. So why has the Society of Authors, a sort of posh union for writers, illustrators and translators, failed to support members who are receiving death threats? In August, J.K. Rowling tweeted her sympathy for Sir Salman Rushdie after his attempted murder. Imagine how she felt when she received this response: ‘Don’t worry, you are next.’ Rowling is a member of the Society of Authors and expected the union to put pressure on the authorities by condemning the threats against her. Right? Wrong. Not only did the Society fail to defend Rowling, but the chair of the
How much alcohol is drunk in Qatar?
Cornish pasting Malcolm Bell, the chief executive of VisitCornwall, complained in an online interview about ‘emmets’ – an emmet being a derogatory word for an outsider, derived from a local dialect word for ‘ants’. Some more insults in Cornish dialect: Bimper, a peeping Tom; Dobeck, a fool; Gocki, stupid; Piggy-whidden, a weakling; Squallyass, a crybaby; Janjansy, a fibber; Timdoodle, a fool; Tuss, an offensive person. Team building Ten players in Qatar’s World Cup squad were born outside the country. Only 12% of Qatar’s population are native Qataris. Where are the rest of its citizens from? India 22% Bangladesh 13% Nepal 13% Egypt 9% Philippines 7% Pakistan 5% Sri Lanka 4%
Letters: What about Qatar’s Christians?
More turmoil Sir: The comparisons made by Kate Andrews between the post-2008 settlement and the ‘Austerity 2.0’ Budget last week seem accurate and this is likely to have wider consequences (‘The squeeze’, 19 November). The failure of growth and perceived lack of care for many in society post-2008 undoubtedly contributed to Brexit and the increased bifurcation of the electorate. Jeremy Hunt now appears to wish to add to intergenerational inequality by keeping the triple lock. Trussism clearly failed at the point of prosecution, but at least it represented a new approach. The Sunak/Hunt answer, which makes no acknowledgement of the sacrifices made by the young during Covid, will produce more of
The welcome death of the ‘my truth’ investment boom
A colourful selection of news items this week seem to have a central thread. Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the Theranos fake blood-test venture once valued at $9 billion, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, the collapsed crypto exchange once valued at $32 billion, was holed up in the Bahamas awaiting extradition to face US justice. Despite continuing crypto mayhem, Binance – the Cayman-based rival exchange that declined to rescue FTX – announced the auction of ‘seven animated NFT statues’ celebrating the triumphs of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. Also still making headlines, Elon Musk appears set on destroying his $44 billion Twitter purchase –
Should the better-off pay more for everything?
Once the energy price cap expires in April, the Chancellor is apparently considering the levy of ‘social tariffs’ on the energy bills of the better off – a pleasantly elastic category, since most of us are better off than somebody. Charging wealthier customers extra for their energy could facilitate reducing the bills of benefit claimants. The same kilowatt hour would cost the ‘rich’ (i.e. the marginally solvent) more than the socially dependent. To bolster our beloved fairness, might this novel pricing scheme be extended to all British goods and services? After all, for higher-rate taxpayers (assuming that after obeisance to HMRC they have anything left), springing for a £7.95 fillet
Bridge | 26 November 2022
Have you ever stopped to have a long think while playing bridge online, and seen an opponent type the word ‘TEST’ in the chat box? I have, several times, and I’d always assumed it was a sympathetic way of acknowledging that someone has a criticaI decision to make. But when I mentioned this to David Gold the other day, he told me I’d got it wrong – the opponent is checking his screen hasn’t frozen. And most of the time it’s euphemistic – a way of saying, ‘Get on with it!’ I’m sure no world-class player has ever received a chivvying ‘TEST’ – everyone is fully aware that when they
Ascot was a high-profile disaster for jump racing
The government may for the moment have disbanded its circular firing squad, but racing has never shown a greater ability for self-harm. For once last Saturday I was not on a racecourse. Unfortunately, Mrs Oakley had had a late-night mishap with an Ugg boot and after a midnight ambulance, a night in A&E and her hip-replacement operation, my presence was needed elsewhere. Jump jockeys are only too familiar with A&E wards and limb-setting operations, but on our first acquaintance we marvelled not only at the skill and care of the NHS teams but especially at their patience with an astonishingly high proportion of abusive and aggressive patients with dementia. As
Why you should ask to see your pet’s medical notes
‘Notice from your vets’ said the email subject. I clicked and there was a letter telling me that my vet was sacking me as a client with two weeks’ notice, even though I had a sick dog. This was because I had asked to see my dog’s notes and discovered they had been discussing me, not just the dog, behind my back – because I had pointed out a mistake. The more astonishing thing is that the mistake was not made by them, but by another vet who had missed an infection my spaniel was suffering from, which was why I took the poor pooch to this other vet, who
My Willie Thorne moment
The sunny, growing month of November is the British expat’s Provençal dividend. Every morning the meridional sunshine comes in through the left-hand bedroom window, lighting my face as I sit up in bed with the breakfast tray and the daily paper. By 11 o’clock it has moved across to the right-hand window, warming the blanket and the dry soles of my bare feet. On the bedside table is the heavy brass base of a first world war French 75 artillery shell. Even on a November morning the brass heats up until it is hot to the touch. I use the shell base as a handy pot in which I keep
How to run a nightclub
New York Christmas partying, like Yuletide shopping displays, begins much earlier of late. After the lockdown, however, the urge to party, and party hard, is justified. Like others, I am trying to make up for the missing two years, but the hangover toll is prohibitive. It takes a whole two days to feel normal again, and at this point of my life, days count as much as months used to. Last week I hit a hot new club here on the east side of the Bagel, Casa Cruz, owned by Chilean Juan Santa Cruz, who also happens to be a Speccie reader. Juan was sitting at the table next to
Baddielphobia and the ugly truth about anti-Semitism
David Baddiel could not have asked for better evidence for his thesis that ‘Jews don’t count’ than the online reaction to it. Channel 4 broadcast his intelligent and touching documentary this week with that very title – Jews Don’t Count – and instantly there was an explosion of Baddielphobia. It was almost as if people were determined to prove his point. There’s a blind spot among progressives when it comes to anti-Jewish hatred, said Baddiel. And – boom – there it was, right away, in hateful comment after hateful comment: the blind spot, clear as anything. Baddiel first made his case in his sharp polemical book Jews Don’t Count, published
Tuesday
Scotland is getting sicker
For Scotland to stay at its current levels of health in 20 years’ time it would have to entirely eradicate cancer. That’s according to the Burden of Disease study published this morning by Public Health Scotland. The report found that although the country’s population is projected to fall in the next two decades, its annual ‘disease burden’ – the impact of morbidity and mortality on population health – is forecast to increase by some 21 per cent. ‘In order to achieve a similar level of disease burden as 2019’, they say it would need to be reduced by 17 per cent by 2043 – ‘which is equivalent to eradicating the entire disease burden of cancer in
How did contemporary culture become so dismal?
Watching the Christmas John Lewis ad, over and over, I’m struck by how much British life has changed – and not for the better. We’ve all become so tastefully downbeat, introspectively sentimental and utterly lacking in brightness. In the early 1980s, the big TV advertisement of the Christmas season was for Woolworths. I should explain for any younger readers that Woolworths was a kind of Amazon depot, except that you were required to go there yourself on your legs and search for what you wanted with your arms. The 1981 Woolworths advert was bright, gaudy and carnivalesque. A cavalcade of middle aged, distinctly uncool and definitively unsexy celebrities –
How Marks & Spencer spoiled Christmas
Working in a charity shop, where the Christmas cards go out in July, means I’m more aware than most how early the festive season begins these days. The postal service can be a bit erratic but surely it won’t take five months for a greeting card to reach its final destination? Our excuse is that the money we raise goes to a good cause. Regular shops don’t have the same justification. Marks & Spencer, in particular, is one of the worst offenders when it comes to Christmas. The retail equivalent of the BBC, M&S is sanctimonious and overpriced. It’s a shop that thinks nothing of having Halloween merch celebrating ghouls
Monday
In defence of the One Love armband
Wales’ football manager Rob Page was clear about why his team’s captain Gareth Bale would wear the ‘One Love’ armband at the Qatar World Cup: it was about demonstrating support of LGBT rights in a country where there are none. Whatever the pushback from Fifa, Page insisted last month that the armband would be worn: ‘That’s what we believe in, that’s what we stand up for’, he preached. The Welsh team were not alone in taking part. Football captains of eight other European nations – including England’s own Harry Kane – were vocal about their plans to wear the armband to promote inclusivity in a host nation where homosexuality is
Fifa 1 – England 0
England have backed down in the ludicrous standoff with Fifa over the plan for captain Harry Kane to wear a ‘One Love’ armband – to show solidarity with gay community of Qatar – in today’s opening fixture against Iran. The move would have defied the governing body’s rules on acceptable on field attire. Faced with the threat of an instant yellow card for Kane, which, if repeated in the second game would have kept him out of the third, England blinked. This absurd little episode ought not to detain us for long, except that it is revealing as it gives us a fairly accurate gauge of the true force of