Society

Wednesday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: toe-curling Valentine poems

In Competition No. 3286, you were invited to submit a toe-curling Valentine poem to Harry, or to the love object of your choice. Meghan and her frightful poems were the inspiration for this assignment but perhaps we should cut her some slack; as Carol Ann Duffy has said, love poetry is the hardest to write. Mindful that some may be heartily sick of the Sussexes and their shenanigans, I widened the brief, and while most of you had Harry in your amorous sights, other love objects ranged from Sergei Lavrov to Nicola Sturgeon. Honourable mentions, in a smallish and patchy entry, go to Richard Spencer, Robert Schechter, Susan Firth and Nicholas

Luke McShane

No. 739

Black to play. Yakubboev-Kramnik, Airthings Masters 2023. White’s last move, Re7-e6, was a blunder, allowing Kramnik to land a decisive tactic. What did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 20 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 Rhg7! Depending on Black’s reply, it’s mate with 2 Ra8# or 2 Rg8# Last week’s winner Bede Moore, Far Oakridge, Gloucestershire

Luke McShane

Bidding one’s time

If a series of chess games is drawn, how do you split the tie? One answer is to play two more games (one of each colour) at a faster time limit, to boost the odds of a decisive result. But that might take a while. When the games get too brisk, the tiebreak feels divorced from the original contest. The drawbacks of playing just one game are obvious – the white player get an unfair edge, and the game might end up drawn anyway. So the Armageddon game was invented – the chess equivalent of a penalty shoot-out. In this, a drawn game results in a win for the black

The Spectator

Sturgeon, Sunak and the state of the Union

Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation as First Minister of Scotland comes at a critical moment for the Union, since the question of Scottish independence has inevitably been tied to the ongoing dilemmas over Brexit. It seems that, over the next week or two, the UK and the EU will announce a potential agreement over the revision of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Goods travelling from mainland Britain for consumption in Northern Ireland will no longer be subject to automatic checks; a trusted trader scheme will allow most shipments to be waved through. In return, it appears that the UK government has dropped its opposition to the role of the European Court of Justice

Dot Wordsworth

The political history of ‘faggot’

‘What does it mean by faggot?’ asked my husband when I showed him a newspaper item headed ‘Champion faggot’. The cutting, from the Northern Daily Mail for 6 November 1897, was sent to me by the historian Andrew McCarthy who had found the headline when looking for something else, and had no idea what it meant either, until he sensibly looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. There it explains that (when votes depended on property), a faggot was ‘a vote for a particular candidate or party fraudulently contrived by nominally transferring sufficient property to a person who would not otherwise be qualified’. The ‘champion faggot’ in the cutting

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I stop my masseuse making conversation?

Q. I am considered to be a friendly and communicative person in everyday life. However I have a bad back and need to have the occasional hour-long massage to offset the tension of having to sit down at work all day. My assistant books me in for ‘full body relaxation massage’ at various spas and explains that, as the client, I will want to zone out completely. And yet there is obviously something about me which is giving the wrong message, as I invariably find I am being treated by a chatty therapist. I try to give the most minimal greeting and description of my needs when I walk into

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club: six of the finest Rhônes from FromVineyardsDirect

I adore the wines of the Rhône. What wine lover doesn’t? There’s variety and there’s value, especially when compared with Bordeaux and Burgundy, and it’s possible to drink your fill without visiting the same well twice or fretting too much about the cost. Last time we had a small Rhône add-on to the main offer; this week we’re going the whole hog, with just a tiny nod to Alsace as a postscript because I adore their wines too. With all the Dry Jan nonsense behind us, Mrs Ray and I fell upon the selection of Rhônes that Esme Johnstone – the canny fox at the helm of FromVineyardsDirect – sent

Toby Young Toby Young

Mark Steyn and the free-speech question

James Delingpole and I had a blazing row on our weekly podcast on Monday. We were discussing the recent departure of Mark Steyn from GB News following a bust-up over his contract. Mark has been hosting a show on the channel for over a year, but took a break in December after suffering two heart attacks. When he was ready to return last month, GB News asked him to sign a contract which would have made his company liable for any fines imposed by Ofcom as a result of a ‘regulatory breach’ unless he and his producers agreed to ‘incorporate Ofcom regulatory input’ into the show. He refused and accused

Simon Barnes

The cultural life of orcas

Male killer whales are all mummy’s boys. That’s not a revelation; their curious and intense social lives have been studied for decades, but the extent to which a male orca depends on his mother has been revealed by new research, which shows that mothers routinely sacrifice their food and their energies for their enormous male offspring, compromising their own health and their ability to produce more young. Orcas or killer whales – the former name is used more often these days – are not whales but big dolphins, up to eight metres long. They’re fierce enough under any name, but curiously selective in their ferocity. And that’s all about culture.

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The toxic cult of self-love

I used to think that the early hours of the morning were for sleeping. Sometimes they might become an extension, or at worst a hangover, from a sloppy, messy night before; a party that keeps going, a person you can’t get enough of – these are the reasons to be up at dawn. Now I know that’s wrong, even detrimental, thinking. Those wee hours of the morning are not for spontaneity or sleep. They are for deliberate self-improvement, self-care and, above all, self-love. When the sun comes up to greet you, you should not be rising with it, but already 60 minutes through your yoga session or finishing your affirmations

Peter Jones

Cyrus knew bullies don’t win

If Dominic Raab has been bullying, he must think it was to his advantage. Agamemnon, leader of the Greek expedition to Troy, thought so too. At the beginning of Homer’s Iliad, he brutally dismissed the old priest of Apollo who had offered a huge ransom for the return of his daughter. So the priest prayed to Apollo, who loosed a devastating plague on the Greek army. In contrast, let Mr Raab contemplate the founder of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great (d. 530 bc). Cyrus was grandson of the earlier king Astyages, a Mede. But Cyrus’s father was Persian, not Median, and because it had been foretold that Cyrus would

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Revealed: Aberdeen’s ‘curriculum decolonising’ plans

The Granite City is an unlikely front in the cultural revolution, but Aberdeen University is about to change that. A document from the institution’s education committee has been passed to me. Titled ‘Decolonising the Curriculum – Timelines and Approval Processes’, it sets out plans to ‘embed a bold, progressive and sustained programme of antiracist curricular reform’. All courses will be given three years to ‘decolonise’. Academics are required to ‘review their reading lists’ and provide ‘additional perspectives on the course subject’. New courses must explain ‘how the curriculum will address the principle of decolonisation’. This will be ‘a constant process… not a linear project with a definite end’. Meanwhile, the

The Spectator

When did football first get referees?

For reference The Referees’ Association complained at the level of abuse against officials in amateur football games. Referees go back further than you might think: the first reference to one was in 1842 – meaning someone to whom gentlemanly players might turn if they could not sort out disputes between themselves. The role acquired an extra notoriety in 1874, when referees were first allowed to send players off.   Who works from home? Between September 2022 and January 2023, 16% of workers reported working from home only, 28% reported hybrid working, 10% said they could work from home but chose to go to work, and 46% said they travelled to

Mariana Mazzucato and Rory Sutherland

How consultancy infantilises governments: Mariana Mazzucato and Rory Sutherland in conversation

Mariana Mazzucato is a professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London. She speaks to The Spectator’s Wiki Man, Rory Sutherland, about the book she has co-authored with Rosie Collington, The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilises our Governments and Warps our Economies.  RORY SUTHERLAND: I’d like to start by congratulating you. The extraordinary growth in scale, wealth and influence of management consulting firms over the past 20 to 30 years is undoubtedly a phenomenon worthy of extensive investigation, particularly as it pertains to government contracts. We are effectively devolving decision-making to people who are doubly unelected in many cases and whose own

Andrew Stuttaford

The truth about UFOs

New York Even if Chinese spy balloons – or alien spacecraft scouting the planet ahead of their coming invasion – start being deployed more discreetly than they have been of late, there will still be more sightings than usual of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs: a new set of initials designed to help UFOs shed their dodgy past). The word has gone out that the stigma attached to military personnel who report UAPs has gone, and they appear to have responded: there were more reported UAP sightings between March 2021 and August 2022 than in the previous 17 years, including nearly 200 that remain unexplained. What’s more, the sensors that scan

The Spectator

Letters: Save our independent schools

Schools out Sir: Toby Young is absolutely spot-on in his assessment of the impact of Labour’s plans to put VAT on independent schools (‘Class conflict’, 11 February). Not only will it cost the government money, but it will destroy a sector that is one of the UK’s great success stories. The naive and childish perception on the left is that all independent schools are, like Eton or Harrow, backed by wealthy parents with very deep pockets. The reality is very different. A significant number of independent schools are really struggling, and several have closed recently. Many schools operate on the margins of profitability or run at a loss. The majority

Douglas Murray

Can you really be radicalised by Great British Railway Journeys?

The late Robert Conquest adumbrated three rules of politics. Perhaps the most famous (also known as O’Sullivan’s law) is that ‘Any organisation not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing’. I would like to add a fourth law: ‘Any programme set up by government will inevitably metastasise unless consciously cut back by observant officials.’ Anyone in search of a textbook example need look no further than the government’s Prevent programme, into which the government’s official review was finally published last week. William Shawcross’s excellent comprehensive report contains many things worth lingering over. But one of the most interesting is what he uncovered about Prevent’s saunter into ‘right-wing

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why AstraZeneca’s new factory has gone to Dublin

‘Great news, Prime Minister, Astra-Zeneca has decided to site a new £320 million factory on Mersey-side. Your vision of the UK as a science superpower is becoming a reality.’ What a moment that would be for a Downing Street intern in search of the positive for an otherwise grim morning briefing; almost up there with ‘Great news, Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has joined a Trappist monastery’. But no, AstraZeneca decided some time ago to put its next factory in Dublin. This is the pharma multinational that was a corporate hero of the Covid vaccine rollout and is a descendant of ICI, Britain’s greatest 20th-century science company; the very model of

James Kirkup James Kirkup

How self-ID helped bring down Nicola Sturgeon

In the years when I wrote a lot about sex and gender and politics and law, I made the same observations many times. One, that politicians weren’t talking fully and openly about the implications of self-identified gender, and the policies and practices related to it. Second, that as a result, such policies would never be politically sustainable: no policy made in the shadows can survive in sunlight. Over several years, and not just in the UK, policymakers of many sorts began to subscribe to the doctrine of self-ID, but very few ever sought or won public consent for the associated policies. I don’t think you need to be a conspiracy