Society

Wednesday

Jeremy Clarke

My week alone in a mess of morphine foils

After commuting to Marseille for nine days of radiotherapy, I spent the week alone in the cave, in bed, in a mess of morphine foils and empty coffee cups. Sister Catriona was in the UK overseeing the birth of her first granddaughter. Friends and neighbours kindly kept me supplied with staples. Every day the sun shone. The astounding insolence of the mosquitos and flies in this Indian summer has to be seen to be believed. Maybe I ought to change the sheets. The martins who live up here on the cliff are enjoying the unseasonal airborne feast, circling and swooping just outside my permanently open bedroom windows. Far below, the

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Don’t sneer at Elon Musk

I know a man who plans to burn an effigy of Elon Musk on his bonfire on 5 November. Musk will be on a cardboard rocket and it will be hilarious, apparently,to watch him being engulfed by flames, because he’s ridiculous, he and his weird ideas about Mars. The idea that Musk is laughable is one of the few topics on which the progressive left and the old hawkish left agree. Musk isn’t a serious person, they say, and because he’s not serious, he’s dangerous. He shouldn’t be allowed to own Twitter, let alone space rockets.   There was cautious, grudging approval when Musk donated terminals for his Starlink satellites

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

The joy of loathing the Qatar World Cup

It was on 2 December 2010, when the boys of the global footballing community were still quaintly playing FIFA 11 on PlayStation 3, that the venue was announced for the football World Cup of 2022. Among the crowds in the great hall of the Fifa headquarters in Zurich on that Thursday were David Beckham, Bill Clinton, Roman Abramovich, Sebastian Coe and Boris Johnson.  What a moment of disappointment it was for us. Not only had England got just a paltry two votes in its bid to host the 2018 World Cup, losing out to Russia, but we learned that the 2022 one was going to be held in a tiny,

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 5 November 2022

Control freaks are deeply annoying and even more deeply uncool. Nobody wants to be thought of as a control freak when they think they are being organised and helpful. But at the bridge table control is everything. As declarer you are in the driving seat and understanding the concept of keeping control is vital. Often it means giving the opps what they are due as soon as possible while developing our side suits. The following hand is a simple but instructive example, and by recognising and applying this technique whenever needed, you will greatly improve your declarer play.  West leads the ♣J and things don’t look too bad. Barring any

Peter Jones

Justice for Boris, ancient-style

Did Boris Johnson lie to the House about partygate? The Privileges Committee decided to investigate, but refused to take Mr Johnson’s ‘intention’ into account. However, Lord Pannick QC (now KC) has since claimed that ignoring ‘intention’ would be ‘unlawful’ in determining whether there had been a violation. The Committee disagrees. Could the ancients help? Argument about the nature of law and justice has ever been at the heart of western thinking. Some early Greek philosophers maintained that only a form of metaphysical ‘justice’ kept a chaotic universe, riven with competing forces, stable. When Socrates (c. 470-399 bc) shifted the emphasis towards the purpose of existence, debates about the meaning of

Luke McShane

Remembering Basman

Just a fortnight ago, I had the pleasure of introducing a friend to the ‘Immortal Waiting Game’, Michael Basman’s victory over the Swedish grandmaster Ulf Andersson, played at Hastings in 1975. Basman landed in a passive position out of the opening, and began to shuffle back and forth, so that at move 23 his pieces were in the identical state they had been in at move 11. It was a psychological masterstroke. Andersson, a distinctly patient player, girded himself to attack, only to waver and botch the execution so badly that Basman turned the tables and won the game. On 26 October, Basman died from cancer at the age of 76.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I get my friend to make time to see me alone?

Q. As a radio producer one of the most infuriating – and surprisingly common – things people ask is: ‘When will you be a presenter?’ Can you help with a withering response that lets them know I don’t feel like a failure, but have willingly chosen a completely different job? — M.G., London SE1 A. You might reply: ‘Oh God no, I’d hate to do that but … [assume a sympathetic facial expression] why do you ask? Would you like to be a presenter?  Q. My best friend lives in Australia, and visits annually to see friends and family. Every time we meet she has invited along so many other

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Does China’s WeChat show Twitter’s future?

Imagine you’re scrolling through Twitter. You see a new coat and, on impulse, tap ‘buy’. Purchase confirmed. Later, you open Twitter again to order a taxi to a restaurant and once there, you scan a QR code to see the menu, from which you order directly to the table. All of this is charged to your Twitter-wallet, filled with money you’ve received as a birthday present from friends or family, sent of course via Twitter. These are all real examples of how my family and almost a billion other Chinese use WeChat, a Chinese super-app that has become far more than just a messaging platform. Elon Musk has already expressed

Luke McShane

No. 727

White to play. Basman-Balshan, Israel 1980. How did Basman decide the game in his favour? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 7 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 Rg8! Rb1+ 2 Kh2 Rb2+ 3 Kh3 (White’s rook prevents g5-g4+) Rb1 4 b8=Q! Rh1+ 5 Qh2 and wins Last week’s winner Sanket Ghatalia, London SE5

Dot Wordsworth

The many uses of ‘multiple’

I once failed to entertain the former Master of Balliol Sir Anthony Kenny by telling him about the inscription in the lift at the London Library, the gift of the Byzantinist Sir Steven Runciman. I suddenly forgot what it said. All I could think of was Inter medium montium pertransibunt aquae, ‘Between the midst of the hills the waters shall pass’. That wasn’t right. I felt like Alice trying to recite Isaac Watts’s ‘How doth the little busy bee/ Improve each shining hour’, but coming out with ‘How doth the little crocodile/ Improve his shining tail’. My failed quotation came from a Psalm, number 103 in the Vulgate numbering, number

Douglas Murray

The negligence of ‘not in my lifetime’

It is sometimes said, correctly, that conservatism is more an attitude than an ideology. And for me there have always been certain individuals who embody that attitude. The late and much-missed Tessa Keswick was one such person, and for some reason a remark of hers has recently been in my head. A few years ago we were at a friends’ house for dinner, with an eclectic group. At one point we were all debating something or other and one slightly left-wing woman at the table said: ‘Well, it’ll all be after my time, so I don’t see why I should care.’ If my eyebrows raised, Tessa’s positively shot up. After

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

The march of Germany’s extreme monarchists

The far right in Germany isn’t all angry young men with shaved heads, baseball bats and black boots. There are those who appear respectable, even intellectual. The Reichsbürger movement includes accountants, teachers and academics; many members are middle-aged. It’s a fractured network with vastly diverging world views, united in their belief that the current government is illegitimate.   The Reichsbürgers claim that the German empire was not legally abolished when it collapsed at the end of the first world war and that it therefore continues to exist. To them, the so-called November Revolution of 1918, in which Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate, ending the German monarchy, was a coup

The Spectator

Has Elon Musk picked up a turkey in Twitter?

Talking gobblers Has Elon Musk picked up a turkey in Twitter? – Musk paid $54.2 per share. The share price reached $41.57 on its first day of trading in 2013. It slumped to $14.62 in April 2016 and peaked at $77.06 in February 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, it claimed 229 million active daily users, a rise of 15.9% year on year. There were 39.6 million users in the US. – In Q1 2022 the company raised $1.2 billion in revenue: $1.11 billion from advertising and £94 million from subscriptions. However, in the same quarter the company ran up $1.33 billion in costs. Dirty Cop How are Cop

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: a response to Kipling’s ‘If’ and other poems

In Competition No. 3273, you were invited to supply a poem addressing a well-known poem of your choice. In a keenly contested week, honourable mentions go to Robin Hill’s response to John McCrae’s 1915 rondeau ‘In Flanders Fields’ (which was rejected for publication by this magazine), Chris Ramsey and Alex Steelsmith. The winners take £20. If you can stroke your chin for hours and hours, While handing out your worldly ponderings As sterling wisdom, knowledge that empowers And truths that point you to the heart of things; If you can make a point-blank affirmation Then undercut it with a get-out clause, Or downplay thought and wild imagination, Dynamics that can open

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Robert Buckland: ‘Let asylum seekers work – and pay tax’

When the small boats crisis began, it was seen by some in government as a positive sign. ‘It was an emblem of success,’ says Robert Buckland, who was solicitor general at the time. ‘If you remember, the previous mode of entry for migrants was on lorries.’ Heat scanners had been introduced at the Channel Tunnel in 2015, which meant more stowaways were being caught. The switch to boats, it was argued at the time, was a desperate tactic on the part of the people-smugglers. No one guessed what a problem it would become. Back in 2014, the UK asylum system was coping: 87 per cent of cases were handled within

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

What Liz Truss’s coffee habit says about her

According to excerpts from Out of the Blue, the cursed biography of Liz Truss by Harry Cole and The Spectator’s James Heale, Truss is dependent on two things for comfort: Instagram and espresso. On a trade delegation to New Zealand, she’d ‘had so much coffee and just wasn’t interested in meeting the ambassador’. Coffee is from Ethiopia. Its origins as a foodstuff are murky, but the best legend is about a goatherd called Kaldi who in the mid-9th century noticed that his goats ate black beans and became manic and sleepless: essentially, they started dancing. From there, coffee spread to Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Persia. But when coffee met Christianity

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Cutting the links with reality

It was a difficult one for the BBC, but they got through it. The problem was this: how to do the story on the chaos at the migrant centre in the former Manston airport which might result in the Home Secretary’s resignation without acknowledging that the root of the issue was a huge increase in asylum seekers? They were avid for the story because they could smell Suella Braverman’s blood on the wind. But it is, I think, contrary to BBC producer guidelines to suggest that Britain may have a problem with illegal immigration. How, then, to stick it to Braverman without implying there’s loads of Albanians flooding the country?

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club: a glittering selection from Armit Wines

I shocked an old friend the other day when I confessed how much I drank per week. He shocked me by confessing how often he had sex. We sat in speechless astonishment before clearing our throats in a very English way and moving on to the weather. I’m not in the least bit proud of my consumption. Alarmed is more the word. But it’s an occupational hazard. My chum has no such excuse. The trouble is that I’m so easily seduced. So it was with this glittering selection from Armit Wines. Out of a dozen or so bottles tasted, these five proved irresistible, united by an innate elegance, and I

Iain Macwhirter

How a tweet got me sacked 

I always advise younger journalists never to use irony or make jokes on social media, so when I was effectively sacked for alluding to an edible fruit of the palm family, I should have known better. And of course I did know better. I deleted my three-word tweet within minutes. But screenshots live for ever. There are no second thoughts on Twitter, no clarifications allowed. No second chances either. It is judge and jury and will take away your career, reputation and livelihood at the click of a mouse, if pusillanimous employers allow it to. I’d been in countless Twitter storms in the past over Scottish nationalism, hate crime, gender.