Society

Wednesday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I curb my brother’s unsavoury language?

Q. My brother, who lives in southern France, uses unsavoury words to gain my attention, such as ‘infernal swine’, ‘schweinhund’ and ‘w****r’. Being somewhat genteel myself, I am reluctant to engage in verbal fisticuffs across the ocean. His literary aspirations, I believe, may have topped off with the Biggles compendium. What strategy, Mary, would you suggest I follow to maintain some fraternal friendship yet decrease the negative tone? — Name withheld, Toronto A. Tell him you have got new software on the computer which has an annoying habit of obliterating words it does not like. This makes his emails sometimes difficult to read. For example, he said that ‘x is

Toby Young Toby Young

The embarrassing truth about how I got injured

I had a bicycle accident last week. Not terrible, but not great either. Of the five I’ve had since I took up cycling more than 20 years ago, it ranked third. No stitches needed,unlike the worst, which required more than 50 and a night in hospital. I didn’t bother with A&E this time, in spite of concerned onlookers advising me to. I think it looked worse than it was. Head injuries generally do because there’s so much blood. I’m slightly wary writing about this because I don’t want to give the anti-motorist lobby any more ammo. In fact, there were no other vehicles involved. The accident was actually caused by

Aidan Hartley

Class of the 1980s: my Balliol reunion

Laikipia, Kenya No portrait of Boris Johnson hangs in the hall of Balliol, his old Oxford College. Hardly a surprise, since serving prime ministers do not have their pictures painted and he has moved on only recently. But as things stand, it seems pretty clear that Boris will never go up alongside this distinguished Oxford institution’s other three prime ministers, H.H. Asquith, Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath. I worked this all out last month while attending a Gaudy, or reunion, at my old college for the years 1984 to 1988. Boris matriculated the year before I went up but as I stood in the hall before dinner looking up at

Melissa Kite

Wanted: a trap for a happy mouse

‘Excuse me, I’m looking for something to catch a mouse that won’t cause it any distress,’ said the young chap who had walked into the hardware cabin at the farm shop with his girlfriend. The pair of them had briefly perused the shelves where the well assorted pest control items were neatly stacked and, not seeing what it was they were looking for, they had approached the counter where the owner and I were having a chat. We were setting the world to rights, as usual, as he put through a bottle of floor cleaner for me, and we had come to the conclusion we always do, which was that

Jeremy Clarke

My grandsons have sensed weakness – and it’s costing me

The grandsons are putting two and two together. Grandad is always lying down and groaning when they video call and he has suddenly become a soft touch when asked to stump up for their material acquisitiveness. ‘By the way, Grandad, can I have the new Liverpool away kit? With Mo Salah on the back?’ ‘You certainly can my dear chap.’ ‘Oh and I forgot, can I get some Nike Air Force 1 basketball trainers?’ ‘The pleasure is all mine. I’ll get on to it right away.’ ‘Oh and I’m using Klynton’s phone because mine’s stopped working.’ ‘Gawd. So you need a new one?’ ‘Yep. Plus I need £100.’ ‘What for?’

Taki

The death of humour

New York Rodney Dangerfield was the American Benny Hill: lewd, funny and not exactly politically correct where the weaker sex was concerned. In America today there is no room for Rodney’s or Benny’s shenanigans, and leering at women is now commensurate with having one’s rocket polished in broad daylight, perhaps even more so. I find it amazing to be daily bombarded by the shameless gimmickry, stupidity and smuttiness of television but deprived of talented comedians who tend to get on the wrong side of hatchet-faced feminists. The saccharine cesspool of late-night talk shows, the utter banality of actors and actresses talking about their latest films – this is what our

Peter Jones

Liz Truss and the art of rhetoric

Liz Truss was spot-on in arguing that the only way in which a state can flourish is by combining low taxes with economic growth. But she failed to persuade her audience that she knew how this could be achieved. If only Dr Kwarteng, a classicist, had drawn her attention to Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric (4th century bc), the first full analysis of the means of persuasion, the day and her career would have been saved. First, Aristotle defined two general types of persuasive proof. One he called ‘artistic’, because it depended upon human ingenuity, the other ‘non-artistic’, because it derived from pre-existing evidence, e.g. witness statements, written contracts, etc. Then

The Spectator

Letters: The case for legalising cannabis

Paying the price Sir: Lionel Shriver’s piece about university standards rang true to me (‘University is supposed to be hard’, 15 October). When I, then working for a distinctly moth-eaten British university, visited a very famous private college in Massachusetts in 1985, I expressed my envy of his luxurious surroundings to a professor of English. His reply was: ‘Don’t envy us. You have something we don’t have. It’s called standards.’ He went on to say that he had just been warned about his behaviour as he had given a ‘very generous’ B minus for an essay by an ‘idle, insolent, profoundly ignorant pig of a student’, who complained about the

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Truss says sorry, Hunt reverses mini-Budget and Kanye West buys Parler

Home Liz Truss said in a BBC interview as Prime Minister that she wanted to ‘say sorry for the mistakes that have been made’. Declaring that she would lead the Conservatives into the next election, she addressed blocs of MPs: the One Nation group one day, the European Research Group the next. She watched Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer whom she had just appointed to replace Kwasi Kwarteng, deliver a statement to the Commons reversing most of the provisions of the ‘fiscal event’ of 23 September. The new Chancellor announced the end of current subsidies for domestic energy bills in April, preferring something that ‘will cost the taxpayer

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The truth about corporate taxes

I’ve chosen to write about corporate tax rates this week not because they’re the sexiest subject available but because – unlike the government’s frontbench, the value of the pound and the scale of winter fuel bills – they’re unlikely to change dramatically during the shelf-life of this column. An increase in corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent, originally announced by Rishi Sunak, will go ahead in April, despite new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s own leadership campaign pledge to cut the rate to 15 per cent, which would have placed the UK between Ireland and Singapore in competitive tax tables. The uplift will, we’re told, tip £19 billion

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Why can’t I give blood?

I read about the national shortage of blood last week with a feeling of gloomy inevitability. The brains of the nation are scrambled, Westminster’s insane, of course the country’s bleeding out. But at least, I thought, I can help a bit. I’ve given blood in the past and I enjoy it. There’s the feeling of warmth and purpose, and biscuits. I’d never fork out for a packet of custard creams, but like most English women and men I’m a sucker for one or two free on a saucer in a medical setting. Our blood donor scheme is actually all-round cheery. Each country has its own circulatory system, a flow out

The Spectator

2575: Problem XIII – solution

5 (the number of GOLD RINGS, from ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’: 34/22A) x 103 (the number of the PSALM (7D) BENEDIC ANIMA MEA: 41/30/1D) x 5 (the number of SYMBOLS AT YOUR DOOR, from ‘Green Grow the Rushes,O’: 3/8/38) = 2575 (the number of the PUZZLE (14)). First prize O.F.G. Phillips, Oxford Runners-up Clive West, Old Windsor, Berks; M.D. Conway, Grimsby, Lincs

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Has a Conservative government got any power at all?

In the House of Commons on Monday, someone accused Liz Truss’s government of being ‘in office but not in power’. By chance, I was sitting in the peers’ gallery immediately behind the author of that famous phrase, Norman Lamont, who applied it to John Major’s administration in his resignation statement as chancellor in 1993. It grows ever more apt. I sometimes wonder if modern politicians positively welcome this situation. It is a general feature of the structures of the EU, where no elected politician has real power, but none seems to mind. Much of the joy of ‘compassionate’ Conservatives at the trouncing of Truss appears to derive from the proof

James Ball

Zuckerberg’s empire collapses

Mark Zuckerberg is in a lot of trouble. He has turned away from the slog of running Facebook to focus almost entirely on his ‘metaverse’, a vision of the internet where people enter interactive virtual spaces using virtual reality (VR) headsets. He has pledged investment of at least $10 billion a year for a decade, and investors have been told that profits will be lower for the next decade as a result. He saw the digital future once. Can he repeat the trick? Right now, it seems not. His company’s stock price has more than halved, wiping $600 billion off its market value. Shareholders are worried. Meta is to cut

Pabulum

2578: Torture

The same word appears as eight headwords in Chambers. Unclued lights indicate what they mean. The word will appear in the completed grid and must be shaded.   Across 10 German town invited Newton twice (5-5) 11 Smart monarch nailing the ceremony (6) 12 Granny’s wonderful honey (3,4) 14 Yes, grandparent’s about to be of use (5) 15 Small valleys breaking up Andes (5) 16 Anchorite tumbling out of cot gets rupture (6) 22 Medicine giving tiny tot fresh start (8) 23 Scotsman and German build platforms (7) 26 Some tanker offloads oil in Perth (4) 28 Having fixed appointment, two cardinals keep united (7) 30 Feminine fiend cast off

Matt Ridley

What’s killing our birds?

If you are a bird, any kind of bird, the current pandemic of avian influenza rampaging through your kind is far more terrifying than anything the hairless apes on the ground below experienced in 2020 and 2021. Britain’s seabirds – guillemots, gannets, gulls, kittiwakes and skuas – have been hardest hit because they breed in dense colonies, facilitating infection. The death toll this summer among 2,600 sandwich tern chicks on Coquet island, off the Northumberland coast, approached 100 per cent. The worst may be only just beginning for the many thousands of geese, ducks and waders. They scatter across the Arctic tundra in summer and gather in dense flocks on

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The case against a stripped-back coronation

The last King Charles was crowned in 1661. Samuel Pepys attended the ceremony. He was captivated by ‘the sight of all these glorious things… sure never to see the like again in this world’. He later became so merry, he told his diary, that ‘my head began to turne and I to vomitt…Thus did the day end, with joy everywhere’. We live in a more decorous age, but I think Pepys imbibed the right spirit. The coming coronation of King Charles III should be joyful too. The paradox is that joy will not be achieved unless the ceremony is solemn and magnificent. Early signs give slight cause for concern. On

Luke McShane

No. 725

White to play. Mamedyarov-J. Polgar, Fide World Blitz, Dubai 2014. Black is lagging in development, and her last move, 10…Nb8-d7, gifted White a tactical opportunity. Which move won the game for White? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 24 October. 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 Be2! Then 1…f5 2 Bh5# or 1…Bb4 2 Bb5# or 1…Ne6 2 Bb5# Last week’s winner Alastair Cridland, Hoyle Ing, Linthwaite, West Yorkshire

Luke McShane

Awestruck

‘I can comprehend Alekhine’s combinations well enough; but where he gets his attacking chances from and how he infuses such life into the very opening – that is beyond me. Give me the positions he obtains, and I should seldom falter. Yet I continually get drawn games, even out of the King’s Gambit!’ Those words of admiration for the fourth world champion are usually attributed to Rudolf Spielmann, a strong contemporary of his in the interwar period. I am struck by the same sense of awe when I watch Shakhriyar Mamedyarov play. The grandmaster from Azerbaijan was at his sparkling best in the early rounds of the Aimchess Rapid, the