Society

Wednesday

Mike Adams

Why America’s cannabis experiment failed

Indiana Once cannabis legalisation in the US started being taken seriously a decade ago, the majority of liberal Americans supported it. It just seemed like common sense. No longer would pot users have to rely on street dealers, so criminal organisations would wither away. At the same time, states would benefit from billions in tax revenue. Booze, after all, was once held under the thumb of prohibition in the US, bringing about 13 years of black market activity and gang violence, which all ended when prohibition was repealed in 1933. The alcohol trade is now one of the leading earners in America and contributes roughly $260 billion to the economy.

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

A house-price crash won’t be the only effect of the Kwarteng calamity

Where next for house prices? Clearly, they’re going down as mortgage rates go up – and my forecast in May that they would shed ‘recent froth’ and then stagnate rather than plunge, has been entirely overtaken by events, or at least by Kwasi Kwarteng’s calamitous ‘fiscal event’ last month. Reverberations from the Chancellor’s debut continue apace, with more emergency bond-buying by the Bank of England despite news that the OBR-assessed forecast missing from his September speech will now be unveiled on 31 October instead of on 23 November. But even if the books can be cooked in a way that makes more sense than markets expect, hundreds of mortgage deals

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Should failing students really graduate as doctors?

If I seem to be bashing universities lately, they’ve asked for it. The prestigious New York University in lower Manhattan didn’t cover itself in glory when, just before this semester began, it responded to a petition from 82 students (out of a class of 350) by sacking the professor. The petitioners’ main objection? The course was too hard. After retiring from Princeton’s chemistry department where he’d taught organic chemistry for more than 40 years, Maitland Jones Jr taught the same course at NYU on one-year contracts as an adjunct. I used to be an adjunct, and this much hasn’t changed since my day: adjuncts are atrociously paid. I’m just guessing,

Dot Wordsworth

The problem with Liz Truss’s ‘growth, growth, growth’ slogan

‘You’re easily pleased.’ said my husband when I told him how satisfying I found a chance discovery. It was about green grass growing, and I’m still pleased with it. Grow comes from an ancient Germanic root gro-. Green derives from the same source, and the greenery that grew was called grass, a third derivative from the root. Grass even shares an origin with the Latin gramen ‘grass’, which had an earlier form grasmen, the –men part being a suffix indicating a noun. My simple satisfaction at these etymological connections is countered by a discomfort at the way growth is used. From a different perspective I share the opinion of Harold

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why should Tom Watson be given a peerage and not Paul Dacre?

Much of this is not Liz Truss’s fault. The great big adjustment all over the West is that the era of low interest rates is now over. This is causing a crisis because most people, businesses and governments – and, we now discover, most pension funds – planned their finances on the basis that the era would go on for ever. It was bad luck that this hit markets just as Britain got its new prime minister. However, the Trussties undoubtedly overreached. Having been caught out, they are forced to become the sober-sides they previously mocked. Having been punished for peremptorily sacking Tom Scholar at the Treasury, they have had

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how can I snoop on my neighbour’s house?

Q. I am at the stage of my life where I am often sending presents to newborn babies. These presents are almost never acknowledged: the parents believe they will get round to posting me a handwritten letter, complete with a picture of the child in the outfit or under the mobile or reading the book they have received. As a result they don’t even send a WhatsApp. As deliveries go wrong so often, I eventually have to check that the parcel has arrived safely and am met with grovelling apologies. Mary, please can you help make this process less annoying? – Name and address withheld A. Buy a £10 pay-as-you-go

Toby Young Toby Young

Will I be PayPal’s downfall?

Dan Schulman, the president and CEO of PayPal, gave an interview earlier this year entitled: ‘The thing that separates good companies from great ones: trust.’ He told the audience that companies need to do more than deliver an outstanding product to build trust. In addition, they need to ‘stand up for social issues that are important’ and ‘do the right things to help create a better world’. Ironically, it is precisely because PayPal has been energetically pursuing this agenda that trust in the company is beginning to evaporate. I don’t think it’s too vainglorious to say that PayPal’s current difficulties began in the middle of last month when, without any

Peter Jones

How would the Romans have defined Meghan Markle?

Meghan Markle has been urging women to define themselves as they see fit, with ‘your full, complete, whole-layered, sometimes weird, sometimes awesome but always best and true self… you’re so much greater than any archetype’. But that all depends on the self-definition you come up with. Hers (if she had the slightest self-awareness) would clearly involve her thirst for power, status and revenge. That thirst is something Romans well understood. They took the view that all human beings were personally accountable for their actions and fully responsible for the outcomes. But coming out on top, which they all desired, earned the ultimate goal of it all, public respect, only if

The Spectator

What does Nicola Sturgeon want for Christmas?

Dying of heat The former government chief scientific adviser Sir David King predicted that the heatwave in mid-July could cause up to 10,000 excess deaths. Was he right? — The ONS says there were 2,227 excess deaths from 10 to 25 July: that is compared with the five-year average (which excludes the Covid year of 2020). This amounted to a 10.4% rise in excess deaths. The ONS recorded 3,271 excess deaths during the five ‘heat periods’ of the summer months (when the mean Central England Temperature exceeds 20˚C). There were nearly twice as many excess deaths among females (2,159) as among men (1,115), a reversal of previous heatwaves. There were

The Spectator

Letters: red kites are a menace

Free Kaliningrad Sir: Mark Galeotti was right to identify the exclave of Kaliningrad as a target for a strong western response to any use by Putin of a nuclear weapon against Ukraine (‘Nuclear options’, 8 October). Perhaps it should be offered the chance of secession from Russia, not only to avoid destruction, but to secure a better future than Putin or any successor could offer. It was subject to terrible ethnic cleansing after its conquest in the second world war, which rules out its return to Germany. But it could lose its dismal association with Kalinin. Under its historic name of Königsberg, it could revert to its previous status as

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Putin should fear those closest to him

I was interested to see that amid the Byzantine intrigues of embattled Conservative panjandrums, two Spice Girls have criticised the government. When the Spices manoeuvre politically, pundits sometimes cite my 1996 interview with the group in which they declared their Thatcherism and opposition to the single European currency. Such is their influence that it could be said they were precursors of Brexit itself, while their phenomenon was prophetic of this century’s Neronian-Trumpian merging of politics and showbusiness. Anyway, this takes me back to the hilarity of the original encounter. It started when the Spices heralded ‘Girl Power’ and I wrote asking if I could debate Rousseau, Marx and Nietzsche with

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: the gilt market, Larry the Cat and Iranian protests

Home The Bank of England warned of a ‘material risk’ to financial stability as it stepped in to buy a wider range of gilts. But markets got the jitters again when Andrew Bailey, its governor, announced to pension funds: ‘You’ve got three days left.’ Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would present his ‘fiscal statement’ to parliament on 31 October, Halloween, not 23 November as originally planned. The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank said that under current plans, public spending would need to be cut by £60 billion a year by 2026-27 to put the economy on a safe footing. GDP shrank by 0.3 per cent in August. British

The Spectator

China’s great leap backward

This month should have marked the end of Xi Jinping’s time as leader of the Chinese Communist party. The twice-a-decade party congress is being staged in Beijing. It is a grand event at which a new General Secretary is meant to be either nominated (five years in advance) or given power. But Xi has changed all that. He has sidelined all opposition and is now settling down to his 11th year in office – fully intent on ruling for life. The world’s second-largest economy will therefore this weekend be reconfirmed as an outright dictatorship. Ten years ago there was a fatal car crash in Beijing involving a Ferrari driven by

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: short stories entitled ‘The Queue’

In Competition No. 3270, you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The Queue’. As well as inspiring this challenge, the queue to file past the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II during her lying-in-state in Westminster Hall spawned countless jokes and memes, obsessed crowd psychologists and became the top trending topic on Twitter. It now has its own Wikipedia entry. Commendations go to Paul D. Amer and Paul Freeman; the winners earn £25 each. Alone, Dmitri hobbled to join the queue, his arthritic bones aching and his aged eyes tearful. He could see only the shuffling throng ahead of him. The Mausoleum was still out of sight. Two, three,

Doc

2577: Light and dark

The unclued lights (three of two words, one of which has an apostrophe) are of two kinds. Across 6 Eat away with genial wraith oddly (4,2) 12 Antibiotic disguised in nice pill (10) 14 He raises stock for reactor (7) 15 Second chapter on king and almost utterly mad literary character (4,6) 16 Medic enters to look round for old blunderbuss (7) 20 A country’s birds (4) 22 Intestinal trouble in Crete (7) 23 Cheat’s disappointment (4) 26 Currency of the red or blues distributed (7) 30 Runs by Hassett regularly upset old emperor (4) 31 Rough cowl on chimney in Portree (7) 34 Key that’s silver every so often

Luke McShane

No. 724

White to play and mate in two. Composed by Bruce Leverett, Chess Life, 1968. What is White’s first move? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 17 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…b5! cuts off the Qa5. 2 Qd8 Qe5+ 3 g3 Qa1 wins e.g. 4 g4 Rh1+ 5 Kg3 Qe5+ 6 Kh4 g5+ 7 Kh5 Rxh3# Last week’s winner Mark Snell, Hove, East Sussex

Luke McShane

Switchback

Vishy Anand’s eyes lit up as he described a beautiful variation from his game with Shakriyar Mamedyarov, played at the European Club Cup in Mayrhofen, Austria this month. The first diagram shows a variation which could arise if Mamedyarov had tried 33…Bg5!? 34 Rxc4 Bxe3+. (See left game) 35 Kf1 is tempting, since 35…Bxc4 36 Qa4!, threatens to capture the Bc4 and put Black in check at the same time. But 35 Kf1 d2! is a powerful spoiler, since after 36 Ra1 Bxc4+ the mighty pawn and bishop pair are a match for the queen. Placing the king on g2 or h1 leaves it vulnerable to a check from d5.

Robin Oakley

The making of a Classics winner

For a Radio Four programme she was hosting Clare Balding once had the idea that it would be fun to apply the techniques of horse breeding to the political world. Strolling around the parade ring at Newbury we duly recorded an item imagining gene mixing between the will to win of a Margaret Thatcher and the indestructibility of a Denis Healey, the feistiness of Barbara Castle with the sinuous positioning of a Tony Blair. Some of those in the couplings suggested even continued speaking to me afterwards. I sometimes become a sounding board for the views of racing connections aware of my political commentating past and at Newmarket on Saturday

Melissa Kite

Me and the builder boyfriend are going to go without hot water

‘I’d like my money back please’ was what I was waiting to tell British Gas, if they ever stopped the deafening rock music of their recorded hold message to answer the phone. My account was £490 in credit, like it was a savings account. Only it wasn’t a savings account for me, and now energy prices are going up beyond all reason, I’m not going to be so relaxed about these matters. I want my 500 quid back. They have been over-estimating my usage for too long, despite me diligently giving them my meter readings. The £2,500 cap announced by the Prime Minister doesn’t mean a damn for me, because