Society

Sunday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Ignore the climate doomsters: we should celebrate our 8 billion population

It almost certainly wasn’t Vinice Mabansag, the baby born in the Philippines last Tuesday and picked out by the UN to personalise the occasion, but somewhere in around about now someone will be born who really does take the world’s population to eight billion. It is a landmark which has attracted the usual Malthusian handwringing about over-population. The fact that the UN decided that the threshold was going to be passed during the COP27 climate conference is surely not coincidence. But far from fearing the eight billionth person on Earth we should instead openly celebrate the occasion. Indeed, there may well come a time when human civilisation looks back fondly

Saturday

Friday

Naï Simpson

Cambridge University is blind to reality in the gender debate

Newnham College, Cambridge, was once a bastion of feminist activism. No longer. This summer my curiosity was drawn to two women whispering to one another in the college cafe. They were, as it happened, a senior fellow and doctoral student; leaning over their table, they spoke furtively for fear that someone might overhear their conversation about gender politics. At Cambridge, professors and students alike are afraid to speak critically, or at all, on the subject of gender.  Believing that biological sex is binary and unchangeable – and that gender is culturally constructed – may not seem controversial. Yet gender-critical feminists who hold such mainstream views are often slapped with a

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Emma Sayle Edition

29 min listen

Emma Sayle is the founder and CEO of Killing Kittens, a sexually liberated social network where women come first. She grew up in a military family, and when not in boarding school, Emma would visit her parents all over the world.  On the podcast, Emma talks to Katy about her ‘outsider’s mindset’ – never truly feeling like she could fit in; becoming an entrepreneur in the sex tech industry and where the name Killing Kittens came from.  Produced by Natasha Feroze.

Thursday

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Another wasteland lost: Battersea Power Station reviewed 

The rude fingers of Battersea are repointed, and barely rude at all. The power station by Giles Gilbert Scott and J. Theo Halliday is no longer a wasteland to contemplate as you sit on the Waterloo to Shepperton night train. It has become a small town with shopping centre, restaurants and a pier on the river, so a middle-aged woman can get on an Uber Boat by Thames Clippers and pretend to be Cardinal Wolsey without others knowing it. I have only ever known it as a ruin and so approaching it from its Underground stop feels subversive, but then all subversion ends. It is glossy, tinny: a dinosaur skeleton

Wednesday

The Spectator

Will Sunak continue with the censor’s charter?

Had it not been for the Tory leadership contest over the summer, a new censorship law would have been passed in Britain by now. The Online Safety Bill included a clause banning content regarded as ‘legal but harmful’ – a dangerously vague phrase that could mean anything that ministers wanted. It would, in effect, have been the end of free speech in the UK. Rishi Sunak said that, if elected, he’d amend the legislation. But this may be only a partial reprieve. The new text of the Bill has yet to be published. But one mooted compromise is that ‘legal but harmful’ would be removed for adults but still apply

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: record inflation, record NHS waiting lists and the return of Trump

Home Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said, ‘We’re all going to be paying a bit more tax’ as he polished up his Autumn Statement. ‘The number one challenge we face is inflation,’ said Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister. The annual rate of inflation rose to 11.1 per cent from 10.1 per cent the month before. Regular pay increased by 5.7 per cent in the year to September but its real value fell by 2.7 per cent because of inflation. In a survey of grocery prices, the consumer group Which? found Heinz tomato ketchup had gone up 53 per cent in two years and Anchor spreadable butter by 45 per

The Spectator

2579: Destructive plot – solution

The theme was MURDER SHE WROTE, the long-running TV series starring ANGELA LANSBURY as JESSICA FLETCHER in the corpse-strewn CABOT COVE. The theme could also describe AGATHA CHRISTIE and DOROTHY L. SAYERS. First prize R.A. Towle, Ilkeston, Derbyshire Runners-up M.F. O’Brien, London N12; John M. Brown, Rolleston-on-Dove, Staffordshire

Andrew Sullivan

The Trumpists have gone full Nagasaki

You may not have had the pleasure of reading one Kurt Schlichter over the years. He’s a Trumpist blowhard columnist who writes popular dystopian novels about the looming red-blue civil war after a Democrat takeover, in a country where ‘all the sugary cereals that kids actually like’ are banned and ‘there is simply one deodorant, called “Deodorant”, which smells like wet cardboard and stains your shirt, blouse, or burqa’. He has replied to hostile tweets with the number ‘14’ – a white supremacist code for the 14 words: ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.’ One column was simply titled: ‘Buy Ammo.’ I’ve

La Jerezana

2582: Chief whip

3 28 40 1D 8 37. Two other unclued entries were involved. Ignore accents.         Across    1    Austrian novice without much flesh (8)    5    Gift of story books (6)    9    Man of uncertainty begins here, uncertainly (10) 14    Jenny perhaps was and is uninitiated (3) 16    Unruffled, drive GTi out of African national park (6) 17    Lustre of European mineral seen from behind (5) 18    People regularly taking part in sport make you sick (5) 20    Sculptor for example goes round scraping away (7) 22    Port of New Orleans (7) 24    Boy said yes after girl’s first seductive glance (4,3) 25    Drug ring finally fleeing Jamaica (5)

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A course in Rod Liddle studies

As someone who has always had a grotesquely inflated sense of his own importance, my experience speaking at Durham University again last week almost tipped me into fully blown, delusional megalomania. On the way to the venue a student informed me that in the big hall nearby several hundred people were crammed into a debate about whether Rod Liddle should be allowed to speak at Durham. Yes, only a matter of yards from another building where Rod Liddle was actually speaking. I had, for a moment, a wonderful daydream about an entire university given over to studying Myself, or listening to Myself, three-year courses on the subject of Rod Liddle

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Deluded politicians in the style of Lewis Carroll

In Competition No. 3275, you were invited to follow the format and formula of Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Mad Gardener’s Song’ and supply a poem entitled ‘The Deluded Politician’. The same challenge was set 15 or so years ago, and on that occasion Tony Blair hogged the limelight. This time around, you were rather more spoiled for choice. Here’s a snippet from Hugh King: He thought he saw ahead of him A glittering career, But soon his mediocrity Became entirely clear, And he, a crass celebrity, Cried ‘Get me out of here’ Entries were uniformly excellent and it was painful whittling it down to just the five below, who take £30

Dennis Duncan

The whimsy – and casual cruelty – of the memoir index

It’s that time when publishers flood bookshops with celebrity memoirs. We all know a sleb autobiography is rarely the work of the celebrity, but the ghostwriter is not the only anonymous voice at work – an indexer can play a quietly subversive part too. One of my favourite index moments is in Shaun Ryder’s autobiography (Twisting My Melon – of course!), towards the end of the S’s: ‘sinus problems, 2; splitting up with Denise, 63; splitting up with Felicia, 320; splitting up with Oriole, 295; splitting up with Trish, 246-7; sunburnt in Valencia, 141-2; teeth, 327-8; thyroid problem, 320, 326; UFOs seen, 33-4.’ Teeth, UFOs, hypochondria, and failed relationships on

Dot Wordsworth

What do Ukrainians mean when they say they’ve liberated a ‘settlement’? 

The Ukrainians have been giving numbers of ‘settlements’ that they have recovered. A friend asked whether the word used by English-speaking broadcasters was influenced by the Pale of Settlement of Czarist times. I was surprised and tried to find out. As a starting point, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth established the Warsaw Confederation in 1573, giving religious liberty to Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Jews and Muslims. This developed after 1791 (when Russia took over Poland and Lithuania) into a system by which Jews, principally, could live under restrictions only in territory on the marches of Russia. The Pale of Settlement took in much of today’s Ukraine, with White Russia (Belarus), Lithuania and Bessarabia

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club: mix and match, magnums and more from FromVineyardsDirect

I can ignore it no longer. Christmas is on its way and I’m plunged into gloom. I’m just going to drink buckets and hope it all goes away. I’ll certainly be tucking into some of these bottles from FromVineyardsDirect, all chosen with this time of year in mind. The 2021 Fremondo Falanghina del Sannio (1) was a big hit when we offered the previous vintage in the summer and this is just as fine. Made by La Guardiense co-operative deep in the Sannio Hills of Campania, Italy, it’s fresh, floral and fruity. There’s a lemony touch to it too and a long, crisp finish. It makes a great aperitif. £9

Luke McShane

No. 729

Black to play. Schwetlick-Lecroq, 32nd Correspondence World Championship. White’s last move, Qd1-b3, is a blunder that can’t have been endorsed by a computer. What did Black play to force resignation? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 21 November. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1…Qh2! wins. Carlsen’s 1…Qc2 (or 1…Qd3) allows 2 Re7+ Ka6 3 Ra7+ Kxa7 4 Qe7+ Ka6 5 Qa7+ Kxa7 stalemate. Last week’s winner David Grant, Ludlow

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: is it disloyal of me to watch The Crown? 

Q. Last week I was a ticket-paying guest at a charity dinner. After the first course, the main fundraiser stood up and gave a speech. I didn’t know the man on my right but I suspect he was some sort of VIP. He never stopped talking about himself to me throughout the speech and I was aware of disapproving glances in our direction. I didn’t want to be rude and ignore him but we were obviously an annoyance to others. What would you have done, Mary? – Name and address withheld A. You might have gripped his arm and said: ‘Did you hear? I think she/he just mentioned your name.’ That

Luke McShane

Lengthy Correspondence

‘In fact it is now conceded by all experts that by proper play on both sides the legitimate issue of a game ought to be a draw…’ Those words were written by Wilhelm Steinitz, who became the first world champion after beating Johannes Zukertort in 1886. But their 20-game match saw 75 per cent decisive games, a quantity of bloodshed that would be unimaginable in the 21st century. By comparison, Magnus Carlsen has played five world championship matches, in which less than 25 per cent of the classical (slow) games were decisive. It is not a matter of style, but rather of skill – the fact is that modern players make far fewer

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Rugby’s new golden age

This column may have been somewhat negative about the future of rugby recently – so how cheering to report a spate of magnificent matches, across both codes and both genders, that provided not only brilliant entertainment but also, as young people like to say these days, ‘learnings’. The best game of all was the women’s World Cup final at Eden Park, Auckland, when after 80 minutes of spine-tingling rugby union England lost by just three points. Forget any snooty talk you might have heard about women’s rugby. This match had everything: athleticism, a real sense of adventure and far fewer of those interminable caterpillar rucks and reset scrums which clog