Society

Thursday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Has Carole the tarantula cured my arachnophobia?

I’ve been an arachnophobe my whole life. I can’t remember a time when videos of spiders, or even photos or drawings, didn’t give me palpitations. As a kid Charlotte’s Web read as sinister propaganda. Even as an adult, just hearing the word ‘tarantula’ would make me feel like one was crawling on me (kind friends and colleagues took to calling it ‘the t-word’). I wish I could blame someone for these fears, but no one else in my immediate family screamed uncontrollably when a house spider scuttled across the floor. A fear of spiders is the third most common phobia in the UK, so I know I haven’t been alone.

Cosmo Landesman

In defence of staring

Like many people, I enjoy watching people. There’s a great pleasure in sitting in a café or on a park bench on a sunny afternoon and just watching people pass by. But increasingly, people-watching is becoming suspect, and even criminalised. The latest and most worrying example is Transport for London’s campaign against what it calls ‘intrusive staring’. Posters all over the Tube now warn us: ‘Intrusive staring is a form of sexual harassment and will not be tolerated.’ Last month a man was sentenced to 22 weeks in prison after a woman reported him for ‘continuously staring’ at her on a train in Berkshire. Sarah White, leader of British Transport

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The one thing Netflix could do to keep me subscribing

Anecdotes and statistics should never be confused, but let’s do just that to build a composite picture of today’s UK economy. As the ‘cost of living crisis’ – barely out of its starting blocks – began to eat spending power and erode confidence, high street sales fell 1.4 per cent in March while non-store retail (largely online) dropped 7.9 per cent. Office occupancy, blighted by working from home, is stuck below 30 per cent of capacity. The City of London is a ghost town on Mondays and Fridays, while West End footfall remains a fifth below 2019 levels. But in case you’re planning a resumed commute or an in-town shopping

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Can Mélenchon unite the French left?

Paris Shortly before the first round of the French presidential election I was handed a campaign flyer by one of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s activists. On one side was his photo and on the reverse the headline: ‘With Jean-Luc Mélenchon another world is possible.’ What sort of world? A leftist utopia in which the minimum wage would be raised from its current €1,302 to €1,400 net per month, new hospitals would be built, the retirement age would be lowered to 60, and there would be a fixed price for petrol, food and energy prices. Oh, and there would also be a Sixth Republic. Quite how Mélenchon would pay for all this, given

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Nadine Dorries: My vision for the BBC

When Nadine Dorries was named Culture Secretary last year, it proved to be the most controversial appointment of Boris Johnson’s reshuffle. Her critics weren’t afraid to point to what they saw as her flaws. She was a Scouser and former nurse put in charge of the cultural crown jewels. The only explanation they could come up with: she was intended to embody a two-finger flick, on behalf of the PM, to the BBC, Channel 4 and the arts world in general. The furore, she says, didn’t come as a surprise. ‘There are some men who do have a problem with a woman from my background achieving,’ she says. It also

Robin Oakley

The unacknowledged stars of the jump season

The Irish aren’t just good at winning horse races: they are in the Super League when it comes to celebrating victories. After Shark Hanlon’s Hewick had collected the £90,000 first prize in the bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown Park last Saturday, the red-haired trainer said with a twinkle: ‘The plan was to go home this evening. The plan just changed.’ I hope the craic was good: the year before, when Shark had his first Grade One victory with Skyace, he went home and fed 50 calves before opening a bottle of champagne only for his boxer bitch to start producing a series of eight pups – a process that engaged

Jeremy Clarke

The call of opium-based analgesics and introspection

On the morning of my last day in England, I drew back a curtain and there in the garden, browsing one of the flower beds, was a brown hare. It hobbled cautiously but not timidly among the spring bulbs, choosing thoughtfully like a discriminating shopper. I leaned on the window sill and watched it for perhaps ten minutes. The hare was in the process of exchanging its tatty winter fur coat for a shorter, smoother, lighter-brown one, visible underneath. Overnight late spring had turned to the softer air of early summer and I was sorry to be leaving the country at the exact point of the season’s changing. In the

Dot Wordsworth

The wonder of the Metaphor Map

‘What’s that?’ asked my husband, looking at my laptop. ‘Fibonacci fossilised?’ His question made no sense, but I saw what he meant. I was looking at a diagram of ‘the fabulous semantic engine, a sort of virtual sausage machine’ that I mentioned last week. The diagram was circular, like a compass-rose with 37 points. Each point was connected to each of the others, like a church column to vaulting tracery. It is a metaphor map: the points represent categories for pigeonholing every word in English over the past 13 centuries. An underlying 415 semantic categories sort 793,742 word forms. It is not like some delusion in which the secrets of

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

My plan to cut congestions on our roads

Much of the current antipathy towards the car derives from the excessive influence Londoners exert over national debates. London is an outlier in being one of the very few places where you can avoid owning a car, and where cycling or public transport is faster than driving. Indeed a car is less useful in the middle of London than anywhere else: you can’t drive to work, you can’t park at the shops and, if you set out from inner London, after 30 minutes of fraught driving you will merely end up in a worse part of London. This is not true in other cities, where 30 minutes’ drive will take

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Can Elon Musk take on the tech censors?

After three centuries of failing to assert power over the printed press, the House of Commons is finding the digital world easier to conquer. The Online Safety Bill now going through parliament will give ministers the power to decide what can and can’t be said online by banning what they regard as ‘harmful’. The word is not very well defined – which, of course, gives sweeping powers to the government regulators who will define it. It will be one of the most ambitious censorship laws that the world has ever seen. Enter Elon Musk. His $44 billion takeover of Twitter is intended, he says, not to make money but to

Peter Jones

What makes a ‘just’ war?

What is a just war? Those who, from St Augustine onwards, have debated the question usually begin with Cicero, the Roman philosopher and statesman, who first attempted a definition in 44 bc. Cicero’s general understanding of the nature of justice, which was a central duty of those in power, went as follows: ‘Justice instructs us to spare all men, to consider the interests of the whole human race, to give everyone his due, and not to touch property which belongs to others.’ The foundation of justice was good faith, i.e. ‘truth and fidelity to promises and agreements’. There should be ‘a limit to retribution and punishment for wrongdoing’: much better

The Spectator

How controversial was Basic Instinct?

Stone me Boris Johnson threatened to unleash the ‘terrors of the Earth’ on an unidentified Tory MP who claimed that Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, deliberately crossed and uncrossed her legs to distract the Prime Minister at the dispatch box – in the manner of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. But that was just one way in which the 1992 film caused offence. It was also accused of glorifying violence, portraying negative stereotypes of gay people, making smoking glamorous and exploiting Sharon Stone, who later claimed that she had been tricked into removing her knickers for the offending scene. Let us pay How is the cost of living crisis beginning

The Spectator

Letters: Workshy Whitehall has its benefits

In check Sir: Jade McGlynn (‘Conflict of opinion’, 23 April) has a point that there are many reasons for popular support inside Russia for Putin’s ‘special operation’ to take over Ukraine. Whether a country is a democracy or a repressive dictatorship you will always find supporters of a patriotic war. Nonetheless you have to take into account the effects of a repressive state on ordinary people’s motivation to protest, even if they want to do so. Millions in Russia and Belarus are either state employees or dependent on the state in some existential way. If you protest you are locked up or beaten up; in many cases both. Would you

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Twitter takeover, late nights for pubs and a row over leg-crossing

Home Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said Britain assessed that 15,000 Russians had been killed in the war against Ukraine and at least 530 Russian tanks, 530 armoured personnel carriers and 560 infantry fighting vehicles had been lost or captured. Sixty Russian helicopters and fighter jets had also been lost. He told the House of Commons that Britain was sending to Ukraine some Stormer armoured vehicles, with launchers for Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, called for aircraft to be sent too. In the seven days up to 23 April, 2,207 people had died with coronavirus, bringing total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive) to 173,693. In

Anthony Horowitz

How can James Bond survive?

I have just got back from Cannes, where I was the president of a jury, judging TV dramas. I’ve never had an experience like it. I was put up at the Majestic Hotel, overlooking La Croisette. I had a limousine to take me all of 100 yards to the Grand Palais for screenings and when I chose to walk, I was provided with a bodyguard. I even had my own hairdresser and make-up artist for the nightly photoshoot on the pink carpet. It was all ridiculous of course but it gave me a rare glimpse of celebrity and its pernicious allure. We writers are usually consigned to the engine room,

Doc

2553: Island alien

The unclued lights (15 words in total) are to be arranged to provide a definition from Chambers of one of the normal clues which is NOT defined. Across 9 Worst of anything I kept in home (10) 14 Agreement apparently penniless lecturer returns (3) 16 Menus beginning with a cold collation – mostly spicy stuff (6) 17 Faulty parachute doesn’t open (5) 18 Dissident bishop in part of film (5) 20 Less heavy boat used in docks (7) 22 Various grebes, say, at end of lake (7) 25 Arab picked up the vernacular (5) 26 Drink in press release? (5) 28 Narcissistic folk say it’s so fantastic (7) 31 Such

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: poets bemoan a problematic appendage

In Competition No. 3246, you were invited to submit a poem in the style of the poet of your choice about a problematic appendage. Taking pride of place alongside Philip Larkin’s troublesome penis were Heaney’s big toe, Shelley’s belly, and a series of noses, among them Mike Morrison/Ogden Nash: This nose/conk/beak/hooter/schnozzle Has brought me nothing but anguish and schemozzle… An honourable mention also goes to Alex Steelsmith/Edward FitzGerald: The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on – and there’s the Rub; it doesn’t quit.       It probes a Naris, Concha and anon Explores a Sphincter, Orifice and Pit… The winners, below, earn £20 each. Shall I compare

Doc

2550: Shorties – solution

The unclued lights and those clued without thematic definition (7, 11, 17, 30, 31, 32, 36 and 41) are SHORTened versions of Christian names which are confirmed as such in Chambers. First prize Chris James, Ruislip Manor, Middlesex Runners-up Ray Ridley, Tyne and Wear, South Shields; Jenny Atkinson, Little Chalfont, Bucks

Luke McShane

No. 700

White to play and draw. Composed by Jan Timman, 2011. 1 h8=Q Rxd5 wins for Black, so how does White escape? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Tuesday 3 May. 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…Qxe2+ 2 Kxe2 Bg4 is mate. Last week’s winner: Joanne Thompson, Derby

Luke McShane

Ordination

In the dying seconds of an online blitz game, I promoted a pawn and instantly regretted it. There was nothing wrong with the move, but the extra second spent on choosing and clicking the queen was more than I could spare. A few flailing moves later, my time ran out. Of course, I had forgotten to switch on ‘Always Queen’, a handy setting offered by all decent chess websites. Some 99 per cent of the time, a queen is what you want. But just occasionally, a knight, rook or bishop is superior. A knight may land with check, where a queen does not. To see a rook or bishop trump