Society

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Can anything halt the pound’s fall?

My predecessor Christopher Fildes looked at exchange rates through a cocktail glass: three negronis for the Italian lira equivalent of a tenner, good; a $2 martini for £1, even better. That latter ratio applied briefly 30 years ago when, he wrote, the favoured tipple ‘brushed against my lips like an angel’s kiss’. It recurred during the financial crisis of 2007-08, when no one was really able to enjoy it, and has never been seen since. On Monday, as Liz Truss was crowned, the pound dipped below $1.15, in sight of its 1985 all-time low of $1.05. ‘The prospect of …parity versus the dollar,’ said Bloomberg, ‘is becoming ever less outlandish.’

Dot Wordsworth

The cereal ambiguity of ‘corn’

‘Wha, wha?’ said my husband in a slack-jawed way, throwing over a copy of the Guardian, as though it was my fault. ‘“Today,” it said, “just three crops – rice, wheat and corn – provide nearly half of the world’s calories.”’ I saw the problem. It was obvious, from a process of elimination, that by corn it meant ‘maize’. Elsewhere ambiguities abound. Since the Ukraine war began, discussion of wheat and maize has increased no end, but it is often impossible to tell whether wheat or maize is meant by corn. I thought we had agreed to differ with America on this. ‘As a general term the word corn includes

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I get my friends to leave after a dinner party?

Q. We have made available our mews cottage – 30 yards from our main house – to a woman with small children, who has had a tough time recently through no fault of her own. She will be staying pending her divorce. Our problem is that she keeps asking us to dinner. We like her and she is a good cook and we understand that she is trying to give something back since we are not charging rent. However, our lives are just too busy to see even our very best friends more than once a month. We can’t use any of the normal excuses, e.g. that we are away

Toby Young Toby Young

I’ve finally been offended by a joke

I went to the O2 on Sunday night to see the comedians Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. Chappelle, who survived an attempt to cancel him last year, didn’t disappoint, delivering some hilarious, politically incorrect jokes, and Rock was equally seditious, although his set went on for too long. But the rest of the evening was pretty painful. The effort it takes to get to this relic of the New Labour era is truly Herculean. Indeed, Rock made a joke about it, claiming he’d set off from his hotel on Wednesday morning and only just arrived. The Tube station is North Greenwich, one beyond Canary Wharf, and your only hope of

Melissa Kite

The death of customer service

The ladies in the bank now wear badges telling you to Be Kind and not do anything that might upset them in any way. Be Kind is in big capital letters on this badge and beneath is a lot of small print explaining the well-known global problem of upset bank employees, which has reached such proportions that extreme measures are having to be taken to tackle customers from whom kindness does not flow in generous enough proportions as to prevent upset being incurred by agents of the high street banks in the course of them courageously risking all in order to speak to the likes of you and me about

The Spectator

How much can Boris Johnson earn on the speaker circuit?

In they come, out they go Liz Truss is the 15th prime minister to have served under Queen Elizabeth II, and her appointment was the 15th time the Queen has overseen a change of prime minister during her reign (Winston Churchill was already PM when she became Queen but Harold Wilson served twice). It would require political turmoil, however, for Elizabeth II to catch up with Queen Victoria on the latter score. While only ten different prime ministers served under Victoria, she oversaw 19 changes of prime minister. On five occasions the PM she appointed lasted less than a year. William Gladstone was appointed for his third spell on 1

The Spectator

Letters: Why we obeyed lockdown

Why we allowed it Sir: In her article ‘Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?’ (3 September), Lionel Shriver partially answers her own question. Priti Patel told us it was our public duty to shop our neighbours if they had three friends to tea, and our previously invisible police force started to patrol parks and beaches with unprecedented vigour, with a threat of £1,000 fines for malfeasance. There was no eagerness, but the public were glued to the nightly broadcasts from No. 10, where the PM told us we would be little better than murderers if we didn’t obey the diktats. The fear all this created is still evident as I

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Truss in, Johnson out and Nord Stream 1 off

Home Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister, said in a speech outside 10 Downing Street: ‘Boris Johnson delivered Brexit, the Covid vaccine and stood up to Russian aggression. History will see him as a hugely consequential prime minister.’ For her part: ‘I am confident that together we can ride out the storm.’ Earlier, on being elected leader of the Conservative party, she had said: ‘I know that we will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver.’ She had been elected by party members ahead of Rishi Sunak by 81,326 votes to 60,399 (57.4 per cent to 42.6). Turnout was 82.6 per cent. She travelled to Balmoral the next day to

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The BBC’s new direction

I am becoming terribly worried about the people of Sunderland with regard to how they will cope in this coming winter. The greatly increased fuel bills will affect all parts of the country, of course – but none more so than the Mackems who, I suspect, will largely die as a consequence. Their particular problem was highlighted by the local Labour MP, Bridget Phillipson, on BBC2’s Politics Live hosted by the excellent Jo Coburn. Ms Phillipson said people in her constituency opened their doors to her wearing their coats and possibly mufflers, because they were trying to reduce their energy bills. The temperature up here has not dropped below about

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Kwasi Kwarteng is a politician from a different age

Liz Truss doesn’t waste energy on unnecessary emotion. At the announcement of her victory at the QE2 Centre, she ditched the convention of hugging your partner and shaking hands with the runner-up. Instead she grabbed her notes from her husband Hugh O’Leary and marched past Rishi Sunak without a second glance. No time for sentimentality! Different from Johnson, surrounded by his siblings and ubiquitous father, or the uxorious Cameron and doting May. She knifed to the microphone with the same steely determination she showed all those decades ago when she told the Lib Dem conference to abolish the monarchy. The script has changed, the focus has not. Just before midnight

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Kill badgers to save hedgehogs

Until last month I hadn’t seen a hedgehog for close to 30 years, though they were part of everyday life when I was a child. In the school holidays, we’d rush first thing to the nearby cattle grids to check for animals who’d fallen in overnight. It’s what passed for fun back then: picking damp critters out of concrete prisons. Sometimes there were lambs, wedged in up to their woolly armpits; sometimes there were angry, pulsing toads. But it was hedgehog rescue that was our sacred duty. We’d pick them up in towels and take them to the hedgehog spa in the boiler room, where they’d spend the day lounging

The Spectator

2569: Anadad – solution

The quotation was ‘I WAS BORN TO SPEAK ALL MIRTH AND NO MATTER’ from Much Ado About Nothing (II.i.321) by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. BEAT/RICE (23D/17) is the speaker and BENE/DICK (12/31) the sparring partner. Title: Much Ado About Nothing in cryptic form. First prize R.R. Alford, Oundle, Peterborough Runners-up Gordon Hobbs, Woodford Green, Essex; Fergus Jamieson, London SE26

Lavatch

2572: Blown up

Around the perimeter, beginning at square 1, is a line of poetry (seven words, in ODQ) followed by the title of the poem (six words; one abbreviated word in the original title must be written out in full). Remaining unclued lights are of a kind, suggested by the quotation.   Across 11 Drug ring spread round India (6) 12 Quiet New Year last of all for Jewish community (6) 13 Nothing in drink for succulent plant (4) 14 Awfully neat image, oddly, shows ribbons (7) 20 Girl dancing around current king’s cabinet (7) 21 Save wild birds (4) 27 Lament trouble on flipping Internet (6) 29 Deity has gravitas periodically

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Ebenezer Scrooge asks for a loan

In Competition No. 3265, you were invited to submit a letter to a friend asking for a loan as it might have been written by a well-known character from the field of fact or fiction. John O’Byrne earns an honourable mention for his letter from Hamlet to Laertes. Equally impressive were Susan Firth, Mike Morrison, Ralph Bateman, J.C.H. Mounsey and John Megoran. But the cash prizes go to the winners, printed below, who pocket £25 each. When, in the course of domestic events, it becomes necessary for a man so to impose on the goodwill of his fellow creature, as to request of him pecuniary succour, assistance, and augmentation, it

Luke McShane

No. 719

White to play. Cornette-Feller, French Champion-ship, August 2022. Black has just played 13…h7-h6. How did White capitalise on this mistake? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 12 September. There is a prize of £20 for a correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 c3! Qxf4 2 g3! wins. Any queen move to an unguarded square allows a knight fork Last week’s winner Richard Hughes, London SW17

Luke McShane

Chess speaks for itself

‘Plug the fucking laptop in!’ Hans Niemann, the lively 19-year-old from the US, was left fuming – understandably – after his loss to Jan-Krzysztof Duda at the FTX Crypto Cup in Miami. The organisers set up the equipment, but Duda’s laptop ran out of juice at a tense moment when both players had about a minute remaining. By the time it was resolved, Duda had gained several minutes to think and found an accurate continuation, posing difficult problems in the endgame. An exasperated Niemann lost the game, and collapsed in the next two as well, losing a clean 3-0 sweep in the four-game match. The technical mishap was all the

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 10 September 2022

When was the last time you made a doubled slam – a slam that could and should have been defeated – and lost IMPs on it? Today’s hand comes from the qualifying rounds of the Mixed Teams at the World Bridge Series in Wroclaw. The North hand was shared all over social media, but it’s not a play problem or a defence problem. It’s a judgment call and it’s probably happened to many of us, but as South said modestly at the end of the hand: ‘I know I’m a terrific player, pard, but even I can’t know you have an Ace in your hand when I doubled!’ Here it

Jeremy Clarke

When the bone pain gets bad, my inner NCO keeps me in check

In Frederic Manning’s classic Great War novel, The Middle Parts of Fortune, the shattered battalion shambles out of the line after battle to parade briefly before being dismissed. Noting a general loss of soldierly comportment as the infantrymen limp into camp, a watching NCO urges: ‘Come on, get hold of it now.’ As my bone pain worsens, passing milestone after milestone with dismaying rapidity, Manning’s anonymous fictional NCO speaks that expressive army phrase into my mind. He gives the order sternly, with unmistakeable undertones of regimental pride and kindliness. Milestones passed so far: single site intermittent bone pain easily tolerated; single site continuous pain, easily managed by half a gram

Taki

I’m a one-woman man

Gstaad There’s a fin de saison feeling around here, but the restaurants are still full and the sons of the desert are still moping around. Building is going on non-stop and the cows are down from the mountains, making the village a friendlier and more civilised place. Something of a twilight mood has crept in, especially when I compare the cows with the people. Reclaiming vanished days is a sucker’s game, but it’s irresistible. I was up at my friend Mick Flick’s chalet the other afternoon, talking with Gstaad regulars about how much fun the place used to be. I tried the reverse of an old Woody Allen joke, announcing