Society

Thursday

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Anticolonialists have their myths too

Much is now being made of the evils of empire. As a child of empire I bridle. I acknowledge the wrong and injustices of colonialism, the racism, and the greed too. I accept that a re-balancing of history was due. It’s good that the darker side of the picture has now moved into the light. But from my own boyhood experience I know that mixed among the aims of empire there were also idealism, principle, and a belief in the betterment of those we governed. And success: there were things to be proud of. The roots of my mix of pride and shame about empire are the impressions a white

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Will we ever learn to ‘live with the virus’?

Comparing Saturday’s Downing Street press conference to Groundhog Day would insult one of my favourite films. The hilarious, multifarious strategies our cinematic protagonist employs to repeatedly negotiate the same day in February are anything but monotonous. No. 10’s top-down strategies for containing Covid are always the same. That press conference seemed like a cheap Chinese knock-off video of Groundhog Day, one that only shows a clock radio playing ‘I Got You Babe’ at 6 a.m. over and over. Phil Connors never punches Ned Ryerson in the gob. What a shock: the coronavirus has spun off another variant. Battle stations, everyone. The PM warns that Omicron — evocative of an Arnold

Ben Lazarus Ben Lazarus

‘Prince Charles is more socialist than the Labour party’: an interview with Nigel Kennedy

‘If I needed a guide to go up a mountain, I’d choose someone who knew the way,’ says Nigel Kennedy. ‘So if someone is telling me what to do, they’d better know a little bit more than me.’ In September, Kennedy’s Jimi Hendrix tribute at the Royal Albert Hall was cancelled after organisers Classic FM deemed it ‘unsuitable for our audience’. It still rankles: ‘I reckon I know more about my particular art form than some guy sitting behind his desk,’ says Kennedy, ‘and so I can’t quite take it when people start saying what is classical music and what isn’t. To me, Hendrix’s “Little Wing” is a kind of

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Hospital pass: The NHS is on life support

The cabinet meeting this week turned into a surprisingly frank conversation about the National Health Service. Rishi Sunak was asked to give his thoughts on the future of health and social care. He gave a candid assessment of the dangers of being blind to the NHS’s many shortcomings. It’s political blasphemy to criticise the NHS. But once Sunak started, others joined in. Jacob Rees-Mogg added his concerns. Steve Barclay, the new Cabinet Office minister, and Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, also contributed. By the end of the meeting, the ministers had heard each other say out loud what they have long been thinking: that the NHS, as it stands, is

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

For industry, the pandemic isn’t over yet

‘So you think it’s all over? Ho ho ho!’ That’s the message from Satan’s dark laboratory (twinned with Wuhan’s) where the Omicron variant turns out to have been bubbling in its test tube while we dared to resume our normal lives during the autumn. But whether that ugly little globule ruins Christmas or proves to be largely a scare story, the pandemic’s disruption of business ain’t over yet either: supply chain hold-ups, labour shortages, cost spikes and debt pressures continue apace. Here, for example, is news that the UK car industry produced fewer than 65,000 cars in October, down 41 per cent on the same month last year and its

Hannah Tomes Hannah Tomes

The enduring appeal of Baileys

For many, the first Baileys of the year heralds the start of the festive season; to others, it’s a drink to be consumed only when the temperature drops into single digits. A bottle lasts up to 24 months — opened or unopened, refrigerated or not — and it is an essential component of any worthwhile drinks cabinet. A few weeks ago, Morrisons announced a Christmas deal: Baileys at £10 a litre. To a Baileys fanatic like me, it was quite the call to action. I looked up my closest store — a 38-minute walk away. This seemed a stroke of luck considering the scarcity of Morrisons in London; perhaps it

Douglas Murray

‘The type of person who makes the world work’: remembering Anthony Smith

I’m not sure how many readers know the name of Anthony Smith, who died on Sunday aged 83, but a fair number will. He spent almost a decade at the BBC, helped start Channel 4, directed the British Film Institute, chaired many committees and for 17 years was president of Magdalen College, Oxford. But while not every reader will know him, you are lucky if you know the type: that rare person whose passion is helping other people — the type, in other words, who makes the world work. I first met him when I was a precocious schoolboy of 16. I had asked permission from Magdalen’s librarian to look

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Life online is about to get even worse

No sooner had an inch or two of snow fallen on our upland areas last week than the climate-change Morlocks were out on social media, shrieking and bed-wetting themselves into a catatonic stupor. Nurse, nurse, bring the meds, quickly. ‘There! Told you!’ was the general gist. If it is snowing there cannot possibly be global warming. If one day it is a mite cold, the Earth cannot be heating up. That’s simple enough to understand, isn’t it, if you are an imbecile? Subjected to even the mildest query many of these people immediately began to delingpole. That is, with great fury they started citing hugely eminent figures from the world

Melissa Kite

My battle of the bulb

The streetlighting engineer walked up and down outside my house trying to work out who was right: me, or my neighbour, the vegan. On the one hand, I was claiming this LED light was lighting nothing of importance on a deserted village green at night while shining through my bedroom window driving me insane, and therefore should be fitted with a shield. On the other hand, my neighbour the vegan was claiming that if the bright white bulb was slightly dimmed on one side, women would be attacked, old people would trip over bins and it would be ‘scary’ to encounter fairground people and travellers in the dark when they

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Who will be the Democrats’ Gorbachev?

As this paper has argued since the time of the Tiananmen Square massacres, this country should offer Hong Kong people a way out via immigration. We made the 1984 Hong Kong agreement with China: we owe some protection to the victims when it goes wrong which, thanks to Xi Jinping, it has. He has torn up the famous ‘One Country: Two Systems’ rule upon which the agreement was founded. Our government has now commendably acted on this principle of protection, allowing holders of British National Overseas (BNO) passports a ‘pathway to citizenship’ via a visa scheme. The problem, however, is that the current proposals exclude a small but significant part

Jeremy Clarke

French kissing with the French

Every year Vernon celebrates the gathering in and pressing of his olive harvest by inviting friends to a ceremony at his house. This year there were seven of us. He poured about a third of a pint of the freshly pressed, very green oil on to a central white china plate. We each took a small piece of toast, rubbed it with a garlic clove and soaked it in the oil. Then we removed it from the oil and rubbed it against the pulp of a quartered tomato. Apparently it’s a Provençal peasant tradition. The new green oil catches the back of the throat and isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.

Taki

After a lifetime in nightclubs, now I party at home

New York   It’s party time in the Bagel, and it’s about time, too. Good restaurants and elegant nightclubs are now a thing of the past, at least here in New York, so it’s home sweet home for the poor little Greek boy, for dinner, drinks and even some dancing at times. Here in my Bagel house my proudest possessions are my three Oswald Birley pictures. One is enormous and covers the whole wall of the entrance hall. The other two are a self-portrait and one of a rather grand lady. They are masterfully executed portraits, with aesthetic as well as psychological realism, an extremely difficult goal for an artist

Dot Wordsworth

The six ways to pronounce ‘Omicron’

‘There once was a curate of Kew, / Who kept a young cat in a pew,’ began my husband when the news bulletin on the wireless mentioned the omicron variant of coronavirus. The naming of the variant has caused much dissension. Old-fashioned speakers of English object to the BBC’s preference for the pronunciation ommi-cron, with the stress on the first syllable, and insist it should be oh-my-cron, with the stress on the second. The Oxford English Dictionary provides six pronunciations, four in British English (the ones mentioned and two more that depend on whether the last vowel is indeterminate: -cruhn). American speakers of English seem not to entertain the possibility

Cosmo Landesman

It’s no longer just clean eaters who are the health bores

David Hockney has just endorsed a series of specially designed beer mats, created by an artist called Mr Bingo, that display a cigarette in an ashtray with the slogan: ‘Bored with wellness.’ He went on to declare he found the very idea of wellness ‘ridiculous’ and ‘too bossy’. Hockney is a verification of that urban legend often cited but rarely seen: the granny who ‘smoked like a chimney’ and ‘drank like a fish’ and lived to be 100. He is now the nation’s good-time gran. At 84 he’s still standing — and smoking — and boasts that he’s never been to a gym in his life. I know people just

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why you shouldn’t always ‘follow the science’

Fairly early in the pandemic it was widely accepted in scientific circles that the likelihood of outdoor transmission of Covid at low-density events — say garden parties or beer gardens — was relatively low. It might therefore have seemed logical to allow such gatherings to take place sooner than we did. From a practical point of view, however, it could have been a terrible move. As is so often the case, a straightforward scientific finding does not always translate into practical legislation. Like the saying goes: ‘In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.’ In reality, policy-makers cannot simply follow the science: there

John Lewis-Stempel

Farmer’s notebook: In defence of sheep

I’m avoiding the village pub. Since Clarkson’s Farm I constantly get asked: ‘Are farm economics really as bad as that?’ They’re worse. For anyone who is not a multimillionaire TV star with vast tracts of prime Cotswold acres, the figures are grimly red. Half of British farmers earn £10,000 or less annually, which is why so many have gone into yurts or yoghurt. My own diversification is scribbling. Presently, any spare moments I have are spent at my kitchen table, checking the proofs of a book I’ve written in defence of sheep. Sheep provide food on the plate and clothes on the back, and when farmed properly promote biodiversity. They’re

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop friends laughing at me for learning another language?

Q. We have moved into a terraced house in a seaside town. Our joy is confined, however, by the fact that our next-door neighbour has bought a new car but left his old derelict vehicle on his driveway as well. Although he takes great care never to walk on our garden, often his visitors do not and a muddy track is developing. We have asked about the disposal of the old car but he is a lethargic (although delightful) man. How can I cause the derelict car to disappear without starting a feud? — L.C., Hastings A. Contact a local scrap or car dealer and openly explain the position. Would

Peter Jones

Is Latin worth learning?

A teacher wanting to teach Latin has enquired whether it is worth doing because the subject has ‘such a bad reputation’. As ever with such assertions, it is always wise to ask, ‘In whose eyes?’ The bizarre fact is that, both here and in the United States, the answer is in those of a certain type of academic, for a very specific reason. Dan-el Padilla Peralta, for example, a professor at Princeton University, wants classics to disappear because it has been used for 2,000 years as a justification for slavery, colonialism and fascism. But what ‘authoritative’ human (Plato) or text (the Bible) has not been used to justify something that

The Spectator

What effect did a year of lockdowns have on gun crime?

Thirsty work Sixty-one pub-goers on a night out in the Tan Hill Inn, 1,500 feet up in the Pennines in West Yorkshire, were snowed in for three nights with an Oasis tribute band. Manager Nicola Townsend said everyone was in good spirits and that some people did not want to leave. Some other pubs with a tricky journey home: — Berney Arms in Norfolk is inaccessible by public road and can only be visited by boot, by boat, or, bizarrely, by train, as it has one of the country’s least-used railway stations. The pub has been closed since 2015, although there have been attempts to reopen it. — The Old

James Graham

The birth of the culture wars

The last time I wrote for The Spectator’s diary slot, over the summer, theatres were tentatively beginning to turn their lights on again, following the historically long closures at the height of the pandemic. On Monday night the West End went dark once more, but thankfully only briefly. Theatres along Shaftesbury Avenue and beyond dimmed their lights at 7 p.m. to mark the legacy of Stephen Sondheim, who died last week. I came to Sondheim’s work quite late myself, and I’m sure a new audience will be found following the affection generated at his passing. Sondheim’s impact is felt as much on the theatre scene here as it is in