Society

Thursday

Michael Mosbacher

The rise and fall of Britain’s fur trade

We in Britain have long been much more squeamish about fur than other Europeans. I still well remember the snide comments I would get even in the 1980s when my German mother would collect me from my London school in the fur coats she insisted on wearing. The ocelot number especially raised eyebrows. The UK’s domestic retail market for fur has always been small. Britain’s half–dozen fur farms were closed when Tony Blair’s government legislated to ban them in 2000. As it was, British manufacturing could never compete with Italy on quality, or with Hong Kong, and then China itself, on price. But the wholesale trade has been a very

George Osborne

My encounter with Sue Gray

I only voted in one no-confidence motion. The leader was Iain Duncan Smith, and it was a bit awkward. I spent hours every week helping Iain with Prime Minister’s Questions, and felt sorry for him. At the same time, his leadership was a disaster. Indeed, Tony Blair was going easy on him in the chamber just to keep him alive. So what to do? On the morning of the vote, I conferred with two other new MPs in the PMQ team — David Cameron and Boris Johnson. We all agreed he had to go and swore a pact. So off I went to cast my ballot. A few hours later,

The Spectator

Letters: The BBC licence fee is a protection racket

Russia’s star Sir: Wolfgang Münchau is surely right to highlight the risk posed to European peace and stability by Germany’s strategic myopia (‘In the pipeline’, 22 January). But he may be in error to assert that ‘Russia is in the ascendant’ — at least in terms of the fundamentals. Russia no longer makes it into the top ten of the world’s economies and is about to be overtaken by South Korea. Its poorly developed economy is unduly reliant on energy exports — a sort of Saudi Arabia with snow instead of sand. A state whose star is rising has every incentive to sit tight and allow that to continue —

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Unease in Ukraine, tensions in No. 10 and hamsters escape Hong Kong

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, told the Commons that Britain was prepared to send troops to protect Nato allies in Europe if Russia invaded Ukraine. The Foreign Office named Yevhen Murayev, a former Ukrainian MP, as a candidate that President Vladimir Putin of Russia was plotting to install in Ukraine. About half the staff at the British embassy in Kiev would come home. The Queen took a helicopter from Windsor Castle to Sandringham, where she is expected to stay for the 70th anniversary of her accession on 6 February. The Metropolitan Police began an investigation, led by deputy assistant commissioner Jane Connors, into ‘a number of events that took

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 29 January 2022

During lockdown I had a bit of a tidy-up and came across a Post-it note with the following statement written on it from a member of my team: ‘I WILL NEVER DISCUSS BRIDGE THEORY WITH JdB AGAIN. IF I DO SO I WILL JUMP OUT OF THE WINDOW.’ Bit much, I thought at the time. I only said I didn’t agree. Last week the mixed trials for June’s European Championships took place at Young Chelsea. No serious bust-ups but a sliver of temperament: South led the ♥Q. On the first Spade from dummy (West), North won the King and switched to his singleton Diamond. East covered with the ten and

The Spectator

2537: My Lord! – solution

The exchange that gave rise to the expression CURATE’s (19 Down) Egg was ‘I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones’, ‘Oh no, my Lord (puzzle’s title), I assure you, parts of it are excellent’, from a George du Maurier cartoon in Punch (1895), widely accepted to be based on a similar cartoon in the magazine Judy in the same year. First prize Stephen Clarkson, Ipswich, Suffolk Runners-up Pam Dunn, Sevenoaks, Kent; G.H. Willett, London SW19

Cheesecracker

2540: Recycling components

Eight unclued lights, arranged symmetrically, comprise two quartets, one of which makes the other go round.   Across 1 How much poor Matthew has aged (14, three words) 11 What’s got blowers regularly engaged? (5) 13 Cheeky make-up (5) 14 Nothing fresh about first social reformer (7) 15 Some change local larder outside flat (10) 17 Blame husband for going in basin (5) 21 View rascal across floor (6, two words) 23 Partner works both ways (4) 26 Brown primates hold one back (5) 27 Clean up exposed broken bones (5) 28 Stone set in epoxy not backed (4) 30 Encouragement to prima donna, a lady (6) 36 Place of

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: meet the new Mr Men

In Competition No. 3233, you were invited to invent a new character for the Mr Men/Little Miss series by Roger Hargreaves and submit an extract from his or her story. The first character to make an appearance, in 1971, was orange Mr Tickle with his long, wiggly arms. Fifty years on, Mr T.’s overly tactile behaviour has raised an eyebrow or two, earning him comparisons with Harvey Weinstein. Mr Clever, meanwhile, has been denounced as a ‘smug, sexist mansplainer’. Despite the fuss and bother, Roger Hargreaves’s books (written and illustrated by his son Adam since his death) continue to be hugely popular, as was this challenge, which pulled in the

Luke McShane

No. 687

Black to play. Grandelius–Rapport, Tata Steel Chess 2022. With a bishop resting on a3, the White king can never sit comfortably. Rapport’s next move was a crushing blow. What did he play? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 31 January. 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 Qh5+ Qxh5 2 e8=Q+ Kf6 3 Qxh5 and wins Last week’s winner Anca Gramaticu, Oadby, Leicestershire

Luke McShane

Pixel this

When Magnus Carlsen won last year’s Meltwater Champions Tour, they made two trophies. One was for Carlsen, and the second was auctioned online, fetching a sum in digital currency of around $25,000. The trophy only exists as a video showing a stack of rotating gold squares, like a Donald Trump skyscraper from the future. If you bought it, you’d be right on trend. Earlier in 2021, the winning bid at Christie’s for a digital artwork named ‘Everydays: the First 5000 Days’ came in at $69 million. That was for an elaborate collage created by graphic designer Mike Winkelmann, using the pseudonym ‘Beeple’. The pixels aren’t worth diddly squat, since anyone

Monday

Andrew Tettenborn

The Church of England’s diversity mission has gone too far

Is the Church of England on a mission? It should be, of course. But it appears to have confused its purpose of preaching the gospel with seeking to make itself more representative. From now on, at least ten members of the House of Bishops, part of the General Synod, must be from an ethnic minority. This will help create a ‘church that truly embraces people of global majority heritage at every level of its life,’ says the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell.  But it’s hard to reconcile Cottrell’s words with those of Paul to the Galatians: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Entitled motorists have ruled the roads for far too long

Last week it was ‘operation red meat’, designed to recapture wavering Tory voters. This week something very different: changes to the Highway Code are coming into effect, which threaten to upset the not-insignificant number of car owners. Sure enough, the Alliance of British Drivers, the trade union for Mr Toads, has complained bitterly. Responding to a new clause reminding that cyclists and pedestrians have the right to use any part of the road, the Alliance complains: ‘This is a recipe for anarchy and accidents. It is unworkable. Greater clarification is needed as it appears to give pedestrians total control over the entire road network.’ No one set out to turn our

Sunday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Sage ‘scenarios’ vs actual: an update

Given that lockdown was very nearly ordered on the advice of Sage last month, it’s worth keeping an eye on the ‘scenarios’ it published, and how they compare to the situation today. Another week of data offers more food for thought. This week was the period when deaths were supposed to be peaking – so given that no extra restrictions were ordered, it’s interesting to compare the peak the models predicted for this week with what actually happened. Deaths were said by Sage to peak at anything from 600 to 6,000 a day (the latter figure, predictably, hogged the headlines). But on Saturday 262 deaths were reported in England, and

Charlie Walsham

The real problem with the BBC’s partygate coverage

As a journalist, it’s never a comfortable feeling when the news organisation you work for becomes the story. But with No. 10 desperate to throw some ‘red meat’ to the green benches — to take the spotlight off the rotting carcass of ‘partygate’ — it was inevitable that the BBC would end up being fed through the mincer this week. The Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, lit the touch-paper by announcing on social media (where else?) that the latest BBC licence fee announcement would ‘be the last’, adding with provocative hyperbole that ‘the days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors’ were over. Up until

Saturday

Debbie Hayton

We must never abandon children during lockdown again

Schools are far more than mere exam factories. Across the UK, teachers in 32,000 schools and colleges care for children on over half the days in any given year. Or we did until the lockdown in March 2020. Since then, children have missed the best part of two full terms. And while they were out of our sight, some were at risk. Six year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, for example, may have been rescued from the terrible abuse he suffered had his teachers been able to see him every day. But while most children have returned to class now that Covid restrictions are ending, some are still absent. News of anecdotal cases

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

How did the security services fail to catch the Texas synagogue terrorist?

Just how many databases was Malik Faisal Akram on? It turns out that the 44-year-old Briton – who was shot dead by an FBI Hostage Rescue Team last week as he held four people at gunpoint in a Texas synagogue – was no stranger to Britain’s creaking protective services. The US is now asking the UK to explain how Akram was able to leave our shores and enter the country two weeks ago to carry out an anti-Semitic terrorist attack without any flags being raised. The information that is slowly emerging is not encouraging. MI5 investigated Akram in 2020 as a possible terrorist and closed his case after a month.

Kit Wilson

Will our future lives be like a video game?

A few years ago, the software company Owlchemy Labs released a computer game called Job Simulator. Its premise was simple. Players find themselves in a future world, roughly 30 years from now, in which super-efficient robots have snaffled up all the jobs. No longer needed for work, humans entertain themselves instead by donning virtual reality headsets and reenacting ‘the glory days’ — simulating what it was once like to be an office clerk, chef, or shopkeeper. The gameplay, therefore, consists entirely of, well, yeah… carrying out endless mundane tasks: virtual photocopying, virtual cooking, virtual newspaper sales. Job Simulator is pretty tongue-in-cheek, crammed full of dry, self-referential jokes. In the game,

Friday

Cristina Odone

How lockdown sparked a wave of anxiety among Britain’s children

I knew what ‘anxiety’ meant when I was in primary school. But it was not a word I had cause to use regularly, as I moved from my pastel coloured class-room to my David Cassidy-filled suburban bedroom. Today, however, ‘anxiety’ is our children’s word of the year, according to the Oxford University Press. We can’t be surprised. The past two years represent a small proportion of my lifespan – but for a six year old, they are a third of their existence. Daily reports of a mysterious illness, hearing about people dying around them – some of them friends or family — and being banned from venturing outside their home:

Thursday

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Is it really such a shock that some people drink at work?

Thirteen years ago we shared an office building with a large international bank. A common lift connected both businesses to the underground car park. Here I once overheard one of the bank employees describing our offices: ‘And you know what else they have up there…’ He spoke in the kind of wide-eyed, aghast tone you might have expected if he were about to reveal an opium den or a branch of Stringfellows: ‘They’ve got a bar.’ This was true. In the evenings after work, while the bankers downstairs were soberly hard at work destroying the world economy, there were people only yards above them shamelessly chatting over a beer. If