Society

Thursday

28 Oct 2021

Who owns the language?

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is giving local residents £25,000 grants to enable them to change the names of the roads in which they live. Some Londoners, I believe, find it uncomfortable to live in a street which has a name redolent of colonialism. Fair enough. I hope, though, that Sadiq will also give grants to right-wing white neighbourhoods of the capital so that the residents there can change the names of roads to make them more redolent of colonialism — such as Cecil Rhodes Avenue, or Zulus 0 British Army 5 Crescent. Or perhaps install a name which commemorates the mayor himself, such as Vacuous Dwarf Close. This

Theo Hobson

Why I’m paying my daughter to go to church

It would be weird if my 13-year-old daughter didn’t say she was an atheist. It’s what you say in our culture when you’re that age. To be honest it would creep me out a bit if she was all pious. But she is getting confirmed into the Anglican faith. This is a piece of hoop-jumping that her parents have decided to require of their children. I went for coffee with the vicar to ask if my daughter could join the classes. I admitted that she was a bit reluctant. In fact, it was a mixed picture. Whenever I mentioned confirmation she professed her atheism, but when I didn’t mention it

Elisa Segrave

Fight club: when book groups turn nasty

‘Small friendly village book club is looking for three or four new members.’ I was infuriated to read this in our village newsletter, an alternative to the parish magazine. I had just been ‘cancelled’ by this ‘friendly’ club from featuring at one of their evenings. A text, sent by a hitherto pleasant woman who’d liked my last book, explained: ‘There are many hurt feelings in the village. We in the book group believe that your email, put on the parish council notice board, was hurtful and upsetting. So the feeling is that at the moment it would be better to postpone your visit.’ ‘Hurt’ seems to be a current buzzword

Linden Kemkaran

My family and the scars of forced adoption

I was nearly 40 when I discovered that I had an older brother. My lifelong family position as the eldest of four evaporated in a flash one Sunday afternoon in 2008 when my mother called us all together at her house, saying she had something she needed to tell us. She opened a box file and with trembling fingers pulled out a black and white photo of a baby. It turned out that my mum, who died suddenly and unexpectedly of Covid in February of this year, had been one of a number of unmarried women — there could be as many as 250,000 — forced to give up their

George Osborne

My night of nostalgia with Boris and co.

Rishi Sunak had a pre-game Twix and a Sprite to prepare for this week’s impressive Budget. I used to have a cup of very sugary tea. It was a tip from our joint mentor, William Hague. It coats the throat in preparation for speaking in a rowdy chamber. Even then my voice would be hoarse by the end of an hour’s Budget statement. It’s hard to convey just how noisy it is standing there with a couple of hundred adults screaming at you from a few feet away. But on Wednesday the House of Commons seemed quieter than it used to be on these big days. I’m not sure why.

Melissa Kite

Why I hate WhatsApp

‘My phone says I can’t go out until Tuesday, so I can’t come and meet you,’ said my friend. And she repeated this down the line several times, as I insisted I did not understand. I had nipped outside the hairdresser with my hair in highlighter foils to take her call and was standing on the street, phone tucked under the silver-paper flaps, a stiff wind blowing. I assumed she must be saying something else and I had misheard. ‘It’s the app on my phone,’ she explained. ‘I’ve counted the days myself and I should be able to go out today, but my phone says I have to stay in

James Lovelock

Why are we so afraid of nuclear power?

The climate change summit in Glasgow will have one important part of the discussion missing: the role of nuclear power. It seems the government is in no mood for a discussion with the nuclear industry — every one of its applications to exhibit at the COP26 summit has been rejected. That’s a shame, because there are plenty of myths to be addressed. We could discuss the lessons from the plant at Fukushima, seriously harmed by a tsunami in March 2011. Sometime later, two of the reactors overheated, burst and released a small quantity of radioactive material into the environment. At the time of this event, my wife Sandy and I

Roger Alton

Why the Reds have got the blues

Not so much the hair dryer: more a gentle home perm. Contemplating the increasingly less youthful visage of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as he looked on powerlessly while his very expensive Manchester United side were dismembered by Liverpool, you couldn’t help wonder what Sir Alex Ferguson, glowering and irascible in the stands above, would have done with those players. He would certainly have got something more out of the infantile and malicious Paul Pogba, sent off for a mean tackle which betrayed his manager and his teammates. But as Solskjaer was clearly a Ferguson appointment, shouldn’t the old bully take a share of the responsibility? With a weak board and a

Tanya Gold

Dregs of fake Provence: Whitcomb’s reviewed

Whitcomb’s is in The Londoner hotel on the south-west corner of Leicester Square. The Londoner calls itself ‘the world’s first super boutique hotel’, which may mean that it is the world’s biggest small hotel. Or its smallest big hotel. I don’t know. Whatever its existential status, the developers destroyed an art deco cinema — the dour and lovely Odeon West End — to make it, and it looks like a piece of bright blue infant Lego with lesions for windows. Heritage organisations objected to the cinema’s destruction. Westminster council replied: who cares? We need Lego with lesions, or anything that looks like Lego: look at the Hotel W round the

Toby Young

Why lockdown sceptics like me lost the argument

I’m optimistic that the government won’t implement ‘Plan B’, let alone impose another lockdown — but not because sceptics like me have won the argument. Why do I say that? Because the public debate is about whether another lockdown is necessary, with the participants on both sides taking it for granted that non-pharmaceutical interventions are an effective way of suppressing infections. For at least a year, sceptics have been arguing that these don’t work, pointing to numerous research studies showing that the rise and fall of infections in different regions of the world has no correlation with stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, business and school closures, etc. But this argument has

Fraser Nelson

Cop out: Boris’s battle to save the climate summit

As so often, the Queen put it best. While opening the Welsh parliament a couple of weeks ago, she was caught on microphone discussing the COP26 summit and its frustrations. ‘Still don’t know who is coming,’ she told the Duchess of Cornwall. ‘It’s really irritating when they talk, but don’t do.’ In just a few words, she perfectly summed up the challenges facing Boris Johnson in Glasgow. The PM wants to get countries to commit to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But how to get a deal, if the main players aren’t at the table? Xi Jinping hasn’t left China since the Covid outbreak and will stay put now. Vladimir

Katy Balls

The Tory blame game over COP26 has already started

Just a few months ago, the view inside Downing Street was that the COP26 summit would be a national morale booster. The Coldplay singer Chris Martin was mentioned as a potential headline act and there were excited discussions about giving the event a cute mascot. Now, the headlines are about rail strikes, bin men running away from rats on rubbish-strewn streets in Glasgow and the Prime Minister declaring that recycling doesn’t work. Even the mascot, Bonnie the seal, has been called ‘rat-like’ by government sources. ‘It’s hideous,’ says a member of a foreign delegation. Just as the technical climate negotiations have hit stumbling blocks, so too have No. 10’s other

Robin Oakley

A brace of new books worth the space in any racing library

In 1986 a young Mark Johnston, having acquired a derelict yard on the Lincolnshire coast, phoned the Jockey Club to enquire about a licence to train. He was asked what experience he had. ‘I’m a vet in practice.’ Back came officialdom’s less than encouraging reply: ‘Just because you’re a vet doesn’t mean you can train a horse.’ So furious was the combative Scot that he almost decided on the spot to go to America to test out his theories. Fortunately for British racing, he persevered and had the cojones when the Jockey Club grudgingly offered him a jumping licence only to insist that it was a combined licence or nothing.

Jeremy Clarke

Life amid Catriona’s cleaning regime

Earlier in this run of glorious October sunshine I was languishing on the bed in the middle of the afternoon not feeling up to much. The phone rang. Catriona. Could I manage to get down the path to help carry two heavy shopping bags back up to the house? ‘I’m on my way, mon chou’, I said, maintaining my customary ‘willing helper’ tone of voice. I went down the path in my pants, which could pass for thin shorts in the event of an encounter at the bottom with one of the neighbours. From here it’s a short climb to a dusty plateau were we park the cars. I gallantly

Taki

Michael Mailer’s new film is Chariots of Fire on water – and it’s great

New York I find most films nowadays as fascinating as a lengthy history of orthodontics but then I’m spoilt rotten, having watched old black-and-white pearls such as From Here to Eternity, The Asphalt Jungle and My Man Godfrey. When Chariots of Fire came out some 40 years ago I went bananas. My uncle had competed in the hurdles in both the 1932 and 1936 Olympics, and my father was on the relay team. Athletics back then were for pure amateurs only, and as in the case of the great Jim Thorpe, anyone caught having ever been paid even a dollar for competing in any sport in or out of the

Dot Wordsworth

Can men be witches?

‘No, darling, I certainly wouldn’t call you a witch,’ said my husband. ‘You’re not thin enough.’ The Oxford English Dictionary has just published a new entry for witch. It is less dismissive of old women. The former version spoke of a ‘repulsive-looking old woman’. Now it is ‘a term of abuse or contempt for a woman, especially one regarded as old, malevolent, or unattractive’. In that sense it is still definitely a woman. But what has lexicographers in a ferment of excitement is the decision to undo the division of the main entry for witch into male and female. Before the Conquest it had only been formally distinguishable in the

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I get my masseuse to stop talking?

Q. Our two daughters often bring friends down for the weekend. These friends are more than welcome; we enjoy their company and most have perfect manners — except they never leave a tip. Our daughters claim that no one of their age group (early twenties) carries cash and that even if they remind their guests to bring some to leave in their room, they are so unused to using cash points that most of them still forget. How should I insist without striking a bullying or inhospitable note? — N.H., Bridport, Dorset A. Make it easier for the guests by casually mentioning that you have been out to a cashpoint

The Spectator

What’s more expensive – petrol or fizzy drinks?

Filming fatalities The actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot a cinematographer on set when mistakenly given a gun loaded with real bullets. Others who have died on set: — Martha Mansfield was resting in her car during the filming of a romance set in the US civil war in 1923 when someone flung a match which set her dress alight. — John Jordan fell out of a plane while filming Catch-22 in 1969. — Vic Morrow was decapitated by a low-flying helicopter while filming Twilight Zone: the Movie in 1982. — Jon-Erik Hexum shot himself while fooling around with a gun on the set of the CBS series Cover Up in

Ross Clark

What’s really behind the net-zero zealotry of big businesses?

Boris Johnson’s biggest challenge at COP26 doesn’t lie in avoiding a finger-wagging from Greta Thunberg, who won’t be going. Neither will it be in preventing the party being spoiled by Insulate Britain holding up the limousines of the great and good. Nor will Johnson have to struggle too hard to persuade his fellow world leaders to sign some kind of declaration strong enough to be spun as a triumph but anodyne enough to allow China, Russia and others to ignore it. No, the PM’s biggest challenge lies in fending off the demands of big businesses, who have latched themselves to the cause of net zero with great gusto, aware of

Michael Heath