Society

Saturday

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

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The secrets of chicken soup

Catherine Chicken is sickly. She has swollen up like a barrage balloon with an evil face and dinosaur feet. She lumbers about. It is peritonitis, the vet says, after I make my husband drive her to the animal hospital in Falmouth. She will not recover without an implant that prevents her ovulating. Chickens are ever in danger of reproduction, like human women, and that is why I find them so touching. They are feathered paradigms. (There is a novel on this called Brood.) They counsel implants on the chicken welfare site — they counsel deification on the chicken welfare site — but it’s £250 for a chicken that cost less

Luke McShane

A multitude of queens

Here’s a challenge which appeared in a German chess magazine in 1848: place eight white queens on an empty chessboard so that no two queens occupy the same file, rank or diagonal. In other words, none of the queens may defend each other. Perhaps you start with a queen in the top left corner, on a8. The next might be placed on the adjacent file, nearby but not touching, on the b6 square, a knight’s move away from the first. Following the pattern, you put another on c4, and a fourth one on d2. For the e-file, we need to break the pattern, so let’s revert to near the top

Douglas Murray

‘Operation Red Meat’ won’t beef up the government

Are you ready for ‘Operation Red Meat’? If not, then you should brace yourself. For it looks set to be one of the most fearsome operations of modern political times, liable to make Conservative voters quiver with excitement and feel almost too stimulated. Alert readers will have noticed that Boris Johnson did not have the best end to 2021. Unfortunately he hasn’t had the best start to 2022 either. Hardly a day has gone by when we haven’t learned of some new shocker from No. 10. The impression has been not just of shambolic-ness but of dishonesty, double standards and general incompetence. The point is that the Prime Minister and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

‘If it goes to a vote he’s finished’: the battle to save Boris

Two years ago, Boris Johnson had British politics at his feet. He had won the largest Tory majority since Thatcher, broken the Brexit deadlock and forged a new electoral coalition. Yet Johnson now finds himself on the verge of a vote of no confidence by his own MPs, and this turnaround hasn’t been triggered by some great ideological divide: this isn’t like old Tory arguments over imperial preference, the poll tax or Europe but by Johnson’s own behaviour and the way No. 10 is run. Downing Street had hoped that Sue Gray’s report would come out later this week, and they presumed it would give them the opportunity to launch

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The collapse: how Red Wall MPs turned on Boris

On Tuesday night, Boris Johnson loyalists were desperately trying to halt a spate of letters of no confidence going to Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of backbenchers. They had thought there was plenty of time, that no MPs would move until Sue Gray’s report into the ‘partygate’ scandal was published. ‘Wait for the Gray report’ had become the answer to every awkward question. But it turned out that almost two dozen MPs from the 2019 intake were about to break ranks. In what was dubbed the ‘Pork Pie plot’ — a weak joke explained by the prominent role played by the MP for Rutland and Melton Alicia

Nick Moar

What really happened to Politics For All

On 2 January I woke up late to the sound of my phone buzzing continuously and a sense that something had gone badly wrong. The first message was from a friend. ‘Having a nice holiday?’ he wrote, above a screenshot of my political Twitter account covered in block letters: ‘Suspended.’ My reaction was to swear in just the way my dad does whenever he crashes his car. Politics For All was a news aggregation service I started two years ago when I was 17. It took the most salient lines from news articles and posted them across social media, always pointing readers to the original publication. The aim was to

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

Lardy cake: a royal favourite

Lardy cake has a branding problem. We don’t mind puddings or cakes which explicitly announce their richness or decadence — death by chocolate, chocolate nemesis and devil’s food cake all remain popular. We actively embrace the hedonistic butteriness of croissants, along with brioche and puff pastry. Or consider the Betty’s Fat Rascal, which has achieved cult status despite (or because of) its unabashed fatty cheekiness. But attach the word ‘lard’ and it’s a different story — a horror story. Those who wouldn’t think twice about accepting a hot cross bun or a piece of shortbread recoil at the prospect of lardy cake. ‘Lardy’ sounds inelegant, lumpen and, well, fatty. Even

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The TV licence is a dead duck

‘Tell me we’re winning the media battle!’ I imagine Unilever boss Alan Jope barking at his team on Tuesday, following the revelation on Sunday of his rejected £50 billion bid for GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer healthcare arm. ‘Yes, sir,’ replies the flustered PR, ‘Very much so… except for top investor Richard Buxton of Jupiter telling the FT: “The idea of letting the goons at Unilever run [the GSK business] is laughable.” Then there’s an analyst in the Telegraph saying: “We can’t imagine many things that would unnerve us more about Unilever” than this deal going ahead. Oh, and our shares fell 7 per cent yesterday.’ Jope is now huddled with his advisers

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Good things can come from guilt

I do not know anyone in the Sackler family. I wouldn’t even have heard of them were it not for recent reports of their return to the large-scale philanthropy with which their name was once associated. These reports have led to criticism of institutions that accepted Sackler charity: the well-worn argument being that the family’s businesses made a fortune from aggressively promoting the use of opioids in America, and opioids have caused serious addiction problems for millions of Americans. Sam Leith wrote thoughtfully about the controversy on the Spectator website last week (‘We should be thankful for the Sackler family’s philanthropy’). His — to me — most arresting argument is

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The true cause of the public’s anger

What Keir Starmer should have said, but didn’t, was that he had indeed drunk some beer in a frowsy Labour party constituency office, but that he had not remotely enjoyed it. This would have had the advantage of being true, for a start: even through the blurred window you can see the Labour leader’s face etched in misery as he shares a comradely pint with some typical party activists — Roz Harridan, Loretta (formerly Dave) Spart and bum-fluff Oli from the youth wing — in Durham. Thing is, I remember having drinks with comrades when I was in the Labour party and they were never much fun, just tiresome evenings

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The curious case of Barry Gardiner

In May 2020, in the wake of the Barnard Castle story, Emily Maitlis delivered her famous Newsnight address to the nation: ‘Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that, and it’s shocked the government cannot.’ The public felt ‘fury, contempt and anguish’ at what had happened. The Prime Minister was showing ‘blind loyalty’ to a colleague, etc. Now Mr Cummings is chief witness for the prosecution of Boris Johnson of which Ms Maitlis was an early forerunner. It is time for Emily to speak to us via Newsnight once more and, in the interests of the BBC’s Impartiality Action Plan, declare: ‘Dominic Cummings is a brave whistle-blower. Shocked

James Heale James Heale

Road to Reform: is Richard Tice’s party a threat to the Tories?

When I meet Richard Tice, the leader of the Reform party, in St Ermin’s Hotel in Westminster, he is sporting an upside-down Union Jack lapel badge on an otherwise immaculate navy suit, looking like the quintessential Tory he hopes to displace. There was a time when the Tories were complacent about challengers on their right. When David Cameron became Tory leader, he dismissed complaints that he was not Conservative enough. Who else would his critics vote for? Would they really join the ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’ of Ukip? In the end, Nigel Farage was an opponent supremely capable of stealing his voters and turning British politics upside down. Is

Michael Mailer

What Norman Mailer’s ‘cancellation’ reveals

New York Recently a story about my father, the writer Norman Mailer, getting ‘cancelled’ tore across the internet. What started the hoopla was Random House, Mailer’s long-standing publisher, suggesting that his estate bring a proposal for a book. The book was to contain excerpts from several of his political writings and interviews in which he presciently laid out the fragility of democracy. The collection was intended to honour his centenary next year. Random House received the proposal favourably, but then weeks later declined to publish it. The reasons are hearsay. One suggestion is that there were objections by junior executives to the use of the word ‘negro’ in Mailer’s essay

Robin Oakley

The new Tote is a ray of hope for British racing

There is nothing like visiting a stud early in the foaling season. As amiable mums-to-be saunter up to the paddock rails, it both rekindles the basic passion — admiration for the magnificent animals that give us such pleasure contesting their prowess — and recharges the optimism sometimes sapped by racing’s structural problems. In Friday’s winter sunshine, at Alex and Olivia Frost’s Ladyswood Stud near Malmesbury, the Dubawi mare Empress Consort, once trained by Andre Fabré and now in foal to the mighty Frankel, nibbled my notebook while Malaya, formerly a classy hurdler with Paul Nicholls, arched her neck and nuzzled up to help Alex reach her favourite scratching spot. In

David Mamet

The hypocrisy of actors

I’ve been keeping a journal for nearly 60 years. There are piles of the damn things in archives and covered with shoeboxes on high closet shelves. I’ve never looked back at one word in them. Being a vain sinner, I’ve entertained the fantasy that others would but, as it seems I’m not going to be remembered as a national treasure, I must conclude the journals have served their purpose. This was to get me to write things down. The physical act of transcription forced me to place half-formed thoughts upon the paper, making them concrete; a delusion, or obsession became a fact, and, as such, could be addressed as independent

Melissa Kite

The tyranny of the smart phone

‘Can I ask you why you don’t want a smart phone?’ said the chirpy manager, as I stood blinking in front of him in the intensely red Vodafone shop. I took my iPhone out of my bag and explained that I wanted a second phone with no brain whatsoever. A stupid, backward phone was what I wanted. Not a scheming, conniving monster like this one. And I said this quietly, so that my iPhone didn’t hear me, because that is how frightened I am of it. ‘Ah!’ said the pin-striped tech wizard, as if he had heard of this situation before, or perhaps increasingly. Reaching for the bottom shelf, he