Society

Thursday

Debbie Hayton

Does the Green party care more about trans rights than the environment?

Our planet is in a mess. Ice caps are melting and the glaciers are retreating. This summer in Canada, the mercury has already broken through 49 degrees Celsius, with August still ahead of us. Climate change worries me, and I think it should worry others too. But despite the party’s name, the Green party isn’t devoting its full attention to this issue. Instead, some of its members are preoccupied with rooting out alleged transphobia within the party. This week, co-leader Sian Berry announced that she was standing down over ‘inconsistencies’ within the party. Her statement didn’t name names, and was probably baffling to the ordinary voter, but the cause of her

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Donald Trump writes a political thriller

In Competition No. 3207, you were invited to supply an extract from a thriller, written by a well-known politician, that contains clues to the identity of its author. This challenge drew a moderate-sized entry in which there was much to admire, including Janine Beacham’s fusion of Daphne du Maurier and Winston Churchill: ‘I might have called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, but I would not fail or falter. Victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror…’ And David Harris’s channelling of Alan Clark, thriller-writer: ‘He liked powerful women. He liked all women. The only thing better than one woman was two, he

Michael Henderson

The hateful Hundred is putting cash before cricket

The cricket at Cheltenham last week was reassuringly old–fashioned. In the last session of the fourth day, Gloucestershire’s bowlers took a flurry of wickets to beat Middlesex by 164 runs, watched by spectators who assemble at the college ground each July from all over England to renew a much-loved ritual. ‘Proper cricket,’ said a chap from Slad. They were joined, as ever, by dozens of retired cricketers, fed and watered in one of the tents which ring this most evocative of grounds. Little wonder those former players choose to hold their annual gathering in Cheltenham. Here they can bear witness to championship cricket as they once played it; a traditional

Toby Young Toby Young

Football’s never coming home

I failed a moral test last weekend. A friend offered me a free ticket to the Euro 2020 final and I accepted, knowing my 13-year-old son Charlie would be bitterly disappointed. I had told him I’d try to get two tickets so I could take him, but all my efforts had come to nought and we were resigned to watching it at home. When I broke the news that I’d be going but not taking him, he looked heartbroken, as I knew he would be. I spent hours trying to justify it to myself afterwards. Surely, if he’d been offered a ticket by a friend, he would have taken it?

Adrian Wooldridge

Rhodes to redemption: why Oxford needs a monument to Benjamin Jowett

Not since September 1642, when a mob of Parliamentary soldiers opened fire on the sculpture of the Virgin Mary carved into the side of the University Church, has Oxford been in such a fury over statues. The ‘Rhodes must fall’ campaign that started among radical students in 2016 has now spread to the senior common rooms, particularly the SCR of Worcester College which, astonishingly, has taken over from Balliol and Wadham as the headquarters of the workers’ revolution. More than 150 academics have signed a petition calling for their fellow dons to maintain a virtual picket line around Oriel College — that is, to refuse to teach its students or

Nicholas Coleridge

The unsettling sensation of a full diary

The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee pageant was officially launched last week, with a splashy press call in the Raphael Court of the V&A. I happen to be co-chair of the pageant, to be held in June next year, alongside the eventmeister Sir Michael Lockett. The Raphael Gallery felt like an appropriate setting, since the seven glorious cartoons, considered the most important Renaissance paintings outside the Vatican, belong to the Queen on longstanding loan. Jubilees are a peculiarly British thing, applauding monarchs for their decades of service, full of ceremony and fiesta; a national celebratory parade through the streets of Westminster and down the Mall to Buckingham Palace. This one, marking 70

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Could hydrogen power turn air travel green?

Have you been scanning airline websites for exotic destinations to which your double-jabbed status might allow you to slip away in August? I certainly have, but I’ve ruled out the parts of Canada and the United States that are stricken by record-breaking heatwaves and forest fires — and I’m wondering what impact such extreme climate events will have on the aviation industry as it struggles back to life after the pandemic. Having survived a year of near-total shutdown, I suspect it will now face an onslaught of green rhetoric to which governments — positioning for November’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow — will be forced to respond. A recent Financial

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I avoid hugging at a funeral?

Q. I have been double-vaccinated but am especially at risk and, since I know of at least four double-vaccinated people who have still caught the virus, am anxious to avoid being infected myself. So far I have confined my socialising to outdoor events — however a funeral for a much-loved great-uncle looms and among those attending will be some Covid deniers who have not been vaccinated. I’ve known these friends all my life and it will be impossible to stop them hugging me or sitting close to me in the church, which is likely to be packed. Not attending is not an option. What should I do? — L.P., Northants

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

What did the Romans ever do for us?

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is planning to install a statue of John Chilembwe in Trafalgar Square. Mr Chilembwe was a Malawian Baptist famous for, among other things, leading an uprising where the head of a Scottish farmer was chopped off and put on a pole. He is much revered in his home country for all this and his face has appeared on banknotes. In truth, Mr Chilembwe didn’t incite the murder of many people, in the great scheme of things. If the mayor is searching for a murderer who did punch his weight, he could do worse than hoist up a statue of Francisco Macías Nguema, the former

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The politics of eating lobster

Lobsters like to live in gullies on the sea floor, or under sand, and I understand how they feel. But you can’t hide from politics. An amendment to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill will make it illegal to post shrink-wrapped lobsters alive, or boil them alive, which turns them from blue to Father Christmas scarlet. In Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand it is already illegal to boil them. It is considered kinder to freeze them or pierce them or shoot them with an expensive lobster-stunning gun which you can probably buy in Hampstead Village. And then boil them. Lobsters were once food for the destitute near the sea, so plentiful

The Spectator

Letters: How to save Cambridge’s reputation

Save the parish Sir: The Revd Marcus Walker eloquently describes the crisis that has taken hold in the Church of England (‘Breaking faith’, 10 July). He correctly states that the church belongs to the people of England and not to the archbishops, bishops or clergy. As he wrote, the costs of parish clergy are not a ‘key limiting factor’. They should be the church’s first priority in terms of costs. Stipendiary parish clergy play a vital role in bringing the Christian gospel and pastoral care to their communities. Without properly trained and ordained clergy, there would be no holy communion, no absolution and remission of our sins and no church

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Mixed messages on masks, protests in Cuba and good news for pandas

Home England expects everyone to wear masks in crowded places, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said in a televised address, even though the law requiring it was to be dropped on 19 July. He said: ‘We’re removing the government instruction to work from home where you can but we don’t expect that the whole country will return to their desk as one from Monday.’ He added that the ‘single most crucial thing’ people could do was to get vaccinated. He declared it ‘a matter of social responsibility’ for nightclubs and other venues to demand a Covid pass, proving vaccination or a recent negative test, to allow entry. The Night Time

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The CV trick that guarantees you an interview

Sometimes the opposite of a good idea is, as Niels Bohr said, another good idea. But the converse is also true. The opposite of a bad idea can easily be an even worse idea. Something like this seems to have happened with the expansion of British higher education. When I left university in 1988, if you wanted a reasonable first job, a degree from a Russell Group university was probably sufficient but not necessary. Now it seems to be necessary but not sufficient. The result is that a large number of perfectly capable but non-academic people are excluded from having a stab at many jobs, where for all we know

The Spectator

2512: Impertinence – solution

CHERRY, NETTLE, SMOKE, PLUM-PUDDING, BEES, EGG, SUNBEAM and WIND are the perimetric answers to riddles posed by NUTKIN in The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter. Nutkin’s brother is called TWINKLEBERRY (19/11) and Nutkin is a SCIURUS VULGARIS (33/35A) (red squirrel). Shaded squares give the letters of POTTER. First prize Mark Griffiths, Winsford, Cheshire Runners-up Jacqui Sohn, Gorleston, Norfolk; Sid Field, Stockton on Tees

Pabulum

2515: Paragon

Unclued lights (including three of two words and two pairs) suggest various versions of a name given by a pair of successive clued lights which solvers must shade. Elsewhere, ignore an accent. Across 12 Excited oxen pressing round me in poet’s garment (7) 13 Minotaur’s cross (3) 15 Believer in divine wisdom shows photo she shot (8) 17 Methuselahs could muster here, aged and eccentric (5) 18 Aviator Sully crosses Ireland endlessly (7) 21 Rescue blighted cactus (6) 24 Pope unrefined in speech (5) 27 Jack perhaps in jacket (5) 28 Fiddlesticks producing two notes (4) 29 Old rhino close to hen in farm (4) 30 Silver and bird get

Luke McShane

No. 662

White to play and mate in two. Composed by Sam Loyd, Sunny South, 1885. Nearly all Black’s legal moves can be met by Qg8 mate, but White must prepare a response against 1…Rg7. What is the key first move? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 19 July. 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…Re2 threatens perpetual check with Re1-e2. After 2 Qxg4 Rg2+! it was draw agreed in view of 3 Kxg2 Rf2+! and stalemate soon follows. Last week’s winner Luke Brown, Newcastle

Luke McShane

Lock-picking

In his autobiographical book Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! the late American physicist Richard Feynman described how he amused himself by cracking open the safes at Los Alamos, which stored design papers for the Manhattan Project. He started out picking locks, which he describes like this: Now, if you push a little wire gadget — maybe a paper clip with a slight bump at the end — and jiggle it back and forth inside the lock, you’ll eventually push that one pin that’s doing the most holding, up to the right height. The lock gives, just a little bit, so the first pin stays up — it’s caught on the

Linden Kemkaran

Britain is a tolerant country and a few football racists don’t change that

The racist messages sent to England football players in recent days are shameful, but to suggest that the UK is a festering hotbed overflowing with racist thugs is a step too far. Out of the hundreds of thousands of social media posts about the Euro 2020 final, only a tiny number contained racist words. Of course, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t speak out against such abuse. What happened is indefensible and the culprits should be dealt with by the police. But the frenzied debate the messages have generated risk giving those responsible the attention they crave and which they do not deserve. As well as failing to see the bigger picture here – that Britain, generally

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The real reason Priti Patel is targeted

A special animus is aimed at Priti Patel, perhaps because the combination of being Indian, female and firmly Tory is unbearable to the left. The BBC’s Chris Mason, though paid to report, not pass judgment, speaks of the Home Secretary’s ‘at best equivocal stance’ about racist insults in football. The particular anger against her is that earlier on in the Euros, she described taking the knee as ‘gesture politics’, declining to condemn fans who booed it. Yet taking the knee is a gesture and is political. In its current form, taking the knee was invented by Black Lives Matter. Last summer, after the murder of George Floyd, there was a