Society

Thursday

Taki

The Swiss are united by a common cause — making money

Gstaad When Gerald Murphy and Cole Porter discovered the French Riviera as a summer resort during the early 1920s, the swells and avant-gardes still spent the warm months in cool places like Deauville and Baden-Baden. I think of the deserted summer Riviera and how marvellous the place must have been when people like Picasso and Hemingway joined forces with Cole and Gerald and launched the resort to end all resorts. No longer. The place is now an overcrowded hellhole, expensive, dirty and dangerous, but not to worry. If the recent heatwaves continue and the temperatures keep climbing, soon we’ll be right back where we started, except this time it will

Mark Mason

Why men share trivia

It was halfway through lunch that something reminded my friend Marcus about Ray Charles and his plane. ‘Did you know he used to fly it himself?’ he asked the rest of us. ‘When it reached cruising altitude he’d insist on taking the controls. Obviously his passengers were terrified. They thought a blind man playing chess was one thing, but flying a plane? Someone asked him once why he did it. He said: “Because it’s mine.”’ This triggered a memory of my own. ‘It was the same with his car,’ I said. ‘One day he insisted on driving it. When his chauffeur tried to stop him, Charles said “Who paid for

Dot Wordsworth

The language of the victimhood war

Language is used in a weird way in the victimhood war, where those who see themselves without agency bravely speak their truth to power. Their truth cannot be negated merely by examining the evidence, for it derives from lived experience. The powerful are axiomatically guilty, and must be called out for their behaviour or behaviours, as the new usage puts it. They must then own or take ownership of the issue. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex found themselves victims without agency in the racist world of the royal family. During their interview with Oprah Winfrey, they spoke of conversations between the Duke and a member of the family about

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why no one wants their holiday to last forever

I have been on holiday for two weeks. Well, not quite. You see, a bloke I once met told me that, when you take a long holiday, it’s good to work for a couple of days in the middle, as the contrast will cause you to enjoy your holiday more overall. Since the bloke in question was the psychologist and Nobel laureateDaniel Kahneman, I decided to try this. Unexpectedly, it worked. The principle derives from an idea labelled ‘hedonic adaptation’: the notion that our level of happiness will return to a baseline over time, regardless of circumstances, when our environment remains constant. Put bluntly, it explains why nobody lives permanently

Anshel Pfeffer

Can a third dose of vaccine stave off Israel’s fourth wave?

Jerusalem I thought I’d found the most efficient small clinic in Jerusalem, a quarter of an hour’s drive from my home. For months, I’ve been going there for testing, with no fuss or waiting time. At the end of last week, the government authorised the third ‘booster’ dose of Covid vaccine for over-forties. I made my appointment for a Sunday afternoon and soon found out how things had changed. The car park was packed. Inside the clinic, in the corridor leading to the vaccination cubicles, matters were even worse: several people had been given online appointments for third doses for the same time. It’s a far cry from the first

Bruce Anderson

In turbulent times, there’s sherry

I sometimes wander through Trafalgar Square in the small hours when the traffic has abated and children are no longer scrambling over Landseer’s lions. Hard by his own Whitehall, there is Charles I, a symbol of the constitutional agonies of that era. To most high Tories, he is Charles, King and martyr, Anglicanism’s only saint. Even Marvell saw the romance. -Others’ -responses blend tribute with exasperation. Raison d’état can require ruthlessness and Charles I was not the first failed monarch to meet a premature death. If only Cromwell had arranged for an accidental discharge, rather than a judicial murder. Moving on and looking up, the eye can feast on unalloyed

Matt Ridley

Dismantling the environmental theory for Covid’s origins

With a laboratory leak in Wuhan looking more and more likely as the source of the pandemic, the Chinese authorities are not the only ones dismayed. Western environmentalists had been hoping to turn the pandemic into a fable about humankind’s brutal rape of Gaia. Even if ‘wet’ wildlife markets and smuggled pangolins were exonerated in this case, they argued, and the outbreak came from some direct contact with bats, the moral lesson was ecological. Deforestation and climate change had left infected bats stressed and with nowhere to go but towns. Or it had driven desperate people into bat-infested caves in search of food or profit. Green grandees were in no

Susan Hill Susan Hill

My post-viral battle and what it tells us about long Covid

One morning in 1966, I woke up seeing double. I splashed cold water over my face and blinked a few times but I still saw double. I had had glandular fever the previous month, for which there was no treatment except rest and paracetamol, and the GP said in time it would cure itself — and though tiredness dragged on I was soon back to normal. But now I began to ache all over again, my temperature was up, glands swollen, and when I lay down I went to sleep for six hours. The GP was confident that, double-vision apart, mononucleosis had returned in a mild form, but asked me

Sascha O’Sullivan

I’m a stranded Aussie – get me back in there!

In early March last year, I was self-isolating in my flat in London. Even though there were only a few hundred confirmed cases of Covid a day, I had met someone the week before who had tested positive. This was before anyone knew much about the virus, but people were worried by the news coming out of China and northern Italy. I made frantic calls to 111 to try to get a test. No luck. ‘Why don’t you just come home?’ my mum in Sydney asked. ‘I can’t,’ I replied. ‘I work here as a journalist, I have a flat, I have shelves full of books too heavy to ship

Peter Jones

The Romans would not have made the same mistakes in Afghanistan

‘No one is stupid enough to choose war over peace. In peace sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons,’ said Croesus to his conqueror, Cyrus of Persia, according to Herodotus. But actually man’s stupidity has lasted thousands of years, and one rather doubts whether the fanatical Taliban will buck that doleful trend. Romans were proud of their pax Romana, but it had been won in blood, over centuries, as they were well aware. ‘Who wishes for peace, let him prepare for war,’ said Vegetius. ‘Peace was secured by victories,’ boasted Augustus; Virgil talked of Rome ‘imposing the practice of peace’. Tacitus made the Caledonian leader Calgacus remark

The Spectator

Is Brexit really to blame for the shortage of lorry drivers?

Birth of the Paralympics While Athens can claim to be the home city of the Olympic Games, the Paralympics can be traced to Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, where, on the day of the opening ceremony of the 1948 London Olympics, neuroscientist Sir Ludwig Guttmann — a German-Jewish émigré — held an archery competition for 16 of his spinal patients. The following year it was expanded into the Stoke Mandeville Games, involving several events for wheelchair-bound patients. In 1952, competitors from the Netherlands were invited to take part too. The first Paralympics coinciding with the Olympic Games were held in Rome in 1960. Keep on trucking The Road Haulage Association (RHA) has

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 28 August 2021

So, face-to-face bridge is slowly returning, with EBU’s Summer Meeting in Eastbourne being one of the first to take place. The numbers were small of course, but at least it’s a step in the right direction. The Swiss Pairs on the first weekend for the Harold Poster Cup was won by England International Claire Robinson and Szczepan (Saucepan) Smoczynski. Saucepan may at times use his bidding box more as a weapon than a means of communication, but he’s an outstandingly talented card player. Here he is wowing the field. All but two tables played the standard 3NT, and all got the same Heart lead. Let’s follow the normal line of

Melissa Kite

The end of an era: after 20 years we must move our horses off the farm

The letter arrived in a hand-addressed envelope, inside of which was a handwritten note. After everything we have been through, we were expecting something typed, from a solicitor. It began by politely thanking us for looking after the land so well. But in the next paragraph, the landowner attempted to serve us three weeks’ notice to move our horses, claiming that was all she needed to give. We texted her immediately to say our lease states three months. She replied later to say three weeks had been a mistake, she meant three months. She tried to make light of it. But we already know we are losing our smallholding because

Jeremy Clarke

How I love England — despite the hellhole that is Gatwick airport

At Gatwick airport, after an hour and 15 minutes in a snaking queue system apparently purposely designed to infect as many as possible with Covid-19, and our three bladders inflated like party balloons, we finally presented ourselves before an available passport control officer. Early fifties, hatless, bald and recruited from the working class, he was the first English person on English soil I’d spoken to for 18 months. I formed the impression of a man who liked a drink. ‘And these two are?’ he said. ‘My grandsons,’ I said, looking at them besottedly in spite of us having lived together in insupportable heat for a week. ‘And you’ve come from

Wednesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Vaccine efficacy and the case for living with the virus

How fast does Covid vaccine protection wear off? New data from the Zoe Covid Study, published today, tries to quantify the extent to which the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines wane over time. It’s a comprehensive study that accounts for PCR test data from over a million double-jabbed people. The results? After roughly six months, Pfizer protection against symptomatic illness fell from 88 per cent to 74 per cent. For AstraZeneca, it was a dip from 77 to 67 per cent after around five months. It’s important to note what, specifically, this study is measuring. It is a look at infections, not serious illness. In this sense, today’s study isn’t a

The Spectator

2518: Make a run for it? – solution

As suggested by 11A, other unclued lights were all anagrams of ducks: 12A drake; 16A teal; 28A redhead; 31A smew;  39A widgeon; 40A poker; 10D scoter; 20D shoveller. First prize Tom Shaw, Clevedon, Somerset Runners-up Sebastian Robinson, Glasgow, John Pugh, Ely, Cardiff

Tuesday

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Why are armed men still able to parade around Northern Ireland?

Is the Police Service of Northern Ireland equal to the task of dealing with the sour, indigestible remnants of Troubles paramilitarism? Events this weekend in an estate on the outskirts of Derry, showing yet more glorification of a terrorist by armed men firing weapons, suggests otherwise. Michael Devine, the man who was venerated by half a dozen goons dressed in black this weekend, starved himself to death in Northern Ireland’s notorious Maze prison in 1981 along with nine other republican prisoners in pursuit of political status. He was also a founder of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), one of the most viciously and overtly sectarian paramilitary death squads produced

Ferdie Rous

Cambridge, ‘whiteness’ and the politicisation of Classics

In Cambridge University’s latest push to right the wrongs of history, its Museum of Classical Archaeology will add some signage to explain the ‘whiteness’ of its collection of Greek and Roman statues. The Classics faculty, of which the museum is part, has taken this great and noble mission upon itself in response to an open letter signed by dozens of students, alumni and academics — including the chair of the Classics faculty itself. The letter calls for ‘an acknowledgement of the existence of systemic racism within Classics’ and argues that the white plaster casts of Classical statues give a ‘misleading impression’ of an ‘absence of diversity’ in the ancient world.

Monday

Ben Kelly

Can facial recognition be stopped?

In recent years, facial recognition technology has been introduced into our lives in various benign ways. The ease of using it to unlock our phones, make purchases, replace passwords, and manage our digital wallets is irresistible. Before long, perhaps, it will be integrated into our ‘smart’ homes, shops and airports, and available on all our devices. Unfortunately, our love of convenience may be distracting us from the fact that facial recognition technology is the most sinister and uniquely dangerous surveillance mechanism yet invented. As it increasingly plays a central role in our lives, we are being lulled into accepting its use by the police. And if it is not resisted now, it will

Tom Slater Tom Slater

The policing of ‘non-crimes’ and the dark side of rainbow cars

The great awokening of the British constabulary has got to be the most curious and infuriating part of our culture war. While knife crime continues to rise, an inordinate amount of police time now seems to be taken up by various virtue-signalling initiatives. Take the rise of ‘rainbow cars’. For some time now members of the public have been bemused to see cop cars patrolling their neighbourhoods emblazoned in the LGBT flag. Now the LGBT+ lead of the National Police Chiefs Council has felt the need to make an Instagram post explaining it all to us. In the video, deputy chief constable Julie Cooke — complete with rainbow lanyard and miniature