Society

Thursday

David Abulafia

What’s behind Cambridge’s anonymous reporting system?

Here is a challenge. Cambridge University provides an electronic Daily News Digest to anyone who wants to see how the university is being reported in the press. Will the News Digest include this article? On past form, that seems unlikely. When arguments arose in the past few weeks about Cambridge’s Report + Support website, which offered the opportunity to make anonymous denunciations against individuals deemed to have committed ‘micro-aggressions’ (such as being critical of a student’s work, even if it is bad, or praising the English of a non-native speaker), the Digest went quiet. A few days after the Telegraph published a letter against the website signed by 25 senior

Luke McShane

The world has a new youngest grandmaster

Abhimanyu Mishra became the world’s youngest grandmaster last month, at 12 years and 4 months old. The boy from New Jersey achieved the milestone by scoring 7/9 at the Vezerkepzo GM Mix event in Budapest last month. In doing so, he has broken the record set almost 20 years ago by Sergey Karjakin, who became a grandmaster at 12 years and 7 months old, and went on to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the World Championship in 2016. His father, Hemant Mishra, made it clear that they treated breaking this record as an end in itself, which has required extraordinary dedication and persistence. Along the way, Mishra suffered a run of

The Spectator

Who was the first to wear a face mask?

Mask crusader Who first wore a medical face mask? — The beaked outfits worn by plague doctors aside, the first doctor to wear a mask was the French abdominal surgeon Paul Berger in 1897. His mask, made from six layers of gauze, was inspired by the work of German microbiologist Carl Flugge, who had revealed what a good breeding ground saliva is for bacteria. Berger delivered a paper on masks to the Surgical Society of Paris in 1899, after which they were adopted in other countries. Penalty points How many penalties are scored in the European Football Championship and World Cup? — The overall scoring rate is 75%. In shootouts

Douglas Murray

Oli London and the trickiness of being ‘trans-racial’

Not everyone will have heard of Oli London, a British social media influencer who made news for two reasons last week. The first was that London came out as plural. Which is to say that he came out as a non-binary person. Which is very 2020 and something so un-noteworthy that I’m sure you’ll agree it is hardly worth remarking upon. The other thing London did was more unusual. Which was that he came out as Korean. You might guess from his name that Oli London is not Korean, but he has spent some time there (in the South rather than the North apparently) and enjoys the language and culture.

Lucy Vickery

Sonnets on the universe

In Competition No. 3206, you were invited to supply a sonnet on the universe. The late Frank Kermode reckoned that the sonnet form is just too easy — try a double sestina, if you’re after a challenge, he said — and comps such as this one certainly draw the crowds. A bumper crop of deftly wrought entries showed great wit and imagination, though some stumbled at that tricky final couplet. I was very much taken with several excellent twists on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: Joe Houlihan, John O’Byrne, Tim Raikes and Tony Harris take a bow. Others who shone brightly were Roy Ballard, Martin Parker, Nick MacKinnon, Frank Upton, Nick Syrett,

The Spectator

2511: Changing places – solution

The unclued lights form pairs of anagrams, one word in each pair being a place-name: 1A/6A, 1D/21, 6D/13, 11/38, 19/30 and 22/26A. First prize David Danskin, Yaldley Hastings, Northants Runners-up Kenneth Robb, Bo’ness, West Lothian; Dennis Cotterell, Carlisle

Fieldfare

2514: Welcome back

Unclued lights (one of two words, the others paired) are of a kind. Across 7 Lace branches left in fruit tree (6) 11 After study, forgetting the year, doubting what William was famous for (10) 13 Appealing to restrain husband’s slide (5) 14 It strengthens bricks originally placed in tower (5, hyphened) 15 Mounted, moving south towards the coast (7, two words) 17 Aim in wrong direction so fail to score goal (7) 18 Robber I talk foolishly about (6) 19 Married Indian eccentric, freeing insect (4) 22 Intervene, beginning to punch in the mug (6, two words) 24 Terrible noise at port compound (9) 25 Jingle perhaps shows one negative effect (5) 28

Luke McShane

No. 661

Black to play. Daggupati–Mishra, Charlotte 2020. 1…Rf1+ 2 Kg2 is a dead end, as White’s queen covers the f2 square. Mishra found the only way to draw; his subtle move combined a threat of perpetual check with a stalemate motif. Which move did he play? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 12 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 Rc8! deflects the Black rook. White wins after 1…Rxc8 2 Bxe7 Last week’s winner Gavin Felgate, Letchworth Garden City, Herts

Peter Clarke

Don’t ‘Kill the Bill’

Are the rights of protesters and the rights of all other citizens fairly balanced? Think back to the Extinction Rebellion protests of April 2019, when climate activists chose to ‘peacefully occupy the centres of power and shut them down’, as they put it, including the heart of London. The protests, organised globally, were perhaps the most disruptive in history. A small number of people managed to stop hundreds of thousands more going about their daily lives. People could not get to work, see family and friends or go shopping, because the streets were blocked by an extensive series of roadblocks and other tactics. At one point, printing presses were blockaded,

Wednesday

Bruce Anderson

Boris’s ‘lobster law’ is ridiculous

Sometimes, there is only one conclusion to be drawn – that somehow, the calendar is stuck. Though days appear to pass, it is still April 1. The latest example of April foolishness concerns shellfish. A Bill on animal rights is currently going through the House of Lords, and the government seems minded to accept an amendment which would acknowledge that crustaceans and molluscs are sentient beings and therefore must have rights. In the case of lobsters, this would mean that they could no longer be cooked by being thrust, still alive, into boiling water. As it happens, there is a good culinary case for putting lobsters into cold water and

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Cancelling To Kill a Mockingbird is a step too far

It often feels like we’re living through the revenge of the talentless. Cancel culture is essentially a war of no-marks against high achievers. Think of all those faceless furious people on Twitter who want the Harry Potter books thrown in the dumpster of history just because JK Rowling thinks biological sex is real. These people can barely string a tweet together, never mind write eight books that entrance millions. Or think of the armies of literalist bores who demand the scalp of some comic who once made an iffy joke. I bet those people have never made anyone laugh. At least not intentionally. And now we learn that a schoolteacher

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Euro 2020: Don’t underestimate the Danes

Italy: 1 (moped riding infant) Spain: 1 (swarthy bull-taunting thug) Spain are not terribly good at penalty shoot-outs. Hell, even England beat them in 1996. And so they lost a match they had dominated pretty much from start to finish. If you remember, I tipped Italy to win this tournament right at the outset — but there are flaws to this side.  What you need to do — to state the obvious — is take the chances you create, because with Italy there will be chances. They are a counter-attacking side and invite pressure. If that pressure amounts to playing neat triangles outside the penalty area, then forget it. You

Steven Barrett

The new mask regime: a legal guide

Mask wearing has been compelled by law. Very soon the government has said that compulsion will end (in England at least). There is little in life more terrifying than being British and put in a new social situation without clear rules. So while we contemplate the dread of inevitably offending someone no matter what we do, it might be helpful to clarify what this means from the point of view of the law. The first and most important point is that just because the government stops making mask wearing a legal requirement, that doesn’t mean that mask wearing stops being a legal requirement. Why? Because our legal system gives lots of

Dominic Selwood

The surprising history of England’s three lions

English lions went extinct 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. So why will eleven Danish men – each dutifully sporting the ‘DBU’ roundel of the Danish Football Association – be facing tonight 33 embroidered images of panthera leo on the shirts of the England team? The answer has nothing to do with football, or any other sport in which the men and women of England’s national teams bear the three lions. It is, in fact, a throwback to the medieval battlefield, and the system of identification that allowed heralds to walk among the dead once the frenzy was over and catalogue the fallen. King Richard clearly liked lions far more than

Mary Dejevsky

Why voters should have to show photo ID

This week’s publication of the Elections Bill has given pressure groups and others a fresh opportunity to complain about what they see as the latest manifestation of this government’s illiberalism: a requirement for people to produce photo ID when they go to vote. Forgive me, but I fail to see what is so terrible, so undemocratic, about that. The arguments go like this. First of all, opponents say, any change is unnecessary, as the UK simply doesn’t have a problem with voter fraud – with impersonation, say, or multiple voting. Trust in the UK electoral process is high and the instances of fraud are infinitesimal compared with the numbers of

James Kirkup James Kirkup

How Denmark made England

International football is good for many things other than the sport itself. Politics, culture and history are all in play in the best matches. I’m hardly a football fan but I’d watch, say, Spain vs Portugal just for the spectacle. And who could turn away from Serbia vs Croatia, or Finland vs Russia? Like a lot of countries, England fixtures are often seen through the prism of the country’s history of conflict. So far, Euro 2020 has heard echoes of battles ancient and modern, as England played Scotland then Germany. And everyone knows the history of those meetings. But what about England and Denmark? How many people know that this is about

Tuesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What is the purpose of test and trace?

At yesterday’s press conference, Boris Johnson announced that his government was shelving plans for domestic ‘Covid certificates’ (i.e. vaccine passports), at least for the time being, although this won’t stop private businesses or venues from deciding to use them.  We also learned today that it won’t stop the creation of a two-tier system (as Lara Prendergast warned months ago) for the ‘jabs and jab nots’. New policies have been confirmed that will allow for the double-jabbed to skip quarantine if they’ve been in contact with someone who tests positive for Covid-19 (with exemptions granted to under-18s as well). It’s hard to herald ‘freedom day’ when younger people risk being forced back inside by

Michael Nazir-Ali

The plot against religious education

Faith is not the declining force that some secularists believe or indeed desire it to be. Even here in the UK, we have our growing and vibrant black-led churches; increasingly present mosques, temples and gurudwaras; and believers arriving from Eastern and Central Europe.  This is why it’s important for religious education to continue to have a special place in the curriculum of our schools. Although RE is not a ‘core subject’, it remains a compulsory one. Successive Education Acts have stipulated that it should be taught in such a way that reflects the mainly Judaeo-Christian traditions of this country — while also covering the teachings and practices of other religions present here. It is worrying, therefore, that

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris’s ‘freedom day’ spells misery for many

The projection from Sajid Javid that Covid-19 infections could surge to a record 100,000 per day in a few weeks, as all social distancing and mask-wearing regulations are removed, is especially terrifying for those whose immune systems are impaired or are clinically vulnerable in other ways. There are millions of these frail people. For those whose immune systems are compromised or suppressed, the efficacy of vaccines is much reduced. For others among the frail, any residual risk of becoming infected is too great, because for them it is literally a matter of life or death. So when you hear politicians and others talking about the important freedom to choose not