The Battle for Britain | 30 October 2021
Society
Thursday
2527: The main dilemma – solution
The question posed by the song is 11A/ 22A/37A. Suggested by 37A, other unclued lights were anagrams of words meaning sailor: 17A – rating; 26A – mariner; 39A – shipmate; 10D – sea dog; 27D – lascar. First prize Ian Laming, Chippenham Runners-up Andrew Bell, Shrewsbury, Shropshire; Caroline Arms, Ithaca, NY
2530: Ups and downs
Clockwise round the grid from 2 runs a quotation (5,3,3,5,6,4,3,4,3,3,4,5) followed by the poet’s first name. Her second name is a clued light which shares a letter with her surname which appears diagonally in the completed grid. Two pairs of unclued lights (including one of two words) give the titles of two of her novels. Solvers must shade all three names of the poet. Elsewhere, ignore an accent. Across 9 Fool had tiny portion of brains (5) 10 Whatever person shows endless love is blessed (5) 11 Set, say, almost lost (5, two words) 12 Faithful follower trailing Welsh cyclist (7) 13 Monarch wearing Asian hat (5) 16 Praise no
Spectator competition winners: dystopian animal stories
In Competition No. 3222, you were invited to supply a dystopian short story that incorporates as many collective nouns for animals or birds as possible. Your appetite for dystopian imaginings may be somewhat limited at the moment — ‘How about setting something sweet and optimistic?’ write Frank Upton — and there was a dismal sameness about the entry this week. Notable exceptions included David Silverman’s Huxley-Orwell-Collins-Atwood mash-up, Nick Syrett’s Conan Doyle-inspired vignette, and the winners, below, who each pocket £25. After the human colonies had been obliterated, meetings of the Great Unkindness took place, of course, at Ravenna. Each year, patrolling mobs, murders, gaggles, skeins, charms and even convocations of
No. 677
Black to play. Turner–Jackson, Hull 4NCL GM Tournament 2021. Which move did James Jackson play to ensure a decisive advance of his passed a-pawn? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 1 November. 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 Rg8+ Kxg8 2 Qxf7+ Kh8 3 Qg8# (or 3 Qf8#). Not 1 Qxf7+ Kh6 2 Qf4+ Rg5 3 Qh4+ Rh5 which only leads to a draw. Last week’s winner David Allcock, London SE21
The Varsity match
Anyone who has attended the Varsity chess match knows that an online version just wouldn’t be the same. The annual event is held in great style at the Royal Automobile Club in London’s Pall Mall, and has tradition at its heart. This year’s, the 139th edition, could not be held at the usual time in March, but it took place last weekend, to coincide with the RAC Chess Circle’s Annual Dinner. Since the 2020 edition also took place just weeks before the onset of the first national lockdown, the mighty tradition of the Varsity match remains uninterrupted by the pandemic. (The last year without a contest was during the second
Bridge | 30 October 2021
It was great to be back playing live bridge at the Portland Club last week. I was lucky enough to be invited to one of its first dinners since lockdown, and I’m pleased to say that nothing had changed: a lively supper was followed by brisk and exciting bridge until the small hours, and a terrible but strangely satisfying hangover the next day. I don’t normally drink while playing, but the Portland is one of the most enjoyably relaxed bridge clubs in London. Despite the high stakes, there’s always fun and banter, and certainly never any shouting, blaming or calling for directors. To eschew the very fine wine on offer
Wednesday
Why Jesus College shouldn’t have returned its Benin bronze
Jesus College Cambridge can claim a world first. It is the first institution, at least in the twenty-first century, to return a so-called Benin Bronze because it was looted in a British punitive raid in 1897 on the historic Kingdom of Benin, now part of the territory of Nigeria. The College’s Master Sonita Alleyne has today handed over its Okukor – a brass statue of a cockerel that took pride of place in the college’s dining hall peering over generations of students – to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Germany announced in May that its public museums would return their hundreds of Benin artefacts; Dan Hicks — Curator
The cold hard truth about heat pumps
When I went to Poland not long before Covid, I found a country more bitterly divided by a culture war even than we are. So I would not rule out EU leaders being right that the current government there has intruded on the independence of the judiciary for its own political ends. This is the background to recent Brussels fury that the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (supreme court) asserted the primacy of Polish law over that of the EU earlier this month. The problem never arises in the EU, of course, because there the European Court of Justice has never had an independent judiciary to be tampered with. It has aways
Novara Media was cancelled by a culture it helped to create
Something stirring happened online yesterday. People rushed to the defence of a media outlet they dislike. In the name of standing up for freedom of speech, political differences were put aside and the case was clearly made that even people we passionately disagree with must be at liberty to speak and publish. This was freedom of speech in action. People of all political persuasions rallied together to demand ‘freedom for the thought we hate’. The outlet in question is Novara Media. When YouTube temporarily suspended Novara’s channel, it wasn’t just the middle-class millennial Corbynistas who make up the bulk of its viewership who rushed to its defence. So did many
Tuesday
The staggering cost of ‘Plan B’
Finally, the government is modelling the cost (and benefits) of lockdown restrictions. The introduction of vaccine passports, mandatory face masks and work-from-home advice would cost between £11 billion and £18 billion according to a leaked assessment of the so-called ‘Plan B’. And while all this may reduce the spread of the virus at large events by as much as 45 per cent, only a small part (between 2 and 13 per cent) of Covid transmission takes place in such venues — so the extra restrictions would, at most, cut levels of the virus by 5 per cent nationally. The document has been leaked to the Politico website and assumes ‘Plan
The link between drugs, terrorism and mental illness
Rod Liddle once actually said to me the immortal words ‘You were right and I was wrong’ at a Spectator summer party. This is a moment I shall treasure till the hour of my death. But even so, I was disappointed. For the subject was only Theresa May. I had predicted she would be a terrible premier. Rod had believed she would be good at the job. A year later, it was obvious who was correct. For one brief shining moment I had hoped that Rod had changed his mind about something much more important. I wish he and a lot of conservatives would shift their opinions about the role
It’s time to take back control from our judges
The Judicial Review and Courts Bill has its second reading today. Writing for the Guardian yesterday, David Davis MP denounced the government’s plans as ‘an obvious attempt to avoid accountability [and] to consolidate power’ which is ‘profoundly un-conservative’. He could not be more wrong. The Bill is a welcome first step in restoring the balance of our constitution, a balance put in doubt by a decades-long expansion of judicial power. If anything, parliament should go further and amend the Bill to make it a more effective means to restore the traditional constitution. Judicial review, Mr Davis argues, is ‘a cornerstone of British democracy’, a ‘check on the balance of powers
A new name isn’t enough to save Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg emerged from his walk-in T-shirt closet last week to make a stunning announcement: Facebook will be changing its name. And while we don’t yet know what the new name will be, I think I may be able to help here. How about this: Boomerware? Or in keeping with Silicon Valley’s penchant for trendy misspellings: LyfeSuck? Or instead of a name, there’s just the sound of Rome burning? The reason that ‘Facebook’ is getting retired, per Zuck, is that he wants to ‘transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.’ What that means is that he’s trying to distance himself
Is Cambridge university ashamed of Winston Churchill?
When I first started at Churchill College, Cambridge, I was proud that I had joined an institution whose very existence was a testament to the legacy of a personal and national hero. As I walked around the college grounds, I felt that I was now part of a community that was much bigger than myself; a community partly defined by the life and times of our country’s greatest leader. Standing for the college toast at my first formal dinner, the words ‘To Sir Winston, and the Queen’ almost made me believe that my own life was now, in a small but important way, linked to the life of the great
Sunday
Will Sajid Javid really fire 106,000 unvaccinated NHS workers?
When Sajid Javid was interviewed at Tory party conference recently, he was asked if he’s going to start firing unvaccinated NHS staff, given that care workers are about to lose their jobs under ‘no jab, no job’ rules. He said he was considering it, which would be quite a move. The unjabbed may make up a small percentage of the NHS workforce of 1.6 million people. Today’s Sunday Times says that he has decided to press ahead by introducing legislation that will make vaccinations ‘a condition of employment’ for health workers. This would follow what Joe Biden has done in America — where all medical employees face vaccine mandates and companies with more
It’s time to prepare for winter Covid restrictions
Earlier this week, the health secretary Sajid Javid said in a Downing Street press conference that the government was not yet ready or willing to activate its Covid ‘Plan B’. His announcement came after the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) argued last week that Plan B measures – such as mandatory masks, working from home and vaccine passports – should be prepared for now to reduce the need for tougher restrictions in the winter. Both Sage and the health secretary will have been keeping a close eye on the number of Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths, all of which have been rising steadily this month. The worry, of course, is
The dark side of ‘insulating Britain’
Let me start with some statements of fact. The planet is heating up dangerously fast with devastating consequences for everyone that lives on it and if we don’t stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere we have no future as a species. In the UK, a major source of our carbon emissions comes from homes and a large part of that is because we burn gas whenever we put the radiators on. Each UK household emits around 2.7 tonnes of carbon every year heating their home. That’s utterly unsustainable and must stop. To some the answer is to insulate our homes so tightly that we no longer need to use much
Saturday
When I was the victim of a transphobic hate crime
The question was direct and to the point, ‘Are you one of them blokes?’ With those six short words, I was the victim of blatant transphobia. We have been advised to report such attacks. ‘We need the stats,’ explained one transgender campaigner in 2018. That was in response to ‘hateful’ stickers which read ‘Female is a biological reality’ appearing in Edinburgh. This attack was personal and in my face. But if this was transphobia, I was in no danger. The woman who asked the question was in her 60s, laden down with groceries and she would have needed to stand on a box for it to be truly in my
Friday
The latest celebrity must have? A trans child!
Hard luck, Madonna, your lovingly assembled rainbow family is no longer the most cutting-edge crew on the showbiz block. If you want to excel as an A-list parent these days, you need a trans child to show off on social media. Jamie Lee Curtis has revealed that her child, born Thomas, now answers to the name of Ruby. The 62-year-old actress has declared to a waiting world – via People magazine – that the most difficult thing about adjusting to this unforeseen circumstance is calling them by their new name. ‘It’s speaking a new language…l earning new terminology and words… that was the hardest thing, just the regularity of the
