Society

Thursday

16 Sep 2021

The case for an asylum amnesty

Many feared mass unemployment as a fallout from Covid-19. Instead, we have ended up with the opposite problem: a labour shortage. The lack of lorry drivers has led to some items missing from supermarkets. Pubs, restaurants and many other businesses are struggling to re-open as completely as they would like for want of adequate staff. As Matthew Lynn says in his article, the labour shortage has already had a positive effect on workers’ wages. The situation also presents a rare opportunity for long-overdue reforms elsewhere — particularly when it comes to processing asylum seekers. For years, there was public concern that there were far more immigrants coming to work in

Rod Liddle

In defence of Jess Brammar

I noticed with interest that Gigalum island — off the Kintyre peninsula in Argyll — was up for sale for half a million quid or so. Nineteen rather barren acres, slightly warmed by the Gulf Stream. These little parcels of desolation quite often become available for purchase and I do wonder if Gigalum should be purchased by the state for the dumping of toxic waste. Gruinard island, further north, was used by the government during the second world war as a site for testing militarised anthrax, for example. My proposal for Gigalum is that it should be a repository for everyone in the country with the word ‘diversity’ anywhere in

Martin Vander Weyer

The government should be helping, not hindering, start-ups

I’m hugely enjoying meeting the finalists for The Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year Awards. This year’s bumper entry was strong on paths to decarbonisation — as you’d expect for the new era of climate action — and on ventures rocket-boosted by the pandemic, whether designed to take pressure off the NHS or in the ‘edutech’ field of online learning. By contrast, ‘fintech’ and consumer apps were less prominent than in earlier years, reflecting changed priorities. And come to think of it, common to all the entrants I’ve talked to so far is that not one has said: ‘We couldn’t have done it without the help we’ve had from government.’

Jack Rivlin

Are NFTs memes – or masterpieces?

You may think you have experienced buyer’s remorse. But until you’ve splashed out £4,000 on a Jpeg, you have not. That’s where I found myself the other day, after an adrenalin-fuelled afternoon bidding on a digital collectible ‘card’ depicting the Mona Lisa sitting on an easel. The item in question is a Curio Card, one of the earliest examples of a non-fungible token (NFT), a new technology used to buy and sell digital art. NFTs are the latest frontier for crypto-currency maniacs, the online gold rushers who keep financial watchdogs awake at night. Bored by a quiet summer for stock markets, memes and bitcoin speculation, the maniacs are piling into

Mark Mason

All bar none: there’s more to the pub than just drink

Life’s great joys are usually its little ones, and one of the greatest is ordering at the bar in a pub. The custom — as opposed to sitting at a table and being served by a waiter — was one of the things I missed most during lockdown. The period when pubs reopened but could only provide table service was miserable. A bar is more than just the place where drinks are dispensed. It’s a pub’s heart, the region where its name (short, of course, for ‘public house’) gets its meaning. You never know who you’re going to meet there. This is why pubs are always more exciting than members’

Luke McShane

No. 671

White to play. Gaprindashvili–Servaty, Dortmund 1974. The dark squares around Black’s king are critically weak, and White found an accurate way to conclude the attack. What was her winning move? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 20 September. 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 d6+! Rxd6 2 Bb4 won rook for bishop, and the game soon after. But not 1 Bd4? Nxd5 2 Re4+ Re6 and Black is safe. Last week’s winner Emmett Smith, Caterham, Surrey

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Bridget Jones’s Bible

In Competition No. 3216, you were invited to retell a well-known biblical story in a secular style that would enhance its appeal to a contemporary audience. You might have drawn inspiration from ‘A Brief Statement of our Case’, a rendering of the Sermon of the Mount by the writer and critic Dwight Macdonald in the style of the New English Bible using only phrases that appear in that translation. (You can find it in the excellent Oxford Book of Parodies edited by John Gross.) Macdonald took a dim view of attempts to bring the Good Book as close as possible to ‘the life and language of the common man in

The Spectator

2521: Leading question – solution

The question was ‘What is THE THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY(-)NINTH PRIME NUMBER’ (7A/10/22/40/16/31/32/28)? The answer is 2521, the number of the puzzle, which solvers were to shade. First prize Trevor Evans, Drulingen, France Runners-up Jo Anson, Birmingham; Ian Shiels, Bramley, Leeds

Pabulum

2524: Spelean II

Clockwise round the grid from 20 runs a quotation minus one word (1,2,4,4,4,1,4,1,5,4,4,9) followed by an honest servant’s name. Unclued lights exemplify the missing word. The source of the quotation appears in the completed grid and must be shaded. Across 9 Charlie neglected very famous philosopher (5) 10 Boxer a little below par offering excuse (5) 12 Note chap going round institute (5, doubly hyphened) 13 Plant extract in delicacy friend nibbled (7) 15 Singing seamstress active in coastal city (5) 16 Background with cloudy island RSC repaired (5) 18 Yobs in old footwear cycling (5) 21 Takeaway district in protectorate (8) 22 Last letter from Eddie? (6) 29 Eloquent

Luke McShane

Detecting vulnerabilities

I suspect many players perceive the chess board in rich contrast, like a heat map. Glowing bright red are those pieces which are attacked but not defended. A gentler shade applies to pieces which are vulnerable to attack in future, or squares that are ripe for occupation. In the diagram below, the intrusion 10 Nd5-e7+ is tempting, to win rook for knight. But Wesley So’s stunning move 10 Nf6+ showed an exquisite sense for the soft spots in Black’s position. The key point is that after 10…gxf6 11 Qh6, Black’s awkward clump of pieces have almost no way to influence the f6-square, so Qh6-f6 and Be1-c3 is very hard to

Matthew Lynn

Payday: who’s afraid of rising wages?

During the Brexit referendum, Stuart Rose, the former boss of Marks & Spencer, and chair of the Remain campaign, claimed that if Britain left the EU, wages ‘will go up’. This was, he added, in a rare moment of candour, ‘not necessarily a good thing’. But the idea that salaries might rise was exactly the reason that a great many people voted for Brexit. They were well aware that it suits the likes of Lord Rose to keep wages low, and they resented it. It is now nine months since Brexit’s transitional arrangements came to an end, completing the UK’s break with Brussels and Stuart Rose’s prediction has come true

Toby Young

Has Boris Johnson given up on free schools?

For the founders of the West London Free School, of which I was one, last Thursday should have been a moment of great pride. We gathered in the assembly hall, surrounded by the politicians and officials who’d helped us, to celebrate the school’s tenth anniversary and reflect on what we’d achieved. Not only has the school thrived — it is now part of a growing academy chain — but where we led, others followed. As the first school of its type to be approved by Michael Gove, WLFS showed what a determined group of volunteers could achieve, and there are now more than 600 free schools. Contrary to the predictions

Rodney Pittam

Why Brits like me have abandoned trucking

I became a trucker by default. It was the 1980s and I was working three jobs just to pay the mortgage and keep my family going. I was a milkman, a taxi driver and a barman and I was tired and bored. We were living in a town with a ferry link to France and so at the evenings in the pub I got to know the truckers who drove back and forward from the Continent. I’d listen to their stories and think what fun it sounded. I saved up, passed my test, bought an old DAF tractor unit, hired a trailer and began my life on the road. Back

Douglas Murray

Where has the truth gone?

There were two remarkable things about Emma Raducanu’s wonderful win at the US open last week. The first was the win itself. The second was the reaction to it. For the fact that Raducanu happens to be of Romanian-Chinese descent and was born in Canada meant that her triumph was immediately spun through the same political cycle as everything else. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan proclaimed that the star’s story is ‘London’s story’ and showed the virtue of ‘diversity’. Other politicians and hacks joined him. A columnist from the Times declared that Raducanu’s victory showed that ‘immigration enriches us, and always has done’, while an ITV presenter said the win

Martin Lloyd

The flaw in vaccine passports

The Egyptologist Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson interprets drawings in a tomb in Thebes as persons queuing up to have passports issued to them in 1500 BC. This was a millennium before Nehemiah asked King Artaxerxes in the Bible for ‘letters to be given me to the governors of the province beyond the river that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah’. How did we get from the roll of papyrus to the technically complex booklet we use today? The basic components of a passport are facilitation and control — enabling the holder to travel while dictating what they can do. William the Conqueror would refuse his

Matthew Leeming

Kabul is now a city of the dead

I lived in Kabul for nearly ten years. I had a house there for many years and I loved being there. I loved the sense of life on the edge — even at the risk of sudden death — and the extraordinary array of interesting people who visited. I later became a partner in a fuel distribution business in Kabul, with a contract to supply the jet fuel used by Nato. We supplied $2 billion worth of jet fuel, amounting to around 100,000 tons a month, giving Nato the ability to bomb the Taliban. Several Afghans worked for me, friends as well as colleagues, and over the past few weeks

Dot Wordsworth

Why do ministers – and bakers – love a rollout?

I was rolling out some pastry that had been cooling its pudgy heels in the fridge when voices on the wireless began discussing whether Priti Patel would roll out ‘controversial new tactics to turn migrants back mid-Channel’. I felt that our rolling roles belonged to different realms. For pastry, I have a rolling pin. How does one go about rolling out tactics? I had thought that such things might be rolled out as though they were barrels. That depressing song from the beginning of the war (as we still call it) urges us to ‘roll out the barrel. We’ll have a barrel of fun.’ If not a barrel, then perhaps

Mary Wakefield

Is it cruel to crush your child’s dreams?

I think it’s for the best if we ban all children’s books containing the word ‘dream’. Dream big, little dreamer, dare to dream… that sort of thing. And especially an unbelievably popular series of books for primary school children, name of Little People, Big Dreams. There are hundreds of titles in this series and nearly four million copies sold worldwide. It’s a rare school that doesn’t stock them. Bin them all, I say. Perhaps it sounds cruel to actively want to crush a child’s dreams, but it’s for their own good. The books sound cosy, aspirational, unobjectionable, but in fact, deep in children’s young and spongy minds, they’re sowing the

Joel Zivot

Last rights: assisted suicide is neither painless nor dignified

Is euthanasia painless? The founder of the British pro-euthanasia movement (and sometime eugenicist) Dr Killick Millard declared in 1931 that his aim was ‘to substitute for the slow and painful death a quick and painless one’. His sentiment is echoed today by the pro-euthanasia group My Death, My Decision, which says that it wants the ‘option of a peaceful, painless, and dignified death’. The British Medical Association appears to agree and this week dropped its opposition to the Assisted Dying Bill, currently making its way through parliament. As a doctor and expert witness against the use of lethal injection for execution in America, however, I am quite certain that assisted

Suzanne Moore

The genius of Quentin Tarantino

During one of the interminable lockdowns I mentioned that I didn’t care if I never went to another launch party again. Not only did I say it, I think I wrote it. Well, that will learn me, as my mum used to say. The launch for Julie Bindel’s book Feminism for Women was held in Conway Hall and it was anything but the usual turps and vol-au-vent affair. Bindel is a polarising figure and a fabulous friend. What’s really polarising about her, I think, is that she doesn’t pose on Instagram in ‘Smash the patriarchy’ T-shirts — she actively does feminism. It was an enormous relief to hear her say