Society

Thursday

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

Annabel Denham

The economic case for ditching mask mandates

After many months of hardship and sacrifice, freedom is finally within grasp. Boris Johnson has reclaimed his buccaneering, libertarian spirit and punctured the hopes of zero Covid zealots who wanted more working from home, social distancing and masks. When it comes to face coverings, however, lockdown fans have been working hard to convince the public that they ought to wear them voluntarily — on the off-chance they have the virus and unwittingly hop on to a tube carriage with the unvaccinated. Are they right? Masks are undeniably inconvenient. They’re a pain to wear and a nuisance if forgotten. They reduce the ability to communicate, interpret and mimic the expressions of those with

Monday

Graham Watts

The building safety bill won’t end Britain’s cladding nightmare

The government’s Building Safety Bill has been a long time coming, but its publication today offers little certainty for residents caught up in Britain’s cladding scandal. For leaseholders, the bad news is this: many will remain trapped in buildings cloaked in combustible external wall systems. Despite the housing secretary Robert Jenrick’s insistence that the new system would ‘reassure the vast majority of residents’, there is little in the bill to alleviate their worries.  To throw more money at it will inevitably lead to more corners being cut and workers without the proper competence being drafted in The bill proposes the creation of a new Building Safety Regulator (BSR), although an interim regulator

Arsalan Mohammad

Reagan, Trump, Halston and me: from Studio 54 to the White House with Bob Colacello

29 min listen

Writer and author Bob Colacello was the editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine during the 1970s, a role that placed him at the very epicenter of that era’s glitter, exuberance, and excess. Camera in hand, he accompanied the legendary pop artist through a dizzying social whirl around the world from the dark corners and disco lights of Studio 54 to the inner sanctums of the Reagan White House. Now, as Netflix celebrates the life of his close friend, fashion icon Halston in a new series starring Ewan McGregor, Colacello joins Arsalan Mohammad in the Green Room to talk about what the series got right – and where it went wrong.

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why has the NHS been awarded the George Cross?

Awarding the George Cross to the NHS seems a bit much, though in keeping with our devotion to the aspirin-dispensing national religion. The health service has been bestowed the highest civilian gallantry medal for its public service and its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s not that health professionals don’t deserve recognition. They do, though I’d have thought paying nurses better would be a more tangible nod. And it’s not as if there is no precedent for an institutional recipient, with the entire nation of Malta honoured in 1942. Still, admirable though the NHS’s pandemic response has been in places, it’s not quite single-handedly holding back the Luftwaffe and the

Saturday

Debbie Hayton

New Zealand’s worrying battle over transgender rights

Last year, the equalities minister Liz Truss set aside laws which would have allowed people to self-identity as the legal gender of their choice. For those worried about the effect self-ID could have on women-only spaces, Truss’ move was a welcome relief. But campaigners for women’s rights should not be too complacent. As recent developments across the world in New Zealand show, it only takes a general election to trigger a massive move in policy in a matter of months. Two years ago, the New Zealand campaign group Speak Up for Women thought that self-ID had been taken off the table when Tracey Martin, the New Zealand minister for internal

Friday

Dr Mark Toshner

Are we heading for another winter lockdown?

What do you think the chances are of another national lockdown before the year is out? Are you glass half empty, glass half full, or do you question if there is really a glass at all? I think a lot of people are looking at the same Covid data right now and coming to wildly different conclusions. The pandemic has been characterised by these moments. The days and weeks pass until reality can no longer be ignored, at which point it is usually too late to prevent catastrophe, but in time to mitigate it. For the glass is half-full folk the vaccine roll-out has been a solid success. The early