Society

Thursday

Taki

The dying art of sports commentary

Wimbledon is here at last, after its absence in 2020. What struck me watching the French Open on television a couple of weeks before was just how much rubbish I had to listen to if I kept the sound on. There are now too many matches broadcast, which means more and more commentators spouting off about the game in the middle of rallies. I don’t know why viewers don’t raise hell with the networks about these non-stop blabbermouths who interrupt our viewing. We’ve become a nation of sheep, accepting everything so-called experts throw at us. Televised sport needs commentators only before and after the event. Although the Wimbledon lot spout

Peter Jones

Tacitus and the hypocrisy of cancel culture

The delicious hypocrisy at the heart of today’s cancel fraternity is that it is strongly opposed to censorship. Romans grappled with the issue; the historian Tacitus nailed it. Since the Roman republic sprang from the expulsion of a tyrant-king (509 bc), anti-monarchic views became standard fare in legal and political debate whenever anyone suspected tyranny. Julius Caesar, seen by some, and slain, as a tyrant, was well aware of such republican sympathies and ‘bore with good nature’ abuse of himself. So did his successor Augustus (27 bc). True, he ended publication of senatorial minutes, but senators still had their say. Vitriolic pamphlets directed against him were initially met with written

The Spectator

2513: Golden anniversary

1A, on 23 17, 41 1D 8 in this 31 was 21D. This anniversary announcement consists of eleven words and includes an apostrophe. Each group of coloured squares reveals a name of one of the team, past or present. One blue square does double duty as it overlaps a green square too. Doc compiled the grid and three clues. Pabulum, Lavatch, Mr Magoo and Fieldfare shared the remainder between them. Across 9 Caesar’s journey through Iceni territory (4) 11 Undecided where to paraglide? (10, four words) 12 Swats young bee eludes (4) 14 Feel fond of fighting terrible Tom (6, two words) 16 Cartoon canine is present joy ultimately (5)

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 3 July 2021

I have a confession to make. I did something I haven’t done for over 20 years: I went on holiday. A proper holiday. No bridge, no card games of any sort. No online kibitzing and no bridge reading or discussing. Just endless Covid tests and quarantine coming home — the only small problem being nothing to write about. ‘The Real Deal’ by Larry Cohen in the ACBL’s Bulletin magazine features one of the last hands played by the super-gifted Justin Lall, who tragically died last year, aged 33. West led the ♥A and Declarer (Justin) made a plan. He needed the diamond finesse to work but he also needed to

The Spectator

2510: Prom session – solution

Twelve symmetrically disposed unclued entries comprise three pairs of Spoonerisms (an anagram of the title): POURING RAIN/ROARING PAIN, FRYING PAN/PRYING FAN and COTTON REEL/ROTTEN KEEL. First prize John Kitchen, Breachwood Green, Herts Runners-up Eddie Looby, Longbridge, Birmingham; Justin Koprowski, High Wycombe, Bucks

Luke McShane

Firestarter

It’s a joy to watch a player like Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who can light a fire with his bare hands. Where most are content to develop their pieces in the opening moves, he has a knack for igniting the play at the slightest provocation. In the game below, Caruana’s move 9 h3 looks unremarkable, but Mamedyarov saw a ‘hook’ for his attack which began with 9…g5 (see diagram), since the imminent advance g5-g4 threatens to open the g-file, so that a rook on g8 can menace the White king on g1. Mamedyarov’s vigorous assault brought him an important win on his way to tournament victory at the Superbet Chess Classic, held

Luke McShane

No. 660

White to play. So–Vachier-Lagrave, Paris, June 2021. The queen on e7 can be taken, but Black’s last move was …Rd8, counterattacking White’s queen. Which move did White play to expose the flaw in this idea? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 5 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 Nfd7+! Rxd7 2 Nxe6+ wins the Black queen, or, 1…Kg7 2 Qxf7+ Kh6 3 Rf6 wins. Last week’s winner Robin Murfin, Lyme Regis, Dorset

Wednesday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Oxfam’s strange obsession with ‘whiteness’

Remember when it was considered wrong for workplaces to harangue their employees about their racial origins? Ah, those were the days. Sadly, they’re long gone. Now it’s all the rage for employers to sit their staff down and berate them about their skin colour and all the problems it apparently causes. The latest workplace to go down this weird road is Oxfam. There’s disquiet in Oxfam’s ranks after its UK employees were asked to take a ‘whiteness’ survey. The 1,800 workers were told to state their ethnicity, define themselves as ‘non-racist, anti-racist or neither’, and open their eyes to how terrible whiteness is. ‘All echelons of power, to some degree,

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

The UK is finally clamping down on hare coursing gangs

Once upon a time, hare coursing was a respectable sport, practised by Royals and other members of the gentry. The Forest Laws, imposed after the Norman Conquest, were introduced to ensure that only the nobility could own greyhounds which is why lurchers – crossbreeds between a sighthound and another working dog – became both popular, and known as ‘poachers’ dogs’. But in 2005 the Hunting Act arrived ­­– changing everything. In 2019, I wrote in these pages about the current illegal hare coursing occurring across the country: ‘It was the Hunting Act that drove coursing underground, and at that point the rules of the game changed. In formal coursing events, a pair

Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The UN’s American obsession

Under other circumstances I wouldn’t mind living in the American empire here in Britain. The tithes are reasonable and the legal structures hardly onerous. If Washington were content to simply dispatch its governors, collect its money, and crush the occasional revolt in the Celtic provinces I don’t think I’d have any complaints to make. The missionaries, though, I could do without. It says something about the pace of change that I barely raised an eyebrow at Sadiq Khan’s Pride tweet choosing to reference the Stonewall riots – a series of demonstrations in New York – rather than select an episode from British history. How assimilated by another country are you

Richard Dobbs

The Covid battle Sajid Javid still has to face

Despite the humiliation of Matt Hancock’s exit, Sajid Javid, the new Health Secretary, might in fact find him a tough act to follow. After an appalling start to our Covid-19 response with missing PPE, high care home deaths, and delays to lockdowns and border controls, under Hancock’s watch the UK is now one of the most vaccinated countries in the world and appears to have decoupled deaths from Covid-19 infections. We seem on track to remove the remaining restrictions in July and deliver some of the strongest economic growth in the world as we bounce back. But Javid, as he considers other health issues such as dealing with the backlog

Tuesday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Euro 2020: I love Raheem Sterling

England: 2 (Sterling, Kane)  Germany: 0 (nobody at all) Well, that lifted the spirits a bit. And coming after the French being evicted by their alpine neighbours, it has meant quite a lot of alcoholic celebration in Liddle Towers. A deserved victory over Germany — who, contrary to popular belief, we do beat quite often. But not often when it really matters.  Credit to Southgate. I am no fan of the man, although he seems a decent and likeable chap. But he got it kind of right here. He is still determined to restrict the number of truly creative players (Sterling aside) in the England team to one. In the

Daniel French

The strange religiosity of Covid compliance

Something has gone badly wrong with the Established Church when it appears more indignant at the breaking of social distance rules than the ruining of two marriages by the same politician. On Sunday’s GB News morning show even the unflappable Nigel Farage was unusually wide eyed when the Bishop of Manchester, Rt Rev David Walker, remarked of the now disgraced Matt Hancock: ‘So, I think I’m more worried about the fact that he failed to keep social distancing than I am about the fact that here is a middle-aged bloke having a bit of a fling.’ To be fair to bishop David, when pushed by Farage that the Church should

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The tyranny of bad hymns

25 min listen

Christian music lovers of all denominations – Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, whatever – know only too well that they enter their local churches at their peril. In this week’s episode I talk to the irrepressible Lois Letts, a wedding and funeral organist for C of E churches in rural Herefordshire, about bad hymns. The funerals are appropriate, since when I first met Lois she wrote obituaries for the Times. Pity the wet vicar who tries to force her to play a bad hymn! We don’t mince our words: our discussion is a euphemism-free zone and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And there’s a musical coda, a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Should we be mixing AstraZeneca and Pfizer shots?

To date, the Covid vaccination programme in Britain has involved two doses of one of three vaccines – AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna. But it has stuck rigidly to giving people two doses of the same vaccine. The NHS has not allowed patients to mix vaccines except in a few strict scenarios, such as allowing a second dose of Pfizer when someone developed a blood clot from a first dose of AstraZeneca. But could we actually improve vaccine efficacy by mixing doses? An Oxford study suggests that we could. The study recruited 830 volunteers who were given one vaccine shot. Some – on a blind, randomised basis – were, four weeks

Mark Piggott

What do Extinction Rebellion have against a free press?

One can only hope that the profound political thinkers of Extinction Rebellion took care not to dump cow manure on the wrong steps when they descended en masse to Kensington this week. According to the group, which used the somewhat confusing ‘#Freethepress’ slogan, the target of their protest was Northcliffe House, home of the Daily Mail. Annoyingly for the eco-warriors though, the paper is based in the same building as the Independent, which unfortunately shares pretty similar beliefs to XR: that we are all doomed and will shortly be fried to a crisp by the sun, unless rising sea levels drown us all first. As part of the stunt, XR

Julie Bindel

Lesbians are being erased by transgender activists

When did ‘lesbian’ become a dirty word again? Perhaps it is since the trans-Taliban decided that we were a group of bigots and fascists, motivated by hatred of transgender people, existing solely to remove the rights of non-binary, sapiosexual, polyamorous blue fringed narcissists. When I came out in 1977, lesbians would be routinely physically and sexually assaulted by men who took offence at being sexually rejected. We were sacked from our jobs, bullied and harassed on the street and in bars, and told we were freaks and perverts. Today, the job of making our lives a misery has been taken over by some trans-activists, aided and abetted by their bearded

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Euro 2020: Why I hate VAR

Austria 1 (Arnautovic)  Italy 0 The laws in my universe differ from those imposed by Fifa. Austria go through, having weathered a difficult first half and then taken control of the game and in the 64th minute won it through a beautiful header from their querulous star, Marko Arnautovic. It was a deserved victory. The point of the offside law was to punish forwards who made the game dull as hell. It was not intended to punish a swift, brilliant attack This is why I hate VAR and all of those other inventions the pencil necks have come up with in order to make football pristine, free of chance and human

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Matt Hancock had to go

Last night, I had a call from a government minister who was incandescent at the idea of Matt Hancock being allowed to stay as Health Secretary. If he continued, the minister argued, it would mean the Tory Party is telling the world that it’s okay with rank hypocrisy – and quite happy breaking the rules they ruthlessly set for other people. A few MPs were quiet in public and even the normally gossipy Tory MP WhatsApp group was silent. This was a sign of rage too deep to express. Some were making their views clear to Number 10.  It was Matt Hancock who had pushed to criminalise the private lives

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sajid Javid appointed as new Health Secretary

Sajid Javid is the new Health Secretary, replacing Matt Hancock following his resignation. Javid has been out of government ever since he resigned as Chancellor in protest at the conditions Boris Johnson was trying to impose on him during his reshuffle. Since then, he has been busy on the backbenches but bit in a particularly troublesome fashion. As a former Chancellor and Home Secretary he has the necessary experience of dealing with difficult policy issues and big departments. It’s worth noting that some of the changes that Javid resisted have since been reversed, with the Number 10 and Treasury teams no longer working in step. As a former Treasury man,