Society

Thursday

24 Jun 2021

Why is modern architecture so ugly?

In Chesham and Amersham last week, Tory voters punished the government, not only for building on greenfield sites, but for allowing the construction of too many ugly, badly designed buildings. The British public are fed up with modern architecture. Despite polls that prove this time and time again, architects simply ignore people’s views. Indeed, if the public has the temerity to criticise their latest works, there is uproar — as I have discovered to my cost. At a dinner in late 2019, I asked Norman Foster, the ‘starchitect’ of such things as London’s widely derided City Hall and the Berlin Reichstag, if he was pleased by the government’s new Building

Martin Vander Weyer

Why private equity sharks are shopping at Morrisons

The late Sir Ken Morrison — founder of the eponymous supermarket chain that’s the latest UK target for US private equity — had the blunt manner of the Yorkshire cattle farmer he became in reluctant retirement after he was ousted by his own board. Criticising his successors from the floor at one of his last AGM attendances, he roared: ‘I have 1,000 bullocks… but you’ve got a lot more bullshit than me.’ So I’m sorry he’s not around to accost the suits from the New York firm of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (and their adviser, former Tesco chief Sir Terry Leahy) on the intentions behind the takeover bid that sent

Melissa Kite

I’m gypsy and proud

Exciting news from my father’s cousin in Canada. ‘You asked about our grandfather, there is much to tell,’ he writes. ‘You may be surprised to know that George’s mother was a gypsy. So it seems that we have some gypsy blood coursing through our veins.’ As I read the email, which my father had forwarded to me, I shouted at the builder boyfriend: ‘I knew it! You’re not the only gypsy in this household!’ He was outside checking the oil in my car, and shouted back to say he didn’t know what I was on about this time. But when he came back in wiping the oil from his hands

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 26 June 2021

On the whole, I’ve enjoyed playing bridge from the comfort of home during lockdown. One regrettable outcome, however, is that I’ve taken up smoking again. Cards and cigarettes just go too well together. Back in the days before smoking was banned indoors, we puffed away so much at TGR’s rubber bridge club that I couldn’t go on anywhere without washing my hair and clothes first —no perfume was strong enough. Even among tournament players, smoking seemed to be encouraged. The England player Patrick Collins told me that he took up smoking in 1970 when first prize in the Torquay Congress was 200 Benson & Hedges. Bridge has so many tense

Arlene Foster

I’m calling my removal from office ‘the great betrayal’

I’ve always maintained I go to Fermanagh for sanity, and after the past few months, I need a return to sanity more than ever. Fermanagh is by far the least populated of Northern Ireland’s six counties and it’s beautiful. I grew up here in the countryside, playing in fields, and now live near Brookebrough in the east of the county. From the sanctuary of Fermanagh I think about the fact that the new DUP leader and his team will now have to negotiate with Sinn Fein to get the first minister nominated again. Once I resigned, it meant that the deputy first minister was also out: for both ministers to

Dot Wordsworth

Critical thinking: the difference between ‘critique’ and ‘criticise’

Six years ago I wrote here about critique, as a noun or verb, and things have gone from bad to worse, as expected. I didn’t like it then, and even my husband was repelled. I had thought that people were trying to avoid the negative connotation of criticise. But both words are now used in precisely the same way. Sportswriters often reveal the real way in which words are used. The other day Mary Waltz wrote: ‘This is not a critique. But the Finland goal was a save Schmeichel makes in his sleep.’ She probably meant the same as ‘This is not a criticism’ — i.e. not a negative criticism.

Tanya Gold

Harry Potter meets Ikea: Backlot Cafe reviewed

Harry Potter is a fictional orphan locked in a cupboard by his aunt and uncle, after which he discovers a magical world and a better class of nemesis than his ugly suburban relatives. It seethes with class. The Dursleys are lower-middle-class, golf-club-haunting gammons. I suspect their MP is Dominic Raab, and I suspect they vote for him. The improved nemesis ‘Lord’ Voldemort is half landed gentry and heir to a Jacobean manor house on a hill. Harry Potter is world famous, and so people want to join him in suburban misery (we are near Watford), though in a slightly larger cupboard: the vast prop room in a former sound stage

Toby Young

What would ‘sensitivity readers’ have made of my student scoops?

‘Whatever you do, don’t call them snowflakes,’ Caroline said the last time I spoke to Oxford students. ‘That’s not a grown-up way of conducting a political debate. It’s like calling you a gammon.’ She’s right, of course, but by God they make it hard. This week we learned that the Oxford University students’ union is planning to elect a ‘consultancy’ of ‘sensitivity readers’ to scrutinise articles in student newspapers before publication to make sure they won’t offend anyone. If the union has its way, the editor of Cherwell, one of Oxford’s oldest student publications, won’t have final say over what’s published in the weekly paper. Once he’s signed off on

Andrew Watts

The problem with the Pride flag

Last month, the Pride flag was updated by the Intersex Equality Rights UK campaign group — the simple rainbow was not considered inclusive enough for intersex people. Other pressure groups had already added stripes for black people, brown people, trans people and people with Aids. The Gay Pride flag first flew 43 years ago this week. It was sewn by the American gay activist Gilbert Baker, who performed under the drag name of ‘Busty Ross’, claiming kinship (of a sort) with the 18th-century Quaker upholsterer Betsy Ross, who sewed the first American flag. Baker had been asked by Harvey Milk, the most famous openly gay politician in America, to design

The Spectator

Letters: Covid wouldn’t be the first virus to leak from a lab

The good doctors Sir: Not all GPs are currently ‘Dr No’ (12 June). I phoned my surgery at 9.30 the other day, expecting to be told the doctor would phone me back in three days’ time, only to be given a face-to-face appointment for 11.30. Everything seemed normal there, apart from the face masks and open windows, and the doctor gave me nearly half an hour of her time. On another occasion when I requested an urgent consultation, I was told to go straight round, and the GP gave me 40 minutes. During the pandemic I have had one biopsy, two brain scans, two full-body scans, one chest scan, one

The Spectator

How many countries have royal yachts?

Royal waves Does any other country have a royal yacht? — The Queen of Denmark uses HDMY Dannebrog, a 260ft vessel built in 1932 to replace a paddle steamer of the same name. — The Dutch royal family own a 50ft 1950s yacht, De Groene Draeck, used only locally. — King Harald V of Norway has the use of HNoMY Norge, a 264ft vessel originally built for aircraft manufacturer Thomas Sopwith in 1937 and bought by the Norwegian people for their royal family after the second world war. It was restored following a serious fire in 1985. — King Mohammed VI of Morocco owns El Boughaz I, a 133ft yacht

Peter Jones

What the EU could learn from the Athenian Empire

The EU has regularly been likened to the Roman Empire. But its current direction suggests that the Athenian Empire (478-404 bc) is a better parallel. The EU began as an attempt to unify countries economically after the second world war. By slow accretion of powers via the single market, Maastricht, the euro and finally Lisbon, the EU became, drip by drip, a full political union run by an unelected central authority, which now threatens to end vetoes and intervene domestically, suing member states with whose policies on immigration, civil rights, freedom of speech etc it disagrees. After the Persian wars, Athens in 478 bc assembled on Delos an alliance of

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A bombshell by-election, Scotland bans Mancunians and China staffs its space station

Home The government contemplated its promised Planning Bill, blamed for contributing to the astonishing victory for the Liberal Democrat Sarah Green in the Chesham and Amersham by-election. She had gained 21,517 votes to transform the former Conservative majority of 16,223 into one of 8,028. Labour did worse than in any by-election before, securing only 622 votes, 1.6 per cent of the total. John Bercow, the former Speaker, joined the Labour party. Clayton Dubilier & Rice, an American private equity company, offered to buy Morrisons, the supermarket chain, for £5.5 billion. White working-class pupils in England have been failed by decades of neglect, the Education Select Committee found in a report.

Taki

The art of Dolly Parton’s bra

New York I hope this is my last week in the Bagel. I plan to fly first to Switzerland and then on to London. There’s the annual Pugs Club lunch I cannot afford to miss, but now that Boris is married I don’t suppose he gives a damn about the poor little Greek boy and his club lunches. Incidentally, the little bird has answered my last week’s query about The Spectator bash: the sainted editor is waiting to hear what, yes you guessed it, the new bridegroom premier will allow this summer. Boris doesn’t seem to be able to make up his mind whether the magazine he headed for close

The Spectator

2509: Current description – solution

The perimeter quote is from ‘Ode to the West Wind’. The remaining unclued lights were the east wind (24A), south wind (30A), north wind (37A), and west wind (17A) which was to be highlighted. First prize Sarah Drury, Devizes, Wiltshire Runners-up Len Coumbe, Benfleet, Essex; Stephen Billyeald, Pangbourne, Berkshire

Pabulum

2512: Impertinence

Clockwise round the grid from 34 run the answers (6,6,5, 11,4,3,7,4) (one hyphened) to eight riddles followed by the riddler’s name. Two pairs of unclued lights give the name of the riddler’s brother and the nature of the riddler. Shaded squares will give the letters of a relevant name. Elsewhere, ignore an accent. Across 7 Pull ploughs near (7) 8 Rock in baseball field (7) 9 Write sad song about glee lost in heart of dozens (7) 12 US footballer hugs independent babe (4) 14 Little iron crocks for pasta (10) 15 Oxide‘s try-out is disastrous (8) 20 Girton oddball discoursing mechanically (6) 21 Handsomer bachelor shuns lively partygoer (5)

Nick Cohen

Beware Boris’s sinister crackdown on free speech

A Conservative government that boasts it is a defender of free speech against the attacks of ‘the woke’ is about to impose the severest censorship this country has seen in peacetime since parliament abolished press controls in the 1690s. In an extraordinary power grab – which is all the more extraordinary for the absence of opposition – ministers want to silence views that carry no criminal penalty. This is more than a much-needed crackdown on racial attacks on black footballers or incitements to violent crime or any other crime; it is an unmerited attack on free speech. The government’s draft Online Safety bill imposes a ‘duty of care’ on internet companies to remove content that

Wednesday

23 Jun 2021

Edward Davies

Forget race or class, marriage is the big social divide

The latest spark to ignite the culture wars is a report from the parliamentary education committee on the underachievement of working-class white boys. But this isn’t about race. The boys don’t underachieve because they are white. Their skin colour is merely a marker by which we can see that a certain cohort is doing worse than another. And despite received wisdom, it’s not just about poverty, school funding or investment. Children of other ethnicities who are equally poor, and even potentially at the same school, will likely do considerably better. It’s not even about class, which seems to be the latest factor on which the fickle finger of blame is

Fraser Nelson

Can Britain ever build its own Silicon Valley?

36 min listen

Ever since the advent of the internet, respective British governments have sought to make the UK a world leader. Surely, it has been argued, a country with some of the world’s best universities and tech skills can rival America’s success? From the coalition-era Silicon Roundabout to more recent plans for a British DARPA (the US military body which has supercharged scientific research), the idea of turning Britain into a tech superpower remains an evergreen fixation. This year has seen two big tech debuts in the city, albeit with slightly different results. The much-hyped arrival of takeaway giant Deliveroo, for example, turned out to be a bit of a flop, with

Rod Liddle

Euro 2020: England shouldn’t get too excited

Ingerlund: 1 (Sterling) Czechia: 0 — Croatia: 3 (people with name ending in ‘itch’) Scotland 1 (Jimmy) A little better, solely because of changes in the team largely enforced upon old Horseface. Jack Grealish started because the hitherto largely ineffective Phil Foden is carrying a booking. Arsenal’s starlet Bukayo Saka was in the team largely because Mason Mount was in quarantine for having hugged a Scotsman (Never do it. Like handling a hedgehog, you never know what you might catch). These two players transformed England and between them created the game’s only goal, for Raheem Sterling. In that first 45 minutes, England looked quite competent, but then sat back on their lead