The Battle for Britain | 27 March 2021
Society
Thursday
2496: Depart Paddington – solution
The play was The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare. The perimetric dramatis personae are MAMILLIUS, LEONTES, FLORIZEL, DORCAS, MOPSA, HERMIONE and ANTIGONUS; NODI (23) and DIPTERA (17) are anagrams of Dion and Perdita. THE WINTERS TALE (in the third row) was to be shaded. Title: ref. ‘Exit, pursued by a bear.’ First prize Totty Milne, Wells, SomersetRunners-up Tom Taylor, Canterbury, Kent; John Carrington, Denchworth, Oxfordshire
2499: Entitled trio
The unclued lights, including three proper nouns (two of two words), consist of three groups of three words of a kind. Together, the three groups suggest a title; the author (seven letters) must be highlighted in the completed grid. Brewer confirms the thematic elements not in Chambers. Across 1 It regulates pressure in pub with drunken toast (8) 8 Formerly heartless German painter (4) 13 A feature of religious buildings is long (6) 15 Southern runners – they seem happy (7) 17 After a little time, nothing’s dry (4) 18 50” terrace (5) 19 Idiot is eating a fruit (6) 23 Hunters having time with rustler abroad (8) 24
The bard responds to news that he has been cancelled
In Competition No. 3191 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy reflecting on the news that the Bard has been cancelled by some US academics. Teachers in the States have called into question the centrality of Shakespeare in the English curriculum given that his works are, according to Amanda MacGregor, writing in the School Library Journal, ‘full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir’. Some have seen this as yet another example of the tyranny of wokeness; others as a perfectly reasonable attempt to re-evaluate the role the Bard’s works should play in a 21st-century classroom. But what would the man himself
No. 646
Black to play… and lose! Aronian–Van Foreest, March 2021. Van Foreest’s next move didn’t blunder his queen but was nonetheless a fatal error. Can you see what he played? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 29 March. 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…Rb4! 2 Rxh4+ Kg3! Now 3 Rxb4 is stalemate, or 3 Rg4+ Rxg4 4 hxg4 Kxg4 is a draw. White played 2 Kh2 and after Ke3 a draw was agreed soon after.Last week’s winner Arturs Kokins, Edinburgh
Everybody must get stoned
Have you ever played the Frankenstein-Dracula variation? The Monkey’s Bum? The Nescafé Frappé Attack? These are all real chess openings, and each has some merit. That is more than can be said for the Bongcloud, which begins with the moves 1 e4 e5 2 Ke2. This daft opening exploded in popularity last year when it was championed (in jest) by grandmaster and Twitch streamer Hikaru Nakamura. In fact the Bongcloud has hung in the air for much longer than that. According to one origin story (which appears genuine, but who knows?) an online persona named Lenny_Bongcloud was already playing it more than a decade ago. The Bongcloud has impeccable memetic
The ugly truth about natural horsemanship
The rope riders came down the driveway slowly, their horses veering this way and that, side to side, forwards a few steps, then backwards nearly as many. It took them an hour to trespass from the bridleway that crosses the top of the drive and make their slow, dangerously shaky course between the paddocks full of horses until they made it to just opposite our smallholding, where their mounts gave up completely and just refused to take another step. There were four horses, but only one was wearing what I would call tack, as in a saddle and bridle. The other three, including a child’s pony being ridden by a
Wednesday
Is AstraZeneca’s Covid jab effective against the South African variant?
The AstraZeneca vaccine has been under attack ever since the results of its phase three trials were announced in December. When the results of US trials were released this week showing 79 per cent efficacy against symptomatic disease and 100 per cent protection from serious cases of Covid 19 – and failing to show up any serious side-effects – it seemed to help bolster its reputation. Yet some of that was undone by subsequent accusations by the US Data and Safety Monitoring Board that AstraZeneca may have included out of date data in its trial results. The company has been asked to come back and present new calculations, using data gathered from its
Sturgeon suffers courtroom blow over church lockdown rules
The Scottish government has suffered a major reversal in court over its Covid-19 regulations. The Court of Session has found its blanket ban on public worship to be unlawful. In January, Nicola Sturgeon closed places of worship across Scotland ‘for all purposes except broadcasting a service or conducting a funeral, wedding, or civil partnership’. She said at the time that, while ministers were ‘well aware of how important communal worship is to people… we believe this restriction is necessary to reduce the risk of transmission’. Canon Tom White, parish priest of St Alphonsus in Glasgow’s east end, and representatives of other Christian denominations, sought judicial review. They argued that this closure
Prince Harry’s new job is hardly ‘public service’
At the tender age of 36, Prince Harry has got his first job since leaving the royal family. Congratulations to him. As most teenagers will know it is both a liberating and formative experience. Paper boy, shopfloor dogsbody, chief impact officer – the roles can be unglamorous, but they’re almost always worth it. Harry’s big post-Megxit break into the world of work is everything we could have expected. He will be working as something called a ‘chief impact officer’ at a Silicon Valley firm called BetterUp, which offers professional-development and mental-health coaching to businesses and their employees. Going by BetterUp’s website, it seems to peddle therapeutic burble to firms with
The case for a domestic abuse register
In the 12 months since the first lockdown, at least 112 women in the UK have been killed by men. Killers such as Anthony Williams are often treated sympathetically by the courts because the men claim to have been adversely affected by the pandemic, meaning that judges and jurors go soft on them in the same way they take it easy on men who say they only killed their partners because she nagged or cheated. Many of these men who commit fatal acts of violence have put women through hell for years, if not decades, before killing. But as the survivors of domestic abuse know, a woman unlucky enough to
Should we vaccinate kids against Covid?
Children could start getting Covid vaccines over the summer as part of the government’s herd immunity strategy. As Katy Balls reported last month, the current thinking in government is that vaccinating the majority of the population is the best way to stop the virus in its tracks. But where does this leave parents like me who have concerns about giving their children the jab? NHS England’s chief executive Simon Stevens has already mooted the idea of combining the flu and Covid vaccinations into one dose. And streamlining the two vaccinations makes perfect sense for adults. But it could put parents in a difficult position. All this leads to the question of whether
Does the UK really have the highest Covid death rate?
A long way from home A walrus turned up off the Pembrokeshire coast, thousands of miles south of its normal habitat. Some other lonely visitors: — In July 2020 an albatross, a native of the southern hemisphere, was spotted near Flamborough on the Yorkshire coast. It was one of 30 sightings over the past few decades.— In September 2018 a beluga whale, normally resident near Svalbard, Norway, was found swimming off Gravesend.— In May 2016 a 25ft bowhead whale, more usually seen off Greenland, was spotted in Mount’s Bay, Cornwall.— In August 1999 a great white shark, common to South African, Californian and Australian coasts, and rarely found north of
Tuesday
It’s about time Bristol’s protestors grew up
As a citizen of Bristol who was kept awake all night, again, by a circling police helicopter, I am growing weary of the riots. Outside of London, we must be the most rioted-in city in mainland Britain. As Robert Gore-Langton writes, we riot with monotonous and increasing regularity, with major events in 1793, 1831, 1932, 1944,1980, 1981, 1987, 1992, 2011, 2019, and in 2020, when the statue of Edward Colston was toppled and dumped in the dock. Apparently, our tendency to become disorderly in public spaces – so marked it has been investigated by sociologists – dates back at least 700 years to the St James’s Fair, where people gathered
Prince Harry gets a job in Silicon Valley
Where does one find freedom these days? A billion dollar Silicon Valley tech company now appears to be the answer. Mr S was delighted to read in the Wall Street Journal this afternoon that Prince Harry, 36, will be taking up his first formal job post-Megxit as the chief impact officer at tech start up BetterUp in California. The Duke of Sussex will be providing ‘proactive coaching’ for personal development, increased awareness and ‘an all-round better life’ at the startup which provides professional coaching, mental health advice and ‘immersive learning.’ BetterUp was founded in 2013 and recently raised $125m from international investors to fund expansion which valued the company at $1.7bn. Heraldic symbols and royal lions out, tech unicorns in
Don’t blame private schools for failing to tackle ‘rape culture’
The allegations levelled against some of Britain’s top private schools have been deeply troubling. Dulwich College turns boys into sexual abusers, one former pupil has claimed. A ‘dossier of rape culture’ has been compiled by ex students at Westminster School; Latymer Upper School has reported sex abuse allegations to the police. These are just a handful of examples: Everyone’s Invited – an online campaign which invites young people to post anonymous testimonies of sexual assault and harassment – has over 4100 testimonies from girls as young as nine. For teachers like me who have taught sex education to 14 and 15 year old boys, these allegations are shocking but perhaps not surprising.
Are we there yet? Realising the future of electric cars
41 min listen
Unreliable, slow and you’ll never find a charging point – those are some of the things that come to mind when thinking about electric vehicles for many drivers. But are these outdated myths? The government has less than a decade to meet its 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars. With the future of electric vehicles just around the corner, Kate Andrews talks to a panel of special guests about how much progress has been made in the industry, and how much still needs to be done With Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport; Mike Hawes, the CEO of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders; and
What is it with Bristol and rioting?
‘Bristol riots’ has a lengthy section of its own on Wikipedia. In the wake of the ugly scenes that erupted in the city at the weekend, the list of disturbances is now even longer. Police were injured, a few badly. Vans were set alight and the mindless joy of all that breaking glass became infectious — one young woman found time to skateboard during the mayhem as tires burnt, fireworks flew and bobbies bled. The riot is now being described romantically as the ‘the Battle of Bridewell Street’ after the street where the police station sits now daubed in graffiti. But in reality it was vicious. Despite Bristol’s well-heeled student population (said
Why are Covid conspiracies so appealing?
The recent decision by several European countries to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine will have thrown petrol on the bonfire of conspiracies surrounding the pandemic. These range from believing that vaccines contain microchips so that Bill Gates can track you, to believing that the virus is a global conspiracy to allow governments to introduce new draconian measures to control their populations. Why are so many conspiracy theories thriving today and what do they tell us about ourselves? During my time serving in Iraq I heard lots of conspiracy theories. Many concerned exaggerated capabilities of the equipment we had, such as the belief that night-vision goggles and even Army-issued
Monday
The Bristol riots show the danger of ignoring anti-police extremism
The ugly scenes in Bristol last night make it plain to see that Britain can no longer turn a blind eye to a particular brand of political disorder. Violent clashes during the city’s ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstration – supposedly in protest against the Conservative government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill – resulted in 20 police officers being injured, burned-out police vans, and a police station being attacked. Two officers who were seriously injured suffered from broken ribs, a broken arm and a punctured lung. So who was to blame for this violence? The chairman of Avon and Somerset Police Federation, Andy Roebuck, labelled last night’s anarchy a form of ‘unprecedented violence’. And the city’s mayor, Marvin
