Society

Thursday

Melissa Kite

Was endorsing Boris one of my worst misjudgments ever?

Now that our social lives are a Venn diagram that only mathematicians can understand I am officially becoming a recluse. I’ve been getting to this point for years, but since the latest Covid rules mean that what we can and can’t do until ‘vaccine freedom day’ can only be understood if you have a head for shaded charts, I am resigning from polite society, in so far as I was ever in it. Boris may as well have announced 375 tiers and a rule saying anyone who wants to celebrate Christmas needs to sit inside an actual bubble and roll themselves along the floor. I have no idea what the

Toby Young Toby Young

The battle for Eton’s soul

When trying to get my head around the row that has engulfed Eton College in the past two weeks I keep getting sidetracked by the comic details. Like the fact that the headmaster, Simon Henderson, is nicknamed ‘trendy Hendy’ on account of his mission to transform Eton into a modern, progressive institution. By all accounts, he has set about trying to cleanse the school of its ‘toxic’ traditions with the zeal of a captain in the Red Guards, promising to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum, recruiting the creator of the Everyday Sexism blog to lecture the staff on the gender pay gap and, at one point, proposing to scrap Eton’s famous uniform.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I stop the cleaner ‘helping’ with my jigsaw?

Q. Unlike my wife, I am tiring of Netflix. Wanting a project to occupy me during these long dark nights, I invested in a marvellous wooden jigsaw puzzle from Wentworth. The 1,000-piece fine art seascape arrived and I set up a table and chair in our library in anticipation of weeks of quiet gratification. I spent the first few evenings laboriously working on the edges but this week I have seen that there has been progress made without my input. My wife and I can only assume that the culprit is our cleaner of 35 years, thinking that by adding pieces she is ‘helping’. I know she would be offended

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

A magical field hospital for vegetables: Turnips reviewed

Turnips is an haute cuisine restaurant inside a greengrocer in Borough Market in London. I suspect others will try this conceit soon — it is the sort of dishonest fantasy affluent anti-vax mothers enjoy as they peddle their oblivious self-hatred on smartphones made of minerals hewn by child slaves — but not like this. Turnips is indisputably magical. Perhaps I say this because it is almost completely outdoors but still warm. These are mad times, even for mad times. Borough is a good place to feel the throb of the ancient city; but particularly now. It has the toughness and ennui of a district that says: global pandemic, kids? What

Dot Wordsworth

The strange language of this year

‘Forget coronavirus,’ said my husband, ‘the word of the year is strange.’ The strange thing is he’s right. This wasn’t determined by online polls or fixed by dictionaries. It emerged spontaneously and distinctly when the lockdowns got going. About lockdown I am still not quite happy. The word seems a little extreme for the episodes so far. But friends kept mentioning these strange times. The word fitted in more than one sense. When politicians’ repetition of unprecedented had become tiresome, strange still applied in the sense of ‘unfamiliar; not known or experienced before’. It also described the feeling of life as ‘abnormal’. Both meanings have been present in English since

Jeremy Clarke

I found a confused elderly man in my bedroom

There are several cave houses built into the cliff. Ours is the highest and can be reached only by a precipitous footpath with a lot of puffing and panting. The postbox is at the foot of the path, but occasionally the postman carries up something or other that needs to be signed for. When you go to the door to answer his knock, you find him doubled over, his hands on his knees, pouring with sweat, gasping pitifully, unable to speak. Guests likewise. The path up to the house is a public footpath that is part of a tourist trail called ‘Visit the Grottos’. One pays €2 at the tourist

The Spectator

What are the best pandemic board games?

Dangerous games Sage scientists advised against playing board games at Christmas. Some games to consider if you are feeling subversive:Pandemic Co-operative board game inspired by 2003 Sars outbreak in which players pool their talents to defeat a deadly disease. Was stocked by the unlikely gift shop at the US Centers for Disease Control.Corona Battle Against Covid-19 German game where players battle to defend their businesses against the pandemic.Plague Inc. Players compete as diseases to infect the greatest number of people.Viral Players compete to try to infect a human body, braving its immune system.Infected One person plays plague doctor, while the others are villagers competing to try to stop him infecting

Candia Lutyens

Why has eBay banned me for life?

Imagine a country where there is no rule of law, where you might be scooped off the street without warning, put before a kangaroo court and sentenced to life in prison without parole and without right of appeal. You have no idea of the charge against you because no one in authority will tell you. You are innocent of any crime, except you don’t know what your crime is; the full might of the law has been brought down on your head and you have nowhere to turn. What if this imaginary country was not in fact a nation state but a large, wealthy and powerful company? What if it

James Ball

The problem with ‘immunity passports’

Just a few months ago it was not certain that we would find a vaccine for Covid-19. Now, we have three, with potentially more on the way — and the rollout of the Pfizer jab due to begin next week. It’s an extraordinary achievement for the research community, our best hope of restoring normal life and a bloody relief after a year of disappointments. But the government, at least, should beware of geeks bearing gifts. To get us to herd immunity, they have to persuade somewhere between 60 per cent to 90 per cent of us to get vaccinated. You can see Boris Johnson’s problem. If he makes vaccination completely

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Save me from the cult of instant intimacy

The other day I made a couple of calls to a bank about a loan. After the usual jumping over hoops to get to talk to a human being — the failure of voice-activated systems to understand a word I say, even when it’s the word ‘loan’, is particularly wounding — I got through to a young man who passed me on to a young woman. In both cases the answer to my actual query was no; they ended the call with ‘Have a good one’ and ‘You take care now’. To which all you can say, a bit lamely, is: ‘You too!’ Whenever someone tells me to have a

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The texture of our country is changing before our eyes

On Saturday night we sat around the kitchen table, my family and I, and had a takeaway from the Turkish restaurant on our high street. We opened box after box: chunky tzatziki; calamari in crisp batter; salty ovals of sucuk; flatbread studded with black and yellow sesame seeds; hot homemade falafels, crunchy outside and yielding within, smeared with cool hummus. And, which I’d been missing since lockdown began, lamb ribs: skin salty and crisp from the grill, the meat underneath sweet and chewy, tarring their bed of rice. God it was bliss. But it made me feel melancholy, too. Meze & Shish only opened in the past couple of years

Charlie Campbell­

The traditional cricket tea is under threat

Cricket is not renowned for embracing change. The introduction of the middle stump, overarm bowling and Kevin Pietersen were all greeted with great suspicion. But now the biggest change of the lot is proposed. Forget the Hundred: the traditional cricket tea is under threat. This summer, as a result of guidelines to tackle Covid-19, amateur cricketers were not able to use changing rooms, shine the ball with saliva or sweat, or enjoy the customary tea provided by the home club. Now the Sussex League is voting on whether to make tea voluntary next season for its 140 clubs. They will decide whether the home team should provide the cakes and

Gilbert Greenall

Trade not aid: spending more doesn’t mean we care more

Outside the Catholic mission I walked through rows of women in traditional hide skirts, squatting or sitting with legs astride, palms upturned in supplication. Many suffered from scabies and cradled emaciated babies, and all looked 20 years older than their true age. These are my memories of the Uganda famine in 1980 and these were the survivors. Africa is a different place today and so are the methods used to combat famine. But this was where I learnt about the contradictions of overseas aid. Aid is pernicious, and injudicious aid can destroy all before it. Take food aid. It is wonderful for saving those in extreme peril, but once the

Andrew Doyle

The ‘anti-racism’ movement is sowing deeper divisions

Have you ever claimed to be ‘not racist’? If so, sorry, but you’re a bigot. Should this seem incoherent, then you’re clearly not well versed in critical race theory: a once niche academic field that has gone mainstream and popularised concepts such as ‘white privilege’, ‘white fragility’ and ‘systemic racism’. According to Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Anti-Racist, ‘the claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism’. Alana Lentin, author of Why Race Still Matters, takes it a step further, arguing that to be ‘not racist’ is ‘a form of discursive racist violence’. If you declare yourself not racist, it’s an unequivocal sign you’re

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Rugby must try harder

Remember those lazy, hazy, crazy days of last year’s rugby World Cup, when as perfect a performance by England as we are ever likely to see dethroned the All Blacks? England went through to the final 19-7 with a brilliant, nimble, free-running performance, backs and forwards in perfect harmony, and a dazzling display of skilful tactical kicking. Seems a long time ago, doesn’t it? Friends told me after the final, where England were made to look very ordinary, that the style of South Africa’s victory (despite Cheslin Kolbe’s exquisite winning try) could be the death of rugby: attritional forward play and relentless box kicking, gaining ground and forcing penalties. All

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The Tavistock is a national scandal

How noble of the British Library to have apologised to the family of the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes for having identified him as a beneficiary of slavery. The library’s scrupulous and deranged researchers had unearthed evidence that Hughes may have been a distant relative of a man called Nicholas Ferrar, born in 1592, and that Ferrar had some early involvement in the slave trade. Ferrar died childless so the precise link was not known, but it was enough for Liz Jolly’s maniacs to besmirch the man. Ms Jolly is chief librarian and the woman who said that racism was ‘a creation of white people’ — along with body odour,

The Spectator

2483: In my soup – solution

Unclued lights are anagrams of animals: PRAENOMINA (1A: Pomeranian), MARTIAN (18: tamarin), LARBOARD (21: Labrador), SHORE (28: horse), PROTEIN (42: pointer), MACLE (6: camel), MENTALISM (24: Simmental), LATER (25: ratel), CREMATE (31: meercat) and MAGYAR (34: margay). The title suggests the song ‘Animal Crackers in My Soup’. First prize A.R. Wightman, Harpenden, HertsRunners-up Roderick Rhodes, Goldsborough, N. Yorks; G.H. Willett, London SW19

Lucy Vickery

What Mr Micawber thinks of Charles Dickens

In Competition No. 3177 you were invited to submit a well-known fictional person’s view of their author. Highlights in a varied and engaging entry included Janine Beacham’s Mrs Malaprop: ‘I am indelibly proud to be the procreation of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a calibrated writer of plagues…’; Anthony Blanche’s withering verdict on Evelyn Waugh as told to J.C.H. Mounsey: ‘My dear, what can I say? An absolute horror. Snobbish of course, being trade through and through. Constantly claiming gentry in his own b-b-background when the best that could be found were rows of sturdy yeomen…’; and Peter Quint giving the lowdown on his creator, courtesy of David Shields: ‘This personage, impressive

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Johnson jabs at Starmer’s Covid queries

That was risky. The PM came to the House for today’s session with nothing at all in his briefing folder. Not a fact. Not a statistic. Not a single detail to rebuff his opponents. Usually he tosses out figures in all directions to create the impression of authority and control. Today he had nothing more than a little speech of thanks for Pfizer’s Covid jab which has just got the OK from the regulatory boffins. ‘I would like to thank all those who have made this possible,’ he said, like a tearful starlet clutching a Golden Globe. Sir Keir Starmer echoed his delight. ‘Fantastic news,’ he gushed. Then he treated

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Two unanswered questions on the Covid-19 vaccine

Britain, we learned this morning, has become the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which is likely to be deployed from Monday onwards. Is Britain being reckless, or are other countries dragging their heels?  The first point to make is that, however tempting though it may be to think so, it is not a case of Britain taking advantage of new-found freedoms enabled by Brexit. It may be in the future that Britain develops a more nimble regulatory system than the EU, and that British patients can benefit for the earlier administration of drugs, but the UK will remain under the European Medicines Agency’s regulatory system