Society

Thursday

Jonathan Sumption

Britain’s bizarre Italian travel guidance

Here’s a tip. When the Foreign Office advises against going somewhere, hop on the next plane. The mandarins have advised against visiting Italy because of Covid-19. It’s as bizarre as everything else that our rulers have said about the virus. Confirmed cases in the UK are currently more than twice as high per 100,000 as in Italy. Anyone with our welfare at heart should be telling us to go to Italy at once. I left the next day. The Italians could be forgiven for serving us our own medicine and quarantining all arrivals from the UK. As it is, they test you at the airport, and quarantine is only required

The Spectator

How many school teachers are male?

Special Offa A regulation passed by the Welsh government to prevent people travelling from Covid hotspots in England has brought comparisons to Offa’s Dyke. — There is no firm evidence that the dyke, which takes its name from the king of Mercia between ad 727 and 796, even stretched along the entire English-Welsh border. Moreover, some of the sections which do survive have been dated as early as ad 430, 300 years before Offa’s reign. But whoever built it, its design seems to confirm that it was designed to keep the Welsh out of England rather than the other way round: the ditch is on the west, Welsh side and

The Spectator

Letters: why Scots want independence

State of the Union Sir: Writing in a week that an opinion poll shows 58 per cent support for independence in Scotland, it seems bizarre for Professor Tombs to claim that commentators are ignoring ‘the death throes of separatism’ (‘Out together’, 17 October). He argues that nationalist supporters rely on the Brexit and Covid-19 crises to advance their cause, and that they will be in retreat once things return to normal. Then, once doubts begin to bubble up about the financial and economic uncertainties of independence, Scottish voters will return to the unionist cause. These arguments may give him some comfort, but here in Scotland they seem unreal. Covid-19 has

Taki

I’m now considered a freak in New York

New York It’s nice to finally be in the Bagel, a place where the cows have two legs and no bells around their necks. I walk daily around the park two blocks from my house and stick to the Upper East Side in general. The park is by far the best part of Manhattan, and it’s better than ever because of you-know-what. Yes, the virus has chased away the tourists, and without tourists the rickshaws that had turned the park into a free-for-all have all but disappeared. Central Park is the only part of the city that Bloomberg’s three-term despotic reign didn’t change for the worse. Bloomberg was a so-so

Jeremy Clarke

The generosity of French doctors

My last NHS scan showed a shadow on a rib. The scan report couldn’t decide between a new cancer metastasis or scarring from an old injury. The first would mean the cancer had moved into my skeleton and was on a winning streak. I have fractured ribs in sharp collisions with steering wheels more than once and cling strenuously to the old-scar hypothesis. The image showed a second suspicious blur. Something, possibly a tumour, was putting pressure on my left kidney. Since then I’ve been going around with a length of plastic tube inserted in my urethra to drain it. Until that point my cancer was just a word. Now

Melissa Kite

I removed my mask and all hell broke loose

The girl in the posh soap shop put her right arm out, palm flat in my face, and shouted: ‘Stand back! Step away from me now if you are going to remove your mask!’ I had been advancing on the Vetiver handwash, having failed to make myself clear through my mask to the assistant in her mask that this was what I wanted to buy and, being prevented from picking it up myself as the shop had a no-touch policy, I was driven to the brink of lawlessness. ‘Vetiver!’ I had begun pleading through my face mask as the girl lifted the wrong product off the shelves, over and over

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The Hay has become the Starbucks of literary festivals

The Hay Festival, memorably described by Bill Clinton as ‘the Woodstock of the mind’, has, over the past couple of decades, transformed into something more like the Starbucks of literary festivals. Like a bookish spider plant, it has sent out runners from its home in the rain-sodden Welsh marches to grow festivals all over the world. This spring it went to Abu Dhabi — where its chief point of contact was 69-year-old Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, a scion of the wealthy ruling dynasty who enjoys the title of ‘minister for tolerance’ in that illiberal regime. Should it have been there? This is a perennial ethical problem. Remember that

The Spectator

2477: Rendezvous – solution

The unclued lights take an extra letter to make BRAMBLING (1A), BUDGIE (12A), STARLING (14A), REDSTART (23A), BRANCHER (27A), TURACO (34A), STILT (35A) and CHOUGH (38A), which could then meet at a BIRDBATH. First prize Alasdair MacKenzie, Hambledon, HantsRunners-up Judith Cookson, Prestbury, Cheltenham, Glos; Bill Stewart, Leicester

Aidan Hartley

Back to Exmoor, scene of prep-school rides on rough ponies

Exmoor I am heading to Exmoor for the first time since I was last there in 1977 — and as the train pulls into Tiverton Parkway station my childhood rises back up at me like ground rush. We head north and pass Ravenswood, the gothic building where I spent six years of my life when it was still a prep school. And suddenly I am back on the same road we’d take on Thursdays, in a van heading up to a farm on the moor’s edge. Back then, 43 years ago, a shaggy-haired farmer’s boy called Kevin would lead us out hacking on rough ponies across the heather and marshes.

Cosmo Landesman

The joy of drinking alone

Thanks to a combination of night-time curfews, social-distancing rules, pubs closing, restaurants failing, the ‘rule of six’ and compulsory mask-wearing, that basic and necessary human need for people to meet for a drink has never been so difficult. Now, with the government’s new three-tier Covid strategy in place, anyone at any moment could find their local pub shut, their parties cancelled, and all forms of indoor mixing prohibited. Millions in the UK are already living under these restrictions. It’s a fair bet that millions more will soon join them. And if the government gives in to demands for a ‘circuit breaker’ — a short-term lockdown — it would in effect

Lucy Vickery

Economies of scale

In Competition No. 3171, a challenge suggested by a kind reader, you were invited to submit a requiem in verse for the pangolin. One competitor pointed out that my request for a requiem seemed somewhat premature given that pangolins are still very much with us. Well, for the moment they are. But these shy, solitary, nocturnal creatures (which are more closely related to dogs and bears than to the armadillos they resemble) are being hunted down for their scales and meat and are now critically endangered. What is more, pangolins constitute their own taxonomic order, so if they disappear there’ll be nothing like them left on the planet. You rose

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Can I still socialise with my virus-denying friends?

Q. An old friend offered to treat me to a birthday lunch, provided I choose and book the restaurant myself. (He has always hated admin.) On booking, the restaurant asked me for a £50 deposit — this to deter no-shows — and I was told this would be refundable on our arrival. When the bill was presented my friend characteristically just handed over his card without even glancing at it. The next day, on noting that my deposit had not been refunded, I rang up this agreeable local restaurant. It turned out there had been a misunderstanding. They had not refunded my account but had instead reduced my friend’s bill

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

This replica is better than the original: The Ivy Oxford Brasserie reviewed

Oxford is not an easy city to homogenise; but that doesn’t mean you can’t try. I found a vast shopping centre where the Westgate used to be, looking as shopping centres do: lonely, despite its similarity to every other shopping centre. This was confirmed by the signage. New York City loves and misses you, said a sign, which I doubt: surely New York has things to worry about beyond the citizens of Oxford being unable to shop in New York City if they cannot get what they want at the Westgate? Still, I like the idea of shopping centre lamenting shopping centre across the ocean; it expresses the fashionable neurosis

Dot Wordsworth

The truth about Adrenochrome

QAnon, the conspiracy theorist’s conspiracy theory, teaches that President Donald Trump is in secret warfare with a worldwide network of paedophiles. As an explanatory model it reminds me of the voices that Gilbert Pinfold hears in Evelyn Waugh’s novel bravely describing his own delusions brought on by too much chloral and crème de menthe. In the QAnon dark world, kidnapped children are, I think, made use of to produce a psychotropic drug and elixir of immortality called adrenochrome. They are no doubt tortured and killed in the process. QAnon did not invent adrenochrome. Aldous Huxley mentions it in The Doors of Perception (1954), which largely explores his experience of mescaline.

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Trump tried to bribe my daughter-in-law

You have to give it to Donald Trump: he never stops trying. In a letter dated 25 September, he wrote to our daughter-in-law, who is an American citizen living in Britain (‘United Kingdom Englan’, it said on the envelope) to tell her he was giving her $1,700 under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act ‘which I proudly signed into law’. It is a pretty impressive bribe, and it pays out, I believe, to every American who earns less than $50,000 a year. In Hannah’s case, however, it might not work for the President at the coming poll. In the National Trust’s recent interim report, ‘Addressing our histories of

Peter Jones

Boris Johnson needs to face down his own people

To beat the virus, the government is asking us to keep to simple hands-face-space guidelines. When these are not followed, the virus spreads, but it is still (apparently) the government’s fault, i.e. the people can do no wrong. That was the case too in Athens’s direct democracy, where anyone whose proposal was ratified by the people’s assembly, but then turned out badly, could still be prosecuted for ‘misleading the people’. Even Pericles. In 431 bc war broke out between Athens, a sea-based power, and Sparta, a land-based one. Since Athens’s walls embraced its harbour Piraeus, Pericles proposed withdrawing the whole population inside the walls, and using their marine dominance to

Toby Young Toby Young

I’m turning into an English nationalist

One of the things I hadn’t anticipated about the pandemic is that it would turn me into an English nationalist. At the time of writing, the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have decided to place their countries under various forms of lockdown, while No. 10 has stopped short of imposing one on England with some Tier 3 hotspots. The explanation for this divergence is simple. The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish executives don’t need to worry about the economic harm the lockdowns will cause because they know that Westminster will come to their rescue. Boris, by contrast, cannot afford to be so reckless because England has no equivalent

Richard Dobbs

The fundamental flaws of NHS Test and Trace

The NHS Test, Trace and Isolate programme — which was meant to be one of our main weapons in the fight against a second Covid-19 peak — has not had a good few weeks. First, when schools went back last month, an inevitable rush for tests was not met with sufficient supply. It then emerged that 16,000 people who had tested positive had failed to be transferred to the tracing system. Not a great start. Then, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), for long an advocate, quietly disowned the programme, saying it is having marginal impact. Are these just teething problems as the programme gets scaled up? I’m

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Kemi Badenoch: The problem with critical race theory

Even now, months after the event, Labour MPs have not forgiven Kemi Badenoch for saying that Britain is one of the best countries in the world in which to be black. It was during the Black Lives Matter protests and many politicians — including Sir Keir Starmer — were ‘taking the knee’ to show fealty to its cause. Badenoch took a different view, seeing within all this a pernicious ideology that portrays blackness as victimhood and whiteness as oppression. In parliament this week, she went further: this, she said, is ‘critical race theory’ — a new enemy for the Tory party and, as equalities minister, one for her to fight.